Towards more-than-human heritage: arboreal habitats as a challenge for heritage preservation

Abstract

Trees belong to humanity's heritage, but they are more than that. Their loss, through catastrophic fires or under business-as-usual, is devastating to many forms of life. Moved by this fact, we begin with an assertion that heritage can have an active role in the design of future places. Written from within the field of architecture, this article focuses on structures that house life. Habitat features of trees and artificial replacement habitats for arboreal wildlife serve as concrete examples. Designs of such habitats need to reflect behaviours, traditions and cultures of birds, bats, and other animals. Our narrative highlights the nonhuman aspect of heritage, seeking to understand how nonhuman stakeholders can act as users and consumers of heritage and not only as its constituents. Our working definition states that more-than-human heritage encompasses tangible and intangible outcomes of historical processes that are of value to human as well as nonhuman stakeholders. From this basis, the article asks how the established notions of heritage can extend to include nonhuman concerns, artefacts, behaviours and cultures. As a possible answer to this question, the hypothesis tested here is that digital information can (1) contribute to the preservation of more-than-human heritage; and (2) illuminate its characteristics for future study and use. This article assesses the potential of three imaging technologies and considers the resulting data within the conceptual framework of more-than-human heritage, illuminating some of its concrete aspects and challenges.

The evolving circle of landscape design

“…Wild animals, whose lives are profoundly affected by ecological restoration and landscape management, could be viewed as stakeholders in their own right (Capozzelli et al 2020). This is mirrored by the emerging concept of more‐than‐human design, which seeks to provide tangible and intangible outcomes that are valuable to human and nonhuman stakeholders (Roudavski & Rutten 2020). Similarly, it remains vigorously debated whether compassion is valid in conservation (Coghlan & Cardilini 2022) and whether the concept of “nativeness,” used to justify killing some organisms for the benefit of others, has any basis (Chew & Hamilton 2011).…”