contested boundaries, contested places: the natura 2000 network in ireland

at SciVerse ScienceDirect

Journal of Rural Studies 28 (2012) 80e94

Contents lists available

Journal of Rural Studies

journal homepage: www.elsevier .com/locate/ j rurstud

Contested boundaries, contested places: The Natura 2000 network in Ireland

Sharon Bryan*

Department of Geography, University of Exeter, Amory Building, Rennes Drive, Exeter EX4 4RJ, United Kingdom

Keywords:Natureesociety boundariesNaturalnessNatura 2000Nature conservationProtected areasHybridityRelationalityHybrid agencyUncertainties in environmentaldecision-making

* Tel.: þ44 353868113108.E-mail address: [email protected].

0743-0167/$ e see front matter � 2011 Elsevier Ltd.doi:10.1016/j.jrurstud.2011.09.002

a b s t r a c t

Where to draw the boundary line between ‘nature’ and ‘society’ has perplexed sociologists, ecologistsand geographers through the ages. This paper was inspired by environmental sociologist, Alan Irwin,who suggests that we shift our focus from asking ‘where to draw the line’ between what is considered‘natural’ and ‘social’ to exploring the ‘very process of line-drawing’ as it occurs within specific socio-ecological contexts (Irwin, 2001). Nature conservation initiatives in the form of “protected areas”provide remarkable insights into attempts to devise and manage conceptual and spatial-geographicboundaries between nature and society. Here, I discuss Ireland’s contribution to the Natura 2000network of protected ecological sites. I show how line-drawing in Natura 2000, from EU right down tolocal levels, is a highly contingent, contested and uncertain process; how both ‘nature’ and ‘society’ canfrustrate attempts to draw and maintain these boundaries and the conflicts, uncertainties and dilemmasthrown up in the process. The paper ends by considering the extent to which this “boundary-work”analysis provides an insightful, though incomplete picture of the experiences of and challenges posed byNatura 2000 on-the ground, while posing some more philosophical questions about natureesocietyboundaries and the challenges they pose to nature conservationism.

� 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction

1.1. Conceptual and geographic boundaries

The longstanding debate as towhether environmental problemsare ‘real’ or ‘socially constructed’ has run its course. Environmentalsociologists and human geographers are exploring new models ofhumanenature relations, seeking non-dichotomous frameworksthat acknowledge the active, material presence of nature withoutdownplaying the diversity of ways in which it is understood andexperienced by humans (Castree, 2010; Whatmore and Hinchcliffe,2008; Franklin, 2002). Insights from Actor-Network-Theory (ANT)and non-representational theory reveal how all understandings of‘nature’ are relational achievements (Thrift, 2008; Whatmore,2008; Cloke and Jones, 2001). “Things” are only definable in rela-tion to other “things” (whether beings, actants, entities, networksor spatial formations), all of which have an inherently hybridquality. Hybrid and relational understandings of natureesocietythus challenge the existence of any real boundaries between thetwo. The “conjoined materiality” (Fitzsimmons and Goodman,1998) of socialeecological systems makes it impossible to alternature without simultaneously altering society and vice versa: each

All rights reserved.

is continually co-constructed (and re-constructed) through theother.

Alan Irwin, drawing inspiration from a sociology of scientificknowledge approach also draws heavily on the notion of ‘co-construction’ although here the emphasis shifts from ontology toepistemology. Irwin takes the co-constituted ontology of natureesociety as given, while urging us to explore the co-construction ofthese epistemological categories. He suggests this for two reasons:first because irrespective of the hybridity and relationality of social-ecological life, boundaries between ‘nature’ and ‘society’ arecontinually drawn and re-drawn; and second, the manner in whichthese are drawn (i.e. by whom, for what purpose, based on whatgrounds and on the basis of whose knowledge) has importantimplications for both people and nature. We must, as Irwin argues,explore these processes of line-drawing in order to reveal thehuman values, judgements, assumptions, choices and powerdynamics that inform them.

