Restoration/Reintroduction

I am currently working on the project “The Return of Native Nordic Fauna” funded by FORMAS for 2013-2016. The purpose of this project is to investigate how certain animal species have been identified both culturally and scientifically as belonging in the Nordic region and how that identification has shaped historical conservation measures, particularly decisions to reintroduce the species. Through an environmental history approach, the project will expose the role of ‘nativeness’ in species reintroduction efforts dating from the twentieth century to today in Sweden and Norway, focusing specifically on the beaver and muskox. The project will investigate how species that have become locally extinct and then reintroduced are framed as native, the ways that species intentionally reintroduced versus accidentally reintroduced are treated differently, and the roles a species’ history and interaction with humans play in making a particular species ‘Swedish’ or ‘Norwegian’ or ‘Nordic’.

Read my Research Blog for “The Return of Native Nordic Fauna” project.

I was also the project coordinator and a researcher on the project “Ecosystem restoration in policy and practice: restore, develop, adapt” which is known as RESTORE for short. The project is funded by the Swedish Research Council FORMAS, Umeå University, and Swedish Agricultural University. My research for RESTORE primarily focused on the development of international restoration policy.