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Short abstract

The presentation examines the performative effect of seeking zero pests in eradication projects and how this shapes how pests are framed and how pest eradication projects are designed, communicated and implemented, including how technology is both developed and deployed.

Long abstract

New Zealand accounts for nearly 25% of the world’s uninhabited island pest eradication attempts. Buoyed by successes from these uninhabited island eradications, biologists are now seeking to undertake pest eradications at scale on inhabited islands. Indeed in New Zealand, ‘predator free’ is a national vision with the aim for the country to be free of all rats, stoats, possums and feral cats by 2050. New Zealand is now a leading exporter of mammalian eradication knowledge, technologies and operational know-how to governments and NGOs across the world who are directing substantial funds towards landscape-scale invasive species eradication.

To be ‘Pest-Free’ requires a biological endpoint of zero target pests in a specific location over a specified timeframe. When eradication is sought and funded, the focus is on pest kills and an outcome of pest suppression only, is typically deemed a project failure by funders. This presentation draws from examples from around the world to examine how the current eradication paradigm with the biological end point of zero pests, shapes how pests are framed and how pest eradication projects are designed, communicated and implemented, including how technology is both developed and deployed. The presentation reveals that the increasing focus on zero pests in eradication projects, limits the involvement of communities, social scientists, humanities and indigenous knowledge-holders therefore restricting the opportunity for important ‘entanglements’ in the new alliances that are formed in eradication projects. The presentation argues for more critical reflection on the performative effect of seeking zero pests in eradication projects.

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Short abstract

This paper examines when species become accepted as native. Drawing on ethnography of different species and their shifting positions between foreignness and acceptance, it reconsiders the tensions between scientific classifications, cultural perceptions, and ecological interpretations.

Long abstract

Species have always migrated and reshaped ecosystems, but climate change and accelerated globalization have intensified these processes, producing far-reaching ecological, social, and economic effects. Invasive species are not only scientific or environmental concerns; they also carry political and cultural meanings. Their spread is shaped by historical and contemporary power relations, as are the efforts to manage or eradicate them. Yet despite extensive scholarship, species continue to be framed through a rigid native/alien dichotomy.

This presentation, part of a broader project on cultural attitudes toward alien and invasive species, examines the cultural and political implications of determining when an alien species becomes native. Drawing on ethnographic research conducted in Israel–Palestine among scientists, environmental activists, farmers, and local residents, it analyzes the tensions between scientific classifications and everyday perceptions.

Focusing on debates surrounding eucalyptus trees and common mynas, the talk shows how different species occupy distinct positions along a shifting matrix between acceptance and estrangement. These cases complicate taken-for-granted categories of nativeness, alienness, and invasion.

Engaging more-than-human theory and the anthropology of emotions, the study highlights how perceptions of species are shaped by temporal depth, cultural symbolism, spatial visibility, and assessments of material harm. By foregrounding these dimensions, the presentation proposes a more fluid understanding of nativeness and foreignness, and invites a broader reconsideration of acceptance, acclimatization, and exclusion in socio-political contexts.

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Short abstract

This paper traces the history of the Marion Island cat eradication program (1977-1993), probing the South African Apartheid-era management strategies for responding to species invasion in a biodiversity hotspot and the vexing questions this episode presents for conservation histories more generally.

Long abstract

The remote, sub-Antarctic Marion Island, an offshore territorial possession of South Africa dating back to its annexation in 1948, represents a crucial node in Southern Ocean bird and mammal ecologies. But from the early years after annexation until their full eradication in the early 1990s, a population of initially human-introduced cats roamed the island, dramatically disrupting the breeding cycles of bird species that relied on the remote island’s location in the larger Southern Ocean region. Within the South African National Antarctic Program (SANAP), the Marion Island cat eradication program has become the stuff of lore, while in the larger conservation literature, it’s noted as a particularly comprehensive success in efforts to cull an invasive mammal species. At the same time, the program represents a curious case, one in which links between invasive species management and the military language of invasion weren’t just discursive or analogical but entailed the explicit material leveraging of military capacities. Specifically, the program recruited members of South Africa’s late-Apartheid armed forces into the team of “cat hunters,” drawing on the skills these “cat hunters” had developed working to preserve white rule in Southern Africa to carry out the necro-labor of conservation. Tracing the history of the Marion Island cat eradication program, this talk asks what kinds of unsettling questions the program and its historical reception raise for thinking the socially and politically situated character of invasion and conservation science, highlighting their imbrication in this instance with the militarized socio-ecological management strategies of an Apartheid state.

