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Paper short abstract

Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in Singapore, this investigation explores how native butterflies have been entangled with infrastructures of environmental data. The multispecies ethnography traces the frictions arising between local stakeholders and large-scale technoscientific data extractivism.

Paper long abstract

The Common Rose and the Common Birdwing have emerged as symbols for nature conservation in Singapore in recent decades. Drawing on long-term ethnographic fieldwork in Singapore’s forests, parks and community gardens, this investigation explores how local butterflies have been entangled with infrastructures of environmental data. Amid anxieties about sea level rise in Singapore, local nature enthusiasts and biologists advocate for a green pathway (Jalan Hijau) towards a sustainable future by conserving wildlife in multispecies landscapes. This investigation foregrounds how they observe butterflies, gather data about their life cycles, and document endangered species in checklists. Traditionally, knowledge about vulnerable local butterflies was recorded in the Red Data Book, but the global rise of biodiversity platforms such as iNaturalist has accelerated the gathering of species data. The multispecies ethnography seeks to assess the role of data infrastructures in Singapore’s biodiversity conservation agenda and traces the construction of butterfly habitats in para-urban settings. Emplaced within tropical vernacular architecture, such habitats mitigate the extirpation risk for butterfly species in Singapore. The investigation demonstrates how nature conservationists appropriate mobile apps to document butterfly species in Singapore’s multispecies landscapes. Users of these mobile apps are drawn into the dynamics of a technoscientific data extractivism, entangling information about breeding and nectar plants of butterflies with data infrastructures and AI technologies for identifying and analysing vulnerable species. Finally, the paper illuminates the postcolonial politics of knowing nature, providing ethnographic insights into the future of biodiversity conservation in times of global warming.