Paper short abstract:

On November 3, 2020 voters in Colorado, USA ushered in a new more-than-human resiliency paradigm of wildlife management: ‘democratic conservation’. This exercise of democratic power is the first known case of a nonhuman animal species’ reintroduction via a statutory ballot initiative.

Paper long abstract:

On 3 November 2020 voters in Colorado, USA ushered in a new paradigm of wildlife management: ‘democratic conservation’. More than 3,000,000 Coloradans narrowly voted to pass Proposition 114 to reintroduce the gray wolf (Canis lupus) to the state (Brasch 2020a) in an example of multispecies socio-political resiliency. This exercise of democratic power is the first known case where a coalition of citizens and nonprofit organizations led a grass-roots effort to bypass state and federal legislation to demand a nonhuman animal species’ reintroduction via a statutory ballot initiative. The outcome is bittersweet for environmental and wolf advocates: on October 29th, 2020 the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Department (USFWD) controversially decided to end federal support for the wolf by delisting the species from the U.S. Endangered Species Act (ESA), turning over management to local and state officials (Rott 2020). Colorado Parks and Wildlife (CPW) is now required to develop a plan to manage the species’ return based on statewide public hearings and scientific data, and to initiate ‘paws on the ground’ west of the Continental Divide by December 31, 2023. Wildlife management and policy is a contentious global issue, rife with competing values and tragic histories of violence against indigenous peoples and nonhuman animals, as well as favoring particular special interest groups. In this paper, we take a subaltern, posthumanist, and decolonial ecological perspective to consider the rights and perspectives of subaltern groups related to environmental conservation and examine the potential of this new democratic conservation paradigm for more-than-human resiliency.