| dc.description.abstract | The current rate of biodiversity loss worldwide has in recent years led scholars to suggest that we have entered a period of mass extinction, referred to as the “sixth extinction” (Kingsford et al., 2009). As concern regarding the rate of species extinctions grows in the conservation community and beyond, debates regarding how best to conserve a rapidly eroding ‘nature’ intensify, and new conservation strategies emerge. Rewilding is one such strategy. Born in the late 1980s out of the conviction that biodiversity conservation should move away from merely “managing loss” (Sandom et al., 2013:413), rewilding aims at actively restoring damaged ecosystems by reintroducing locally extinct species. Rewilding suggests not only new ways to protect ecosystems; it advocates for rethinking relations between humans and the biosphere that they are part of (Rawles, 2023). This thesis is an ethnographic study of a rewilding project carried out in the wetland area of Esteros del Iberá, Northern Argentina. Drawing on six months of fieldwork during which I volunteered for the Fundación Rewilding Argentina’s green-winged macaw (Ara chloropterus) reintroduction project, I explore how rewilding practitioners relate to the macaws whom they reintroduce. Inspired by Govindrajan’s work on multispecies relatedness (Govindrajan, 2018), I look at the plurality of relations which are created between human and macaws. I argue that these relations are transformative both for macaws and practitioners. As I demonstrate, the process of rehabilitating previously captive macaws for life in ‘the wild’ implies the creation of a particular type of relation between birds and humans. Practitioners attempt to progressively withdraw from the lives of macaws, so that those might become independent and near-wild. I show how an analysis of this relation enables us to understand wildness in the Anthropocene not as the characteristic of untouched ecosystems but rather as a rearrangement of relations between birds, humans, and the wider ecosystem. When designing and performing the rearrangement of those relations, practitioners must balance practices of care which are aimed both at individual animals, their species, and Iberá’s ecosystems. As such, the process of rewilding macaws opens avenues for thinking of the meaning of cross-species care in a context of mass extinction. | eng |