While Irwin attempts to move beyond a strict realist-socialconstructionist divide, his approach has been criticised for beingmore social constructionist than realist (Sutton, 2004). Becauseboth environmental and social problems ‘draw upon the samenature-culture nexus’, the ‘social’, Irwin argues, constructs not onlythe ‘natural’ but also the ‘social’ (2001: 175). It can thus be arguedthat Irwin fails to give sufficient attention to non-human agency:the ‘effectivity’ (Sutton, 2004) of the natural on the social is leftinvisible. This point is particularly pertinent given the recent

mailto:[email protected]

www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/07430167

http://www.elsevier.com/locate/jrurstud

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jrurstud.2011.09.002



S. Bryan / Journal of Rural Studies 28 (2012) 80e94 81

“material turn” in the social sciences (and elsewhere) acknowl-edging the creativity and vitality of animate and inanimate “things”and distributed humanenonhuman agency (Bennett, 2009;Whatmore, 2002; Latour, 2004a). And yet hybrid agency as a ‘rela-tional achievement’ (Whatmore, 1999) obscures the variegated anddistinctive capabilities of specific nature-cultures, whether humanor not. Thus while hybrid assemblages precariously “holdtogether”, they are always vulnerable to unpredictable “lines offlight” e the “pulling away” imperative of beings, objects andprocesses that withhold, withdraw, escape or simply refuse to enrol(Bennett, 2009; Murdoch, 2006).

Taking the example of theNatura 2000 network in Ireland, I wantto show how an analysis of natureesociety line-drawing, whenexplicitly premised on a hybrid and relational understanding ofsocialeecological life, can provide useful insights into natureesociety relations (their uncertainties, ambiguities and complexities)without losing sight of the specific agencies of human and non-human actors. In doing so I raise some fundamental questionsabout the utility and significance of boundaries in nature con-servationism and natureesociety relations more generally. Drawingon research conducted in the Irish context, I do this by looking at howNatura 2000 boundaries (conceptual and geographic-spatial) aredevised and negotiated at EU, national and local levels. First, I lookmore closely at the two types of boundaries discussed in this paper.

There is a wealth of social science literature on the contestednature of boundaries in all areas of life (see Lamont and Molnar,2002). Whether symbolic/conceptual, social, cultural, spatial,material or anthropomorphic e boundaries proliferate as theyendlessly move, blur and fold in space-time (Mol and Law, 2005;Barker, 2008). In our (human) struggles to clarify, classify andcontrol the messy, hybrid and heterogeneous assemblages andassociations we co-construct and inhabit, all manner of boundariesare built up, torn down, patrolled, defended, contested, assembledand disassembled across a range of institutions and spatial locales.In this paper, I attend (and limit my focus) to two ‘types’ ofboundaries that are highly significant and contentious in environ-mental governance; namely conceptual/cognitive boundariesbetween ‘nature’ and ‘society’ and spatial-geographic (or place-making (Gieryn, 2000)) boundaries.

Conceptual boundaries (e.g. naturalesocial/humanenon-human/nativeeexotic) construct meanings through simple dichotomiesbased on a process of ‘othering’. Differences across the ‘border’ areaccentuated as identities are forged through negation and risks areenvisaged by threat of ‘contamination’ with the ‘other’. WhileWestern concepts of nature and society as essentially separate,bounded ontological realms enjoy a long history, Franklin observeshow the late modern period has seen ‘nature and society shift[ing]position as principal sources of risk’ (Franklin, 2002: 54). The need toprotect societies from the vagaries of a harsh, untamed nature hasbeen replaced with an emphasis on the need to protect a sublime,fragile nature from the excesses of societal developments (primarilyin the shape of industrial development). Anxieties about these illicitboundary crossings are well versed in contemporary debates aboutbiosecurity (Hinchliffe and Bingham, 2008; Barker, 2008; Curry,2007) where concerns ranging from invasive species to foot andmouth epidemics perform needs or desires to disentangle or purifythese illegitimate couplings (Latour, 1988).

Spatial or geographic boundaries demarcate and delineatespaces and places. Post-structuralist thinking, and Thrift’s non-representational theory in particular, challenge traditional under-standings of geographic boundaries where Euclidean spaces aremapped in terms of fixed co-ordinates, points, lines, and contours(Murdoch, 2006: 12). This pre-occupationwith ‘pointillism’, as Doelargues (1999:120) obscures a multiplicity of space-times. Thestabilization (or relative “permanence” (Harvey, 1996)) of spatial

boundaries and assemblages is always provisional and contested.Here, boundaries and structures are an effect of manifold relationswhere space is ‘a verb rather than a noun’ (Doel, 2000: 125 cited inMurdoch, 2006, my emphasis). Boundaries, whether conceptual orspatial-geographic, like places then, are relational and always ‘inthe process of becoming’ (Deleuze and Guattari, 1980).

