John Sandlos

Mainstreaming the social sciences in conservation

Despite broad recognition of the value of social sciences and increasingly vocal calls for better engagement with the human element of conservation, the conservation social sciences remain misunderstood and underutilized in practice. The conservation social sciences can provide unique and important contributions to societys understanding of the relationships between humans and nature and to improving conservation practice and outcomes. There are 4 barriers-ideological, institutional, knowledge, and capacity-to meaningful integration of the social sciences into conservation. We provide practical guidance on overcoming these barriers to mainstream the social sciences in conservation science, practice, and policy. Broadly, we recommend fostering knowledge on the scope and contributions of the social sciences to conservation, including social scientists from the inception of interdisciplinary research projects, incorporating social science research and insights during all stages of conservation planning and implementation, building social science capacity at all scales in conservation organizations and agencies, and promoting engagement with the social sciences in and through global conservation policy-influencing organizations. Conservation social scientists, too, need to be willing to engage with natural science knowledge and to communicate insights and recommendations clearly. We urge the conservation community to move beyond superficial engagement with the conservation social sciences. A more inclusive and integrative conservation science-one that includes the natural and social sciences-will enable more ecologically effective and socially just conservation. Better collaboration among social scientists, natural scientists, practitioners, and policy makers will facilitate a renewed and more robust conservation. Mainstreaming the conservation social sciences will facilitate the uptake of the full range of insights and contributions from these fields into conservation policy and practice.

Claiming the New North: Development and Colonialism at the Pine Point Mine, Northwest Territories, Canada

This paper explores the history of economic, social and environmental change associated with the Pine Point lead-zinc mine, a now-abandoned industrial site and town in the Northwest Territories. Recent perspectives in cultural geography and environmental history have sought to rehabilitate mining landscapes from their reputation as places of degradation and exploitation – the so-called “mining imaginary.” We argue that the landscapes of Pine Point epitomize the failures and contradictions of mega-project resource development in the north. While the mine and planned town built to service it flourished for nearly a quarter century, the larger goals of modernization, industrial development, and Aboriginal assimilation were unrealized. Ultimately, the mine’s closure in 1988 resulted in the town’s abandonment and the removal of the rail link, leaving behind legacy of environmental destruction that remains unremediated. At Pine Point, the forces of mega-project development joined with modern mining’s technologies of “mass destruction” to produce a deeply scarred and problematic landscape that failed in its quest to bring modern industrialism to the Canadian sub-Arctic.

Landscaping Desire Poetics, Politics in the Early Biological Surveys of the Canadian North

There is a long tradition in the Canadian North of outsiders imagining the region in accordance with their own cultural assumptions. At the turn of the century, naturalists, hunters, and explorers such as Ernest Thompson Seton, Caspar Whitney, and G. H. Blanchet began to describe the North as a last wilderness frontier that was teeming with vast herds of caribou. Many of their narratives also described native hunters as “wanton” killers of wildlife who threatened the sanctity of the Northern wilderness; they argued for increased government legislative controls and, paradoxically, the controlled exploitation of caribou in ranches or organized hunts. This article argues that all of these images of the Northern caribou had a profound influence on the federal governments wildlife policy in the region through the early part of the 20th century. Indeed, the federal governments restriction of native hunting rights through legislative reform and their tentative efforts to establish reindeer and caribou ranches can be traced directly to the cultural representations of the Northern landscape that appeared in the earliest natural history surveys of the Canadian North.

Nature’s nations: the shared conservation history of Canada and the USA

Historians often study the history of conservation within the confines of national borders, concentrating on the bureaucratic and political manifestations of policy within individual governments. Even studies of the popular expression of conservationist ideas are generally limited to the national or sub-national (province, state, etc.) scale. This paper suggests that conservationist discourse, policy and practice in Canada and the USA were the products of a significant cross-border movement of ideas and initiatives derived from common European sources. In addition, the historical development of common approaches to conservation in North America suggests, contrary to common assumptions, that Canada did not always lag behind the USA in terms of policy innovation. The basic tenets of conservation (i.e. state control over resource, class-based disdain for subsistence hunters and utilitarian approaches to resource management) have instead developed at similar time periods and along parallel ideological paths in Canada and the USA.

Undermining subsistence: Barren-ground caribou in a “tragedy of open access”

Mineral resource development in the Canadian north has tragic consequences for both caribou and Indigenous people. Sustaining arctic/subarctic ecosystems and the livelihoods of northern Indigenous peoples is an immense challenge amid increasing resource development. The paper describes a “tragedy of open access” occurring in Canada’s north as governments open up new areas of sensitive barren-ground caribou habitat to mineral resource development. Once numbering in the millions, barren-ground caribou populations (Rangifer tarandus groenlandicus/Rangifer tarandus granti) have declined over 70% in northern Canada over the last two decades in a cycle well understood by northern Indigenous peoples and scientists. However, as some herds reach critically low population levels, the impacts of human disturbance have become a major focus of debate in the north and elsewhere. A growing body of science and traditional knowledge research points to the adverse impacts of resource development; however, management efforts have been almost exclusively focused on controlling the subsistence harvest of northern Indigenous peoples. These efforts to control Indigenous harvesting parallel management practices during previous periods of caribou population decline (for example, 1950s) during which time governments also lacked evidence and appeared motivated by other values and interests in northern lands and resources. As mineral resource development advances in northern Canada and elsewhere, addressing this “science-policy gap” problem is critical to the sustainability of both caribou and people.