Placing Plants in Territory

ABSTRACTIn this article, we use plants to think about territory, a concept that is at once a bulwark of social theory and an under-theorized category of social analysis. Scholarship on plants brings together three overlapping approaches to territory: biological and behaviorist theories; representational and cartographic perspectives; and more-than-human analysis. We argue that these three approaches are not mutually exclusive. Rather, different epistemologies of territory overlap and are imbricated within each other. We further argue that these three approaches to territory inform three distinct domains of territoriality: legibility and surveillance; ordering and classification; and exclusion and inclusion. Through examples of how plants operate in these three domains, we illustrate the analytical potential that a more-than-human approach to territory provides. We conclude, however, that attention to the particularities of plant ecologies can help move multispecies discussions more firmly into the realm of the political economic.

What Good Is a Bear to Society?

Arising out of fieldwork in the Canadian Rockies, this paper analyzes the role of bears in the conservation culture of Canadian national parks. Why is the presence of this large predator tolerated and even celebrated by some? And why do others fear and even despise this animal, whom they see as a danger and a menace, and resent its continued preservation? Bears may act as a token charismatic species in conservation mythology; they may be anthropomorphized into a cuddly roadside attraction evoking childhood nostalgia; or they may play the part of wrathful Nature guarding against human incursion into the wilderness. Tourists in Banff National Park take great pains to see bears, while local hikers and campers expend almost equal energy avoiding an ursine encounter. This paper explores what human reactions to bears reveal about social attitudes toward the natural world, particularly in areas like the Canadian Rockies where human and bear territory overlap.

Territory size and overlap in male Ovenbirds: contrasting a fragmented and contiguous boreal forest

We evaluated if male age and body size, density of conspecifics, and arthropod biomass contributed to variation in territory size and overlap of Ovenbirds, Seiurus aurocapillus (L., 1766), in a fragmented and contiguous boreal forest. Territory size and overlap were determined by radio-tracking territorial male Ovenbirds in fragmented (n = 22) and contiguous forest (n = 13) from late May to the end of June 1999 and 2000. Variation in male territory size was most strongly associated with individual characteristics, specifically body size and age. Furthermore, we found strong support for an effect of density of conspecifics on territory overlap, suggesting that the exclusivity of territories and perhaps levels of territoriality were greater for males in contiguous forest than for those in fragments. Our findings (i.e., mean territory size was similar between landscapes and territory overlap was greater in fragments than in contiguous forest) suggest that fragments either have larger areas of unsuitable habitat or are less saturated with Ovenbirds. Furthermore, because resources were not distributed equally among individuals, our results were consistent with the ideal dominance model of habitat selection. Finally, previous studies based on acoustical surveys have likely underestimated space-use requirements in forest passerines.