CONSERVED?A POLITICAL ECOLOGY OF LANDSCAPE CONSERVATION ON THE NORTH FORK AMERICAN RIVER

abstract

The Wild & Scenic North Fork American River in Placer County, CA benefits from decades of conservation efforts stemming from its recognition as a place needful and deserving of protection. This study utilizes GIS, cartography and the critical examination of both, along with discussion of landscape conservation literature, to discuss what the North Fork has to teach us about the conservation efforts undertaken in its name and (potentially) what those lessons may have to offer about conservation efforts in general. It asks what we mean by conservation. The definition matters because it dictates the way spatial data related to conservation is collected, attributed, displayed, perceived or understood and then acted upon. Maps of the North Fork are examined utilizing data from multiple organizations. Each group‘s data purports to exhibit conservation in the drainage. Depending upon whose inherently political definition of conservation one uses, vastly different maps are generated. A posthumanist approach to mapped entities' affective capacity to shape perception and action related to their subject matter buttresses a political ecology inquiry of variant definitions of “conservation.” Keywords: landscape, political ecology, posthumanism

“It would be sad if geography should permit itself to become identified principally as a discipline that can provide techniques and mechanics of control and manipulations for urban, regional and environmental management. Ours is a major opportunity that transcends mere method. The faculties of description and evaluation are those most in need of cultivation if we are to interpret the relationships of land and life and better illuminate the esthetic qualities of landscapes so that [all] may live more wisely and happily.”–James J. Parsons