INtruders and VANISHers. Living with wildlife on the move amidst a changing climate.

Objective

Climate change is redistributing life on Earth. Half of the world’s animal species tracked by scientists are on the move, looking for a new place where conditions are suitable for their survival. Since each species moves at a different pace, long-standing multispecies relations, of which people are also a part, are being unraveled and new ones are developing. This opens up a future of uncertainty in terms of biodiversity reconstitution or blatant loss, as well as of frictions with human practices, needs and worldviews. INVANISH addresses such uncertainty by proposing a joint effort between anthropologists, ecologists and citizen scientists to explore how four local communities are co-shaping the world with moving wildlife and contemplating future possibilities of multispecies existence. In each locality, attention will be paid to the lived experiences of people with a species that is “intruding” and another that is “vanishing”: red foxes and walruses on the coast of Alaska; bark beetles and mountain goats in the Alps; porcupines and rock partridges in rural Southern Italy; Bengal tigers and wild giant honey bees in a mangrove forest in India. The project will provide the first ethnographic comparison of how human-wildlife relationships are (re)built because of climate change, explore how local people navigate the dilemma of balancing diverse multispecies needs in the present and for the future, and experiment with collective knowledge production in climate change science. INVANISH will bring animals to the forefront of an anthropology of climate change, making them feature not only in the iconic images of the aftermath of climate disasters but also in the ordinary daily unfolding of climate volatility. With 2024 being the hottest year on record, this is an excellent time to conduct a project that both investigates the presents of climate change-driven species reshuffling, and contemplates its futures.