As regards the natureesociety dichotomy, conceptual andspatial boundaries connect and overlap in the sense that ‘nature’ isoften located ‘here’ rather than ‘there’, e.g. ‘natural places’ are morefrequently housed in rural, as opposed to urban locales, (or‘peripheral’ as opposed to ‘central’ locations) (Green, 2005) andtheir protection, as I show in the case of Natura 2000, is oftenconsidered dependent on their demarcation from the non-natural,or the social realm (Lien, 2005; Milton, 2000). Once ‘special’ natureis unravelled from the entanglements of life (Ingold, 2008) it mustat all costs be kept in its ‘proper’ place (Lavau, 2011, drawing onMilton, 2000).

1.2. Natura 2000

Protecting biodiversity ‘the variety of living organisms on earth’(O’Riordan et al., 2002: 9), is now a significant aspect of interna-tional environmental policies. For the European Union and itsMember States, biological diversity is considered a key route tosustainable development. Natura 2000, a network of ecologicallyimportant places across European Member States is the mostambitious EU biodiversity initiative to date. The network includesa wide diversity of terrestrial and aquatic habitats, encompassingan area of land and sea larger than any single Member State. Sitesrange from vast tracts of forestry, bog and coastal zones right downto small family farms or areas of scrubland.

The network is the outcome is two EU Directives, the BirdsDirective in the 1970’s establishing Special Protection Areas (SPAs)for wild andmigratory birds and the Habitats Directive in the 1990’swhich broadens out to include ‘Special Areas of Conservation’ (SACs)for species and “habitats types” considered to be “of Communityinterest”. These sites (SPAs and SACs) are collectively known as theNatura 2000 network which is the cornerstones of the EU’s biodi-versity/nature conservation policy (Keulartz and Leistra, 2008).

The 1979 Birds Directive was the first piece of European legis-lation enacted to halt the decline in species, in this case wild andmigratory birds. Under this Directive, Member States are obliged totake measures tomaintain a sufficient diversity and area of habitatsfor the 175 species of birds listed in Annex 1 of the Directive. Whilethe Birds Directive lays down a range of protective measures for theprotection and management of all wild birds, a key element ishabitat protection. Member states must designate Special Protec-tion Areas (SPAs) for Annex I birds utilising their territory in suffi-cient quantities (Council Directive 79/409/EEC). The HabitatsDirective of 1992 had wider ambitions. Focussing on all manner ofspecies and their habitats, it set out to establish an ecologicalnetwork with a uniform legal framework for all sites. The Directiveidentifies over 200 habitat types and 700 species of plants andanimals considered of ‘Community interest’: Annex 1 lists naturalhabitat types (e.g. fromblanket bogs to coastal lagoons) andAnnex IIlists animals and plant species (e.g. from the bottle nosed dolphin tothe Killarney fern). These are further divided into priority and non-priority species and habitats (priority meaning those in immediatedanger of disappearance). On the basis of these lists, Member Statesare obliged to designate Special Areas of Conservation (SACs) and tomaintain them ‘at favourable conservation status’ (Council Directive92/43/EEC; see also Keulartz and Leistra, 2008).

Both Directives then effectively create protected areas or desig-nated places of ecological significance. While the latter Directivesupercedes the former in many respects, both follow same

S. Bryan / Journal of Rural Studies 28 (2012) 80e9482

structural logic. As Linehan points out, ‘the broad structure ofEuropean provisions on protected areas is to firstly lay down therequirement to designate or establish the protected area in questionand then to lay down the particular control or framework for control(or management) which is to operate within that type of protectedarea’ (Linehan, 2005: 7). Lines between nature and society must befirst drawn and then controlled or protected.

