Contribution short abstract

This roundtable contribution reflects on integrating eDNA, camera surveys, and discourse analysis in research on Sears Island. It considers how to hold ecological patterns and community knowledge together in politically contested energy transitions.

Contribution long abstract

My contribution reflects on what it means to do more-than-human political ecology in a landscape where ecological processes, state planning, and local conflict collide. Drawing from ongoing research on the proposed offshore wind port on Wassumkeag (Sears Island) in Maine, I work through the practical and interpretive challenges of integrating eDNA metabarcoding, island-wide camera surveys, seasonal habitat observations, and discourse analysis into a single relational field practice. These methods reveal multispecies patterns that complicate official portrayals of the island as a low-value landscape ready for industrial transformation, yet translating ecological signals into political terms raises questions about representation, scale, and responsibility. Rather than offering a finished model, I hope to use this roundtable to think collaboratively about how political ecologists can treat ecological data as more than evidence for or against development, and instead consider it part of the relational life of contested landscapes. How do we acknowledge multispecies presence without turning them into static datapoints? How do we bring community knowledge into conversation with the ecological patterns our fieldwork reveals? What does it mean to situate fieldwork in a place where governance frameworks do not recognize these relations at all? I offer these tensions as openings for shared methodological exploration.