This study examines how transformations of a regional rural economy have produced new geographies of encounter between agricultural communities, their livestock, and carnivores surrounding Bandipur National Park in Karnataka, India. We analyze state discourses of human-wildlife conflict alongside the perspectives of rural agricultural communities about changes in human-wildlife interactions. Our study shows how state narratives about human-wildlife conflict mask more foundational changes in the livelihood strategies of agricultural villages in response both to park management and regional economic transformations, and how these changes are inherently woven into the production of new geographies of human-wildlife encounter. Our results suggest declining tolerance for injury and death of cattle by carnivores represents the cumulative impacts of a transformation of the livestock economy and more aggressive protected area management strategies. This research also suggests how political ecology can maintain its commitments to social justice while becoming more attuned to animals as political actors.
Although urban community gardening can offer health, social, environmental, and economic benefits, these benefits must be weighed against the potential health risks stemming from exposure to contaminants such as heavy metals and organic chemicals that may be present in urban soils. Individuals who garden at or eat food grown in contaminated urban garden sites may be at risk of exposure to such contaminants. Gardeners may be unaware of these risks and how to manage them. We used a mixed quantitative/qualitative research approach to characterize urban community gardeners' knowledge and perceptions of risks related to soil contaminant exposure. We conducted surveys with 70 gardeners from 15 community gardens in Baltimore, Maryland, and semi-structured interviews with 18 key informants knowledgeable about community gardening and soil contamination in Baltimore. We identified a range of factors, challenges, and needs related to Baltimore community gardeners' perceptions of risk related to soil contamination, including low levels of concern and inconsistent levels of knowledge about heavy metal and organic chemical contaminants, barriers to investigating a garden site's history and conducting soil tests, limited knowledge of best practices for reducing exposure, and a need for clear and concise information on how best to prevent and manage soil contamination. Key informants discussed various strategies for developing and disseminating educational materials to gardeners. For some challenges, such as barriers to conducting site history and soil tests, some informants recommended city-wide interventions that bypass the need for gardener knowledge altogether.
Societal Impact Statement A wide variety of plant species are threatened by illegal wildlife trade (IWT), and yet plants receive scant attention in IWT policy and research, a matter of pressing global concern. This review examines how “plant blindness” manifests within policy and research on IWT, with serious and detrimental effects for biodiversity conservation. We suggest several key points: (a) perhaps with the exception of the illegal timber market, plants are overlooked in IWT policy and research; (b) there is insufficient attention from funding agencies to the presence and persistence of illegal trade in plants; and (c) these absences are at least in part resultant from plant blindness as codified in governmental laws defining the meaning of “wildlife.” Summary This review investigates the ways in which “plant blindness,” first described by Wandersee and Schussler (1999, p. 82) as “the misguided anthropocentric ranking of plants as inferior to animals,” intersects with the contemporary boom in research and policy on illegal wildlife trade (IWT). We argue that plants have been largely ignored within this emerging conservation arena, with serious and detrimental effects for biodiversity conservation. With the exception of the illegal trade in timber, we show that plants are absent from much emerging scholarship, and receive scant attention by US and UK funding agencies often driving global efforts to address illegal wildlife trade, despite the high levels of threat many plants face. Our article concludes by discussing current challenges posed by plant blindness in IWT policy and research, but also suggests reasons for cautious optimism in addressing this critical issue for plant conservation.
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