The network does not necessarily entail the crude and rigidimposition of boundaries. It constitutes, to some extent, an attemptto reconstruct nature conservation in a less bounded manner, dis-lodging it from the shackles of a strict natureesociety dichotomy.The old “fortress conservationist” or “fences and fines” narrative(Gbadegesin and Ayileka, 2000: 89) in other words, has beenreplaced with a desire for a more integrated approach wherehumanenature relations are no longer seen as necessarily detri-mental to biodiversity and are sometimes acknowledged asessential to its conservation. The practice of nature conservation isthus taken out of ‘reserves’ (or at least the sole preserve of thereserve) and into new milieus as new actors (farmers, hunters,foresters, landholders etc) are enrolled in the process. A newemphasis on site management by humans, rather than strictprotection from humans, signifies an important policy paradigmshift in European nature conservation policy. In practice, however,designations can lead to a suite of potential, and at times extensiveland-use restrictions. While the network contains a myriad of‘nature parks’ across Europe, its contours simultaneously by-passand slice through private, public and commonly-held lands. Theidea that biodiversity, our ‘common’ natural heritage (i.e. a publicvalue) can and should be protected through the designation ofprivately (as well as publicly) held land signifies a second policyparadigm shift (Laffan and O’Mahoney, 2004). This intrusion intothe private domain of the landholder has been a continual source ofdispute and resentment. See Pinton (2001), Alphandéry and Fortier(2001) andMischi (2009) on France; Björkell (2008) and Hiedanpää(2002) on Finland; Stoll-Kleeman (2001a, b) on Germany; andApostolopoulou and Pantis (2009) on Greece. Finally, while focusedprimarily on the protection of ‘special’ nature, Natura attempts tomarry this with economic, social and cultural considerations (seefurther ahead). With Natura 2000 we are understood to be ‘livingwith nature’.1 It is an approach that promises new conceptualisa-tions of the natureesociety relationship.

However, in spite of its attempts to be more integrative, Natura2000 remains a top-down, “science-first” (Kelsey, 2003) [or“ecology first”, (Stoll-Kleeman and O’Riordan, 2002)] conservationinitiative. Leibenath notes how the Birds and Habitats Directives are‘based on a merely ecologicaletechnical approach towards conser-vation’ (Leibenath, 2008; 245). The entire designation process, forexample, begins with lists of species and habitat types consideredworthy ‘of Community interest’ as decided by networks of pan-European ecological experts. From European right down to locallevels, the dominance of a techno-scientific discourse permeates allaspects of Natura 2000. Its underlying methodology is premised onthe supremacy of expert knowledge systems and the authority ofscience is continually appealed to in the event of disputes at EU,national and local levels. In such expert-led, technocratic fora, thereis little room for other ways of knowing or relating to nature. TheHabitats Directive states that the habitats and species under itsauspices form part of a common European heritage, but as askPinton asks, ‘whose heritage, that of scientists, ecological activists,rural populations, city dwellers, all Europeans?’ (Pinton, 2001: 336).

1 This is the title of the information booklet on Natura 2000 published by theDepartment of the Environment and Local Government (DEHLG) in Ireland. SeeBibliography.

Natura 2000’s attempts to integrate economic, social, andcultural factors in its decision-making processes are continually intension with this scientific methodology. Irrespective of competingland-use claims and counter-claims, Natura 2000 legislation statesthat the ecological ‘integrity’ of designated sites must be protected,except in ‘exceptional’ circumstances. The bottom line, therefore, isa scientific decision against which all other competing concernsand interests must be gauged. Exactly when, where, and howeconomic and social-cultural factors are to be taken into accounthas been the subject of much controversy (Pinton, 2008, 2001;Scannell et al., 1999). Drawing on the French experience of imple-menting the Habitats Directive, Alphandéry and Fortier (2001)discuss how ‘the difficulties in combining the scientific and socialdimensions of the Habitats Directive have incessantly posedproblems’ (2001:312).

There is a tension, in other words, between an “ecology first” or“people included” model of conservationism2 (Stoll-Kleeman andO’Riordan, 2002), a tension largely emanating from ambiguitiesand contradictions inherent in the Birds and Habitats Directives(Pinton, 2001). These tensions can also be read as a contest (orseries of contests) in natureesociety line-drawing e contests thatrecur at national, regional and local levels in the implementation ofthe network. To explore these contests and the dilemmas thatunfold, I draw on qualitative research conducted between 2004 and2009 in Ireland including: documentary analysis (e.g. of EU andstate publications from the various bodies charged with overseeingand implementing the network, media reports, parliamentarydebates and policy analysis papers); participation observation atlocally organised Natura 2000 meetings and conferences; 59qualitative interviews (with representatives from conservationist,farming and other land-using groups, administrators, ecologicalexperts and affected farmers/landholders on-the-ground).

