Paper short abstract:

This paper examines muskox-human relations in Kangerlussuaq. Outlining an ethno-ethological approach, the paper argues that conservation and management efforts would gain from understanding muskox ecologies as hybrid communities rather than counting and regulating singular species.

Paper long abstract:

The Kangerlussuaq area in West Greenland is inhabited by the largest muskox population in Greenland. This is the result of a conservation effort in the 1960s, when 27 individuals from East Greenland were translocated to Kangerlussuaq. Although the exact population size is uncertain, questioned, and contested, the muskoxen sustain human livelihoods through their meat (subsistence and commercial hunting), hides (used to produce wool), heads and horn (trophy hunting), and through their simple presence in the landscape (tourism). Muskoxen take part in shaping Kangerlussuaq as a place, and in turn, muskoxen are shaped by human sociality and infrastructures as much as they are by ecological and climatic conditions. Wildlife management authorities suggest that the current number of muskoxen exceeds the carrying capacity of the area, while hunters and others living from muskoxen articulate concerns that the population is near a collapse.

This paper examines mutual shaping of humans and muskoxen in Kangerlussuaq as biosocial becoming and multiplication. I suggest that conservation and management efforts, rather than counting and managing animals as ‘living resources’ and species isolated from others, could gain from attending to muskox ecologies as hybrid communities, that is ecologies shaped by human as well as animal practices. This invites for collaborations across disciplines when it comes to understanding how animal populations and ecologies are affected by human presence and practices, and vice versa. The paper calls for and speculatively outlines an ethno-ethological approach – one that integrates anthropology, biology, and other ways of knowing human-environment-animal relations and sociality.