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.
Joakim Hjältén, Christer Nilsson, Dolly Jørgensen, and David Bell BioScience 66, no. 8 (August 2016): 646-654. Abstract: The global extraction of forest and water resources has led to habitat degradation, biodiversity loss, and declines in ecosystem services. As a consequence, ecological restoration has become a global priority. Restoration efforts to offset this…
Continue reading
Peder Roberts and Dolly Jørgensen, Animals as instruments of Norwegian imperial authority in the interwar Arctic, Journal for the History of Environment and Society 1 (2016): 65-87. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1484/J.JHES.5.110829 [Open Access] Abstract: During the first half of the twentieth century a number of individuals in Norway participated in the transfer of animals from…
Continue reading
David Bell, Joakim Hjältén, Christer Nilsson, Dolly Jørgensen, Therese Johansson Ecosphere 6, no. 12: [online]. DOI: 10.1890/ES14-00551.1 [Open Access] Umbrella species are often spatially demanding and have limited ability to adapt to environmental changes induced by human land-use. This makes them vulnerable to human encroachment. In Sweden, broadleaved trees are disadvantaged by forestry, and commercially managed…
Continue reading
Ecological restoration as objective, target and tool in international biodiversity policy. Ecology and Society 20, no. 2 (2015):43. http://dx.doi.org/10.5751/ES-08149-200443 [Open Access] Ecological restoration has been mainstreamed in international biodiversity policies in the last five years. I analyze statements about restoration in three international policies: the Convention for Biodiversity Strategic Plan 2011-2020 and…
Continue reading
Muskox in a Box and Other Tales of Containers as Domesticating Mediators in Animal Relocation, in Animal Housing and Human–Animal Relations: Politics, Practices and Infrastructures, ed. Kristian Bjørkdahl and Tone Druglitrø, 100-114 (Routledge, 2016) Using three short tales of animal relocation in Norway and Sweden from 1900 to 2013, I argue that the boxes used…
Continue reading
In The Historical Animal, ed. S. Nance (Syracuse University Press, 2015), 184-201. This chapter takes as its departure point studies of human migration, which have received a lot of attention in the past decade. Scholars have been interested in understanding the push/pull forces behind human migrations, whether they are willing or…
Continue reading
Geoforum, 65 (Oct 2015): 482-488, doi://10.1016/j.geoforum.2014.11.016 Abstract: The term ‘rewilding’ sounds as if it should have a straightforward meaning ‘to make wild again’. But in truth the term has a complex history and a host of meanings have been ascribed to it. Rewilding as a specific scientific term has its…
Continue reading
Ecological Applications 25(5): 1373-1389. http://dx.doi.org/10.1890/14-1102.1 authors: EM Hasselquist, C Nilsson, J Hjältén, D Jørgensen, L Lind, and LE Polvi The first author of this paper is a PhD student whom I co-supervised at Umeå University. Abstract: A lack of ecological responses in stream restoration projects has been prevalent throughout recent literature with…
Continue reading
Conservation Biology 29, no 2 (April 2015): 602-605. Parasites with a high degree of host specificity may have extinction rates similar to their avian and mammalian hosts thus warrant attention from conservation biologists. During reintroduction and other translocation projects, typically little thought has been given to whether or not a parasite…
Continue reading
Sustainability 5 (2013): 387-399. English wood pastures have become a target for ecological restoration, including the restoration of pollarded trees and grazing animals, although pigs have not been frequently incorporated into wood pasture restoration schemes. Because wood pastures are cultural landscapes, created through the interaction of natural processes and human practices,…
Continue reading
