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Paper short abstract:

There is a curious mirroring of bird-human encounters enacted in geophysical places (habitats & migration routes) and in “virtual menageries” of policy documents such as the EU Bird-Habitat Directive (Berland 2019). Like virtual wings, names are lexical forms enabling travel among bodies & texts.

Paper long abstract:

In our preliminary ethnographic study of the EU Bird-Habitat Directive, we find a curious mirroring of bird-human encounters enacted in geophysical places (habitats and migration routes) and in the “virtual menageries” of policy documents (Berland 2019). We find that species names, like virtual wings, function as elemental lexical forms that enable travel between bodies and texts. Collected into categories of habitat and endangerment level, species names are mobilized as the basic building blocks of new lists called annexes. The annexes appear sui generis, as travelling actors, crossing scales and jurisdictions through different policy documents. Thus, the deeper the species names travel into policy realms, the farther they are from birds’ actual being and becoming. And yet, the policy documents are designed to circle back through their own abstractions and scales to the jurisdictions with habitats, and ultimately to improve the well-being of the birds who bear the species names (and their companions). Our paper articulates this species-based process of dematerialization and rematerialization through the five-century ornithological history of the birds known to humans as stone curlews (Burhinus oedicnemus). We argue that because the architecture of policy documents relies on species names for its basic building blocks, this may overdetermine the use of existing species categories in environmental law more broadly. And perhaps more problematically, it cements the reliance of scientific researchers on reproducing existing species categories and on species logic more generally. This argument contributes to the critical analysis of the relationship between evidence-based science and law.