The emergence of free-roaming donkey (Equus asinus) populations globally has brought novel challenges for conservationists, land managers, and those concerned about animal welfare. We provide a review of the scientific literature pertaining to the place and role of free-roaming donkeys from 1950 until 2020. Using quantitative and qualitative techniques, namely categorical and thematic analysis and critical discourse analysis, to review >100 articles, we critically examine the logics and rationales that are used to either support or denounce donkey presence in particular landscapes and discuss their place and role in different ecological contexts. Free-roaming donkeys are largely understudied and clouded by dichotomous points of view, different conservation agendas, and the presence of other species in donkey habitat. There is an important need for more in-depth, site-specific studies on free-roaming donkeys that draw on tools and techniques from across the social and natural sciences. Such efforts would offer a richer, more holistic, and comprehensive picture of free-roaming donkeys that consider both human and animal perspectives and the wider environment. This has important implications for generating long-term sustainable management solutions for free-roaming donkeys.
The last forty years have seen a dramatic increase in the number of great cormorants (Phalacrocorax carbo) moving inland away from British coastlines. Britain's largest inland colony currently reside at Walthamstow Wetlands, a nature reserve and functional reservoir system in northeast London, recently branded 'Europe's largest urban wetland'. Here, great cormorants are embroiled in contested ideas of nature. Celebrated by conservationists for their resilience and adaptability, yet hounded by anglers for launching ecological chaos on rivers and reservoirs and disrupting the balance that is imagined for urban recreational spaces.This paper argues for a more nuanced version of rewilding that acknowledges the biogeographical complexity and mobility of nonhumans in relation to radically altered ecologies and post-industrial urban environments. It uses the conceptual frame of more-thanhuman to examine the increased presence, mobility, and agency of great cormorants at Walthamstow Wetlands in terms of nonhuman autonomy and auto-rewilding. The findings demonstrate that the self-relocation and autonomous occupation of inland cormorants in Walthamstow are intimately entangled with human histories and activities, and that they are active alongside humans in creating novel ecosystems.
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