Un-Natural Discourse in the Age of Anthropogenic Landscapes

Our relationship with wildlife and wild spaces is shifting from a dominion over nature to one that strives for coexistence; yet this coexistence is typically fragmented and, with many wildlife species, relies on tautologies that reinforce unnatural metaphors and stories that keep us outside of nature. To assist in identifying common ground amidst competing users of our shared landscapes, Un-Natural Discourse in the Age of Anthropogenic Landscapes: How We Imagine Wildlife considers how the language we use can challenge our ability to coexist with wild nature. When we say a bison is livestock we diminish its wildness, while a beaver as a pest marginalizes it to exist outside of our Anthropogenic landscapes or to not exist at all. Since language forms meaning, Jones argues how by relying on unnatural discourse to relate to the natural world, coexistence can become much more difficult to achieve.