Past Natures for Future Conservation – Current Narratives and Historical Human-Wildlife-Land Relations in Southern Africa and the European Alps

Conservationists often use historical arguments to justify their visions of which groups of human and non-human species should live where and how.

Imagined pasts are central to influential concepts and practices of conservation, such as re-wilding, species re-introduction or landscape restoration.

These narratives range from vague references to past equilibriums, that need to be saved, to more specific baselines of past distribution of certain species, that need to be restored, to the re-creation of specific past landscapes in new settings. Historians have hardly contributed to these historicized arguments.

Following recent calls for conservation humanities, I apply historiographical methods to engage with conservationists ideas of past human-wildlife-land interactions and practices in Southern Africa and the European Alps.

Firstly, I analyze, contextualize and compare how conservation organizations use imagined past human-wildlife-land relations and develop a typology of historical conservation narratives.

In Southern Africa, conservationists present Africans as naturally knowing how to live in their environment or as a threat to nature. In Europe, conservationists narratives present historical people as experts or masters of nature.

Secondly, I research specific historical moments in both regions, to juxtapose conservation narratives with localized analyses of historical changes in human-wildlife-land relations.

Thirdly, by combining critical historical analyses of cases in the Global South with those of Europe, I challenge powerful conservation narratives that often perpetuate global power structures.By this, I critique ongoing conservation debates and practices, and offer novel perspectives of multi-species pasts.

A thorough understanding of these pasts is crucial for coping with immense present and challenges in the light of the ongoing climate crisis, as for example formulated in the COP15 agreement to conserve and/or restore 30% of the worlds surface.