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Short abstract:

After two decades of ecological reparation for industrial damage, the Cruces River estuary is the scene of an unexpected predatory interaction between sea lions and black-necked swans. The case presents the erratic institutional attempts to intervene in this complex interspecies interaction.

Long abstract:

The Cruces River estuary that extends through extensive wetlands in Los Ríos Region in southern Chile, has transitioned in recent decades from events of high environmental conflict to reparatory processes that seek to give rise to interspecific modes of coexistence. A pollution event caused by discharges from a pulp mill in 2004, dramatically affected the population of black-necked swans, turning it into an emblematic species and one of the icons of local social movements and environmental protection against the dangers of the forestry industry. Almost 20 years later the swan is once again threatened, but this time by the unexpected predation of another protected species: the sea lion. After years of a sustained recovery of swans and other estuarine birds, a series of sea lion-swan predation attacks, unprecedented for riverside inhabitants, are reported, recorded and spread through social networks. The alarm of human communities generates erratic attempts at institutional responses, exposing the conflicting visions of scientists and government experts on how to regulate interspecific coexistence in a protected and repairing ecology. The case calls for a posthumanist reflection: what possible responses emerge from the interspecific controversies that develop in complex ecologies and in repairing processes?