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Presentation short abstract

This paper examines herbivore reintroductions through the lens of risk, animal health and multispecies justice. It investigates how actors negotiate more-than-human vulnerabilities and explores human-herbivore encounters, care practices, and contested responsibilities.

Presentation long abstract

This research examines herbivore reintroductions within rewilding through the lens of risk, animal health and welfare, and multispecies justice. As large herbivores are rewilded to restore ecological processes their reintroduction may emerge alongside new forms of more-than-human vulnerability. Drawing on qualitative fieldwork, the paper investigates how human actors interpret and negotiate these more-than-human vulnerabilities and explores how situated relations between humans and herbivores emerge through encounters, care practices, and contested responsibilities. By engaging with multi-species justice, the paper interrogates how responsibility, care, and autonomy are unevenly distributed across these relations, and how such distributions shape the conditions under which herbivores are governed. Positioning this analysis within the IUCN Rewilding Guidelines, the paper contends that governance frameworks must adapt to the fluid, situated nature of human-herbivore relations and the diverse vulnerabilities they generate.