Wildlife Corridors: An Urban Political Ecology

Abstract

Wildlife corridors constitute one of a number of increasingly influential strategic nature conservation tools deployed in urban greenspace planning. The following paper develops an urban political ecology approach to understand wildlife corridors as quasi-objects that play a key role in articulating between the realms of ecology and planning. Interrogating the planning narrative surrounding a contentious brownfield development on an ecologically sensitive site reveals how the wildlife corridor established a particular version of urban nature materially and discursively. Ecological surveying and mapping practices were integral in freeing up the majority of the site for development, reproducing the conditions necessary for capitalist development. It is argued that the wildlife corridor exerts considerable power over what counts as nature in the city, for whom and where, raising a series of questions for the political ecology of conservation planning.

Acknowledgements

This research was made possible by an ESRC/NERC interdisciplinary research studentship (R00429934133), and was written up mainly under the auspices of an ESRC postdoctoral fellowship (T026271328). The author would like to thank his colleagues in the school at the University of Birmingham for their support and the anonymous referees for their useful comments. Perhaps most importantly, the author owes a debt of gratitude to the various audiences who have provided ideas and feedback on the many forms of this paper that have been presented over the last four years, and the people he interviewed who were kind enough to share their knowledge, experiences and opinions with him. The usual disclaimers apply.