Paper Short Abstract:

Native North Ronaldsay sheep (Orkney) are deeply entangled with the life and livelihoods of the island community from which the breed originates. Arguing that successful co-evolution still occurs in a fraught ethical landscape, I re-examine the stakes of interspecies care in the dynamic context of socio-ecological change.

Paper Abstract:

Native north Ronaldsays are a heritage breed of sheep that are the last stragglers of an ancient type indigenous to the archipelago of Orkney, with roots stretching back to the Neolithic (Hall 1975). Today, the breed has become known for its unique diet made up of almost exclusively seaweed that the original herd was forced to adopt after the construction of a drystone wall encircling the island of North Ronaldsay in 1832 pushed them to the shoreline. In a twist of evolutionary fate, the very same wall that served to marginalize these unruly sheep now protects them as the breed developed a heightened susceptibility to copper poising from terrestrial herbage (Balasse et al. 2005). In this paper, I aim to complicate the notion of care in the context of a long-standing interspecies relationship and examine the process of mutual care as a necessary, yet deeply fraught component of biocultural co-evolution. I examine how the shifting biome of this breed patterns- and is itself shaped by the changing nature of care for this heritage type, and the ways in which these relationships rewrite the assumed value of these sheep throughout time. In particular, I critically observe narratives surrounding the importance of maintaining the breed’s genetic purity and the ways in which they are being used not only to practice concern for the sheep, but also to negotiate the livelihood of the local community of North Ronaldsay who are on the precipice of change themselves.