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Paper short abstract

In the Polish Carpathians, transhumant pastoralism has been reframed as environmental conservation work. This paper examines the tensions this has generated between shepherds and conservationists, their competing agendas of protection and production, and their scientific and experiential expertise.

Paper long abstract

This paper examines how competing ideas and practices of sustainability have become sites of contestation between transhumant shepherds, foresters, and government officials in the Polish Carpathians amid competing conservation paradigms and rural abandonment. Transhumant pastoralism is a communal practice which relies on the pooling of livestock and pasture, as well as the mobility of humans and animals across land insides national parks, or which is protected. It produces uniquely biodiverse mountain ecologies which are sustained by repeated, seasonal practices of mowing and grazing. These ecologies are simultaneously natural and cultural: centuries of grazing and mowing have created the open meadows that support endemic species and prevent forest succession. Yet rural depopulation and agricultural abandonment have rendered much of this landscape "barren" from pastoral perspectives - overgrown with invasive species and "closed" by encroaching forest. To combat such environmental degradation, shepherds have begun to collaborate with regional and park authorities to create new programmes which support traditional grazing practices. However, conservation policies create new tensions. They often translate communal pastoral practice into individualized property rights incompatible with shepherds' mobile land use. Meanwhile, policies like retention forestry and Natura 2000 protections exclude shepherds from forest resources, privileging scientific expertise over pastoral knowledge. Given these difficulties, I ask what forms of coexistence are possible - or impossible - when pastoral practice itself is reframed as conservation work.