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SUMMARY:Peter Pan Pachyderms? What a doomed experiment to reintroduce elep
 hants taught us about animal cultures - Sandra Swart\, Stellenbosch Univer
 sity
DTSTART:20240509T160000Z
DTEND:20240509T170000Z
UID:TALK216184@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Dr AM Price
DESCRIPTION:History – as I hope I will illustrate – can play a role in
  addressing current global biodiversity crises\, revealing the shifting dy
 namics of conservation dilemmas and thereby help in shaping more effective
  responses. History can be useful in conservation: it can fuse ecological\
 , political\, social and economic data into explanatory narratives of chan
 ge over time. It can explore successful initiatives but also expose the fa
 ilures precipitated by unintended blowback from failed efforts. The long r
 oots of (human) coping strategies may be learned from cultures with long m
 emories of traditional ecological knowledge. But this talk suggests someth
 ing much bolder: that we should look at changing cultures of the animals t
 hemselves. I suggest how these might be reconstructed and how they might b
 e useful in conservation efforts. I contend that animal behaviours can cha
 nge over time and be locally-specific\, with sentience\, sociality and ind
 ividuality playing a role. I explore the deep connections between people a
 nd animals\, troubling the persistent and dangerous idea that human–wild
 life relationships are of only subordinate significance relative to ‘pri
 stine’ or nonhuman interfaces (in biological/ecological research\, in co
 nservation projects\, or in how we envision ‘Nature’ more broadly). I 
 show how historicizing elephants and human-wildlife relations helps avoid 
 romanticizing them. _Essentially\, I contend that animals have history. An
 d those histories matter to their futures._
LOCATION:Graham Storey Room\, Trinity Hall Trinity Lane Cambridge\, CB2 1T
 J United Kingdom
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