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Contribution short abstract

In the wake of shellfish population collapse, landscapes and legal geographies shape approaches to restoration in two U.S. estuaries. I argue that their seemingly opposite approaches and outcomes break down binaries in resistance and power and share the result of resource enclosure.

Contribution long abstract

How do communities restore ecosystems in the aftermath of collapse? How do their landscapes and legal geographies shape restoration goal setting and approaches, and how does the act of restoration and its physical outcomes reciprocally shape legalities and landscapes? These questions are continuously playing out in estuaries across the United States. Wild oyster populations have declined between 85% to 99% worldwide (Beck et al. 2011), and have almost disappeared from both the Peconic estuary of New York state and Elkhorn Slough, California’s second largest estuary. In the U.S., marine property laws vary by state and shape how communities respond to collapse. I apply de Certeau’s framework of strategies and tactics in everyday life to interrogate who stakeholders are in oyster and ecosystem restoration and how they identify themselves to argue that binary conceptualizations of power break down in the aftermath of collapse. Similarly, I juxtapose the property and access frameworks in the Peconic estuary and Elkhorn Slough to argue that binary understandings of seemingly opposite restoration outcomes, such as a marine protected area in Elkhorn Slough, or transition to commercial marine farming on the Peconic, obscure a shared conceptualization of oysters as forms of natural infrastructure and animal laborers within their otherwise opposing marine property frameworks. Ultimately, I argue that ecosystem restoration may seem to take opposing forms, but that those seemingly contradictory legal structures are both forms of enclosure and resource dispossession, whether by privatizing marine space for mariculture, or through the establishment of marine protected areas.