The importance of stories in wildlife management (in press)

Abstract

Storytelling shapes how we understand the world and act in it, including our interactions with nature. For instance, the oral stories Indigenous peoples around the world transmit from generation to generation about the sacred bond between humans and non-humans in the world establish a respectful relationship with ecosystems. However, we have yet to fully understand how stories shape conservation and restoration practices beyond Indigenous communities. In this article, I demonstrate the function of stories in impeding conservation and restoration as well as their potential in advancing conservation and restoration. I interviewed central stakeholders in Norway's wildlife management—activists, civil servants and parliamentarians—and interpreted their stories using narrative theory to analyse how their stories affected what they did in terms of wildlife management. Each cluster of stakeholders relies on different story sources for their work: activists invoke moral stories, civil servants convey scientific accounts and parliamentarians narrate episodes of power. By relying on these diverse sources of stories, I show that the three groups of stakeholders see the world as it relates to conservation and restoration differently from each other, diverge in their actions, and as a result fail to cooperate in wildlife management. The stories that stakeholders tell are telling. The policymaking implications of understanding the power of stories are significant: efficient conservation and restoration programmes require cooperation, but diverging narratives weaken the likelihood of this cooperation. Furthermore, while most governments around the world use international environmental treaties as the narrative source to guide their efforts in preventing the decimation of nature, none of the stakeholders in wildlife management I interviewed relied on this source in their storytelling. While my interviewees are Norwegian, my findings forefront the worldwide importance of stories in conservation and restoration practices.