Send message to Author

Paper short abstract

This paper tracks lead ammunition through wildlife, ecosystems, and humans via game meat. Using a Just One Health lens, it becomes clear that human and wildlife health are inextricably linked, entwining hunters, communities, raptors, and environments in complex material and ethical relationships.

Paper long abstract

This paper explores how econarratives—stories about economies, ecologies, and ethics—can unsettle inherited binaries, open space for border-thinking, and cultivate relational identities that extend beyond the human. Drawing on my research into media coverage of lead poisoning in raptors and the One Health framework, I examine how dominant narratives about wildlife and public health often reinforce dualisms such as nature/culture, human/animal, and economy/ecology. For example, in analyzing regional news stories on the use of lead ammunition, I found that raptors are typically framed as passive victims of “natural” environmental hazards rather than as indicators of systemic human decisions about regulation, hunting practices, and ecological justice. This framing obscures the shared vulnerability of human and more-than-human communities to toxic exposure and positions wildlife welfare as marginal to public health.

By re-storying these same cases through a Just One Health lens—foregrounding multispecies interdependence, structural causes of harm, and reciprocal responsibility—econarratives can destabilize the binary between “human interest” and “animal interest.” They also invite border-thinking by connecting policy debates on ammunition to broader issues of environmental racism, rural livelihoods, and Indigenous sovereignty over hunting traditions. Such an approach demonstrates how narrative reframing can contribute to inclusive, just, and relational forms of identity that recognize humans as co-inhabitants within more-than-human communities rather than as external managers. Ultimately, I argue that econarratives grounded in multispecies ethics do not simply describe environmental crises but actively shape the moral and global political horizons of possible futures.