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Short abstract

This presentation summarizes lessons learned from the development and implementation of Uprooted: Plants Out of Place, a recent exhibition at Carnegie Museum of Natural History aimed at presenting the nuanced topic of invasive plants through an interdisciplinary lens.

Long abstract

Species invasions are ranked among the top concerns for biodiversity change globally, with big economic costs. Yet, public skepticism and mistrust towards the field of invasion biology have been heightened by growing criticism from within the social sciences, humanities, and popular media. Debates continue over the biological importance of ‘nativity’ and whether the theoretical foundation of invasion biology is biased beyond repair, riddled with sentiments of xenophobia and militaristic language. Communicating about introduced species and their impacts in ways that engage and empower audiences can be challenging but necessary to enable informed decision making. These aspects of invasive species messaging have been largely overlooked, especially in museums, nature centers, and other institutions where public-facing messages have potential to influence local culture and opinions. This reviews the conflicting perspectives between science and the humanities and highlights the need for updated, inclusive communication strategies. Communication strategies are developed and experimented upon in a recent collaborative project at Carnegie Museum of Natural History, which culminated in a new museum exhibition, Uprooted: Plants Out of Place. Integrating historical-scientific narratives through archival objects, art, and museum specimens, the exhibition recontextualizes the museum’s Hall of Botany of plant-centric dioramas dating from the 1920s that portray idealized plant communities devoid of humans. The exhibit focuses on human responsibility and agency, emphasizes invasive plants as passengers, interrogates the role of language in shaping attitudes, and illuminates other cultural points of view. This work emphasizes that invasion biology is not just a scientific discipline, but necessarily an interdisciplinary one.

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Short abstract

This paper examines how invasion biologists decide which knowledge to trust or ignore. Based on ethnographic fieldwork, it develops a reception-oriented model of scientific trust, showing how evaluation practices shape scientific work on possible ecological threats.

Long abstract

This paper examines epistemic practices in invasion biology by analyzing how scientists make decisions about using epistemic resources. Drawing on multi-sited ethnographic fieldwork in two invasion biology research groups (2–3 months each) and ten expert interviews, I investigate how scientists evaluate and receive knowledge in everyday research practice.

Building on these empirical findings, I develop a reception-oriented model of scientific trust. Rather than treating trust as an individual attitude or as a property of knowledge itself, the model conceptualizes trust as an interpretative scheme that orientates decisions about the use of epistemic resources. The model considers how scientists assess data, methods, collaborators, and institutional contexts when deciding whether knowledge becomes usable within their own work.

The paper argues that invasion biology is shaped not only through knowledge production, but also through practices of reception that determine which knowledge is integrated or ignored. By foregrounding reception as a part of active epistemic practices, this study highlights how scientific knowledge is continuously negotiated through everyday decisions about credibility and usability.

Invasion biology provides a particularly productive site for examining these dynamics, as the field operates at the intersection of ecological uncertainty, public controversy, and future-oriented environmental governance. The findings show how trust-based reception practices shape the interpretation of ecological change and which forms of intervention become thinkable or legitimate.

The paper contributes to STS debates on scientific trust and epistemic regimes. It further shows how reception practices participate in shaping possible futures of living with ecological change and so-called invasive species.

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Short abstract

Having walked and talked with 27 engaged gardeners in southern Sweden, this paper shows how invasive species are negotiated through everyday gardening. While routine control makes organisms situationally killable, repeated failed killing efforts and nonhuman persistence make invasiveness “stick”.

Long abstract

Domestic gardens are important sites where invasive-species governance meets everyday practices, valuation, control, and removal. Based on walking interviews with 27 engaged gardeners in southern Sweden, this paper examines how official invasive-species classifications are negotiated through situated encounters with plants and invertebrates.

We develop two interacting processes. First, organisms become situationally killable when gardeners judge removal to be legitimate and routine; when control appears effective, official or colloquial attributions of invasiveness can lose practical salience. Second, repeated failures of containment or eradication generate sticky invasiveness: persistence becomes affectively charged through frustration, disgust, vigilance, and escalating attempts at control. Drawing on Haraway’s concept of killability and Ahmed’s account of stickiness, we distinguish the moral-practical availability of organisms for killing from the practical success of controlling them. Organisms may therefore remain killable even as repeated return, regrowth, or spread makes invasiveness increasingly salient. This processual account shows how nonhuman material capacities participate in environmental classification and helps explain why official categories are selectively enacted in domestic settings.

