Presenting Endangerment

Abstract

Endangered species are not simply revealed but are presented. This process of presentation is shaped by conservation discourses that reflect how actors understand, categorize, and imagine nonhuman life. Such discourses combine to produce narratives of endangerment, which influence policy and conservation efforts. This article examines how particular physical, epistemic, and cultural geographies mediate the production of conservation discourses and narratives of endangerment. It explores an anomalous case in which the endangered species presented never physically existed: the story of the conservationist Sir Peter Scott and the Loch Ness phenomena (Nessie). By reinterpreting Scott’s correspondence covering the Loch Ness Phenomena Investigation Bureau in the 1960s and 1970s, this article outlines the discursive production of Nessie as, first, a scientifically recognized species, and, second, an endangered creature warranting protection. Nessie’s nonphysical existence is argued to reveal the ways in which living things are ancillary to the discourses through which they become protected. Specifically, this article demonstrates how Nessie’s proposed endangerment was produced through ostensibly scientific discourses accessed through particular social networks, understandings, values, procedures, and imagery. In doing so it highlights the other physical and human geographies, including nationalism, landscape, media, and technology, that shaped this and likely other presentations of endangerment.