The findings contribute to STS and environmental sociology by linking more-than-human agency to the everyday mediation of biodiversity governance in private spaces. It preserves the ecological reality of invasive impacts while examining how their meanings travel.

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Short abstract

Bark beetle outbreaks contributed to a massive dieback of spruce in Germany. This workshop examines the insect’s role in timber material flows. Framed as a disaster, it drives uncertainty yet prompts shifts to more diverse forests and reconsideration of agency beyond external human planning.

Long abstract

Timber construction is increasingly promoted as a key solution for making (urban) construction more climate-friendly. Beneath this seemingly straightforward solution, however, lie significant uncertainties related to the forests supplying the timber. For the tree species most commonly used in construction, conifers, particularly spruce, one key source of uncertainty is the outbreak of bark beetles. Although these insects play an important role in decomposing wood within diverse forest ecosystems, they have gained the status of invasive in commercial monoculture forests. The combination of single-species stands, climate-change and storms has enabled their rapid spread, leading to the loss of approximately half a million hectares of spruce forest in Germany between 2018 and 2021.

This workshop will investigate the material flows of timber through an STS perspective. Drawing on ongoing ethnography of German forest region of Sauerland, I invite participants to examine how beetle outbreaks are framed as disasters yet also drive the transition toward more resilient mixed forests. A brief presentation of the case study will be followed by a group concept mapping activity, in which participants will come up with aspects of the case study through the lens of their disciplinary background. The session will close with a collaborative visual thematic clustering exercise and group discussion.

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Short abstract

This workshop inquires how to live with “invasive” species through the means of postcards. This medium invites us to question instances and visual tourist communication of conservation work where killing-as-caring becomes a mundane practice and ingrained part of eco-touristic landscapes.

Long abstract

The question how we may live with “alien invasive” species has been discussed in multispecies STS, particularly in the context of scientific research. What has received relatively less scholarly attention is how humans’ relationships with such negatively connoted species is conveyed and cultivated to tourists, particularly in areas with heavy eco-tourism like Aotearoa New Zealand. Some research identifies differing tourists’ perspectives from mainstream conservation narratives and argues for more targeted communication with tourists to increase management success and conservation awareness (Lovelock et al. 2022). Meanwhile, researchers have paid less attention to how tourist and public communication of “invasive” species normalize “killing as caring” (Kung 2026) to cultivate a specific kind of conservation awareness.

This workshop engages the question how to live with species cast as enemies by creating/writing postcards that communicate this ethos of killing-as-care. Rather than surveys or interviews, it engages a more visceral, visual scholarly inquiry by sending postcards from “invaded” environments. By offering postcards created from eco-tourist hotspots across Aotearoa, panelists are invited to submit images from their research fields that communicate invasiveness, traps on hikes, and other instances of public engagement in killing-as-care. Prior to the workshop, the organizers will create postcards with these images and play them back to participants to reflect on these moments and spaces of culling “invasive” species. The messages written on these postcards are intended to evoke lived, ethnographic moments in which killing becomes a mundane, unquestioned practice, and part of eco-touristic landscapes that underpin a conservation culture.

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Short abstract

Tipu and jacaranda trees have been introduced for landscaping in 30+ cities, thus eliciting a wide range of perceptions. Taking six cities as case studies, this workshop invites a discussion about introduction history, cultural integration and management of invasive species in urban areas worldwide.

Long abstract

The use of non-native species in urban arborization is, to a higher or lesser extent, a controversial issue in different cities. Producing a visually striking combination of yellow and bright purple flowers, tipu and jacaranda trees have been introduced in tamdem to streets and parks of more than 30 cities around the globe. Since the first introdutions in the mid-19th century, the presence of these trees has elicited a wide range of bio-cultural interactions, perceptions, and folklore. Taking these two trees as focal points, this workshop invites a discussion about the role of introduction histories in shaping people's perceptions, cultural integration, and management strategies directed at non-native and invasive species in urban areas. To do so, six cities will be used as case studies: Barcelona (Spain), Brisbane (Australia), Mexico City (Mexico), Pretoria (South Africa), San Diego (USA), and São Paulo (Brazil). First, a visual summary of the introduction history of tipu and jacaranda trees in each of these cities will be presented. Then, participants will be given flashcards containing newspaper clippings, excerpts of literary and academic work, as well as data published by municipal authorities about the two trees. After some time for discussion in small groups, all participants will then be invited to share their peceptions and experiences with the larger group and the panel of invasion ecology scientists.