2. Contested boundaries at EU level

2.1. From the Birds to the Habitats Directives:definitive to ambiguous line-drawing

The negotiations conducted to hammer out and establish thesedirectives (their annexes, guidance documents and so on) revealpolitical, cultural and epistemological power struggles over whereand how to draw the line between nature and society. For example,the original text of the Birds Directive contained clear andunqualified obligations to avoid any human interference of thespecial areas or any disturbance of birds within them. Initially thenthe Birds Directive afforded the natural world strict protection fromthe social world. However, this more definitive line-drawing waschallenged at an early European Court of Justice (ECJ) Decision(known as the Leybucht Dykes Case C-57/89). In this case Germanauthorities proposed modifying a designated SPA on the groundsthat the reinforcement of awater dyke in the Leybucht Harbourwasnecessary to prevent flooding to the point of endangerment ofhuman life. Attention was drawn to problems surrounding theoriginal stringent controls disallowing all forms of habitat modifi-cation in all circumstances. The ECJ ruled that modification to thesite could only be justified on exceptional grounds and ‘for suchexceptional grounds to exist there had to be a public interestsuperior to the Birds Directive’s ecological objectives’ (Linehan,2005: 9). While in this case such exceptional grounds existed, inits overall interpretation of the case, the ECJ crucially held that

2 These two contrasting perspectives, as Stoll-Kleeman and O’Riordan explain inmore detail ‘shape the framework for biodiversity management worldwide’ (2002:163).


‘economic and recreational interests’ could not be interpreted as“exceptional”.

As the implications of this landmark case became apparent,political pressure grew to change the original unqualified controlswithin the Birds Directive so as to take such exceptional factors intoaccount.3 This had obvious implications for the subsequentlydrafted Habitats Directive which, when it was eventually passed in1992, contained provisions that permit human interference withinboth SPAs and SACs on exceptional public interest groundsincluding, in some instances, economic and social considerations.Under the all encompassing Habitats Directive then, SPAs and SACsare subject to the same less stringent, albeit more imprecise anduncertain controls as outlined in Article 6 of the Habitats Directive.The lines between ‘nature’ and ‘society’ were thus re-drawn moreflexibly but also more ambiguously.

2.2. Article 6 of the Habitats Directive

While Article 6 is pivotal in that it governs management of allNatura 2000 sites, it is generally considered the most problematicarticle in terms of interpretation (Opdam et al., 2009). It requiresMember States to ‘take appropriate steps to avoid (..) the dete-rioration of natural habitats and the habitats of species as well asdisturbance of the species for which the areas have been desig-nated’ and to establish pro-active ‘conservation measures’ whichcan take a variety of forms (Council Directive 92/43/EEC). It furtherrequires that any plans or projects ‘not directly connected with ornecessary to the management of the site but likely to havea significant effect thereon..shall be subjected to appropriateassessment in view of the site’s conservation objectives’. Nationalauthorities may only agree to these after having ascertained thatthey ‘will not adversely affect the integrity of the site concerned’(Council Directive 92/43/EEC, my emphases).

Following from the implications of early ECJ decisions (aspreviously mentioned) exceptions to this, however, are envisagedunder certain circumstances, i.e.:

if, in spite of a negative assessment (.) and in the absence ofalternative solutions, a plan or project must nevertheless becarried out for imperative reasons of overriding public interest,including those of a social or economic nature.

In these circumstances then, natureesociety boundaries can bedrawn with a degree of flexibility.

Stricter criteria are applied where a site hosts species and/orhabitats listed as ‘priority’ (meaning in immediate danger ofdisappearance). Here, more rigid boundaries must be respected.The only mitigating considerations which may be raised are thoserelating to human health, public safety or the environment.

Throughout the Habitats Directive and in Article 6 in particular,crucial concepts and phrases such as “significant effect”, “favourableconservation status” and “ecological integrity” remain open tointerpretation. Kistenkas (2005) explains how ‘the definition of“significance” by the European Commission is still subject to on-going debate (cited in Opdam et al., 2009: 913). Because ecologicalexperts are unable to capture itsmeaning in a universally applicableand ‘objective way’, “significance” is generally understood to becontext specific and its achievement in practice, is measured interms of “site conservation objectives”. These objectives, however,

3 Fairbrass and Jordan (2003) explain how the ‘bargaining surrounding theproposal for the Habitats Directive was protracted and many significant amend-ments were mooted between September 1988 and December 1991. During thenegotiations certain states were careful to try to close off some of the avenuespreviously opened by the ECJ with regards to the Birds Directive’ (p. 100).

are performed differently by individualmember states and are oftenbound up with national conservation priorities and concerns(Opdam et al., 2009: 914; see also Waterton, 2002 on the perfor-mances of European and national nature conservation objectives).

Equally, although O’Riordan et al. (2002) describe how‘ecological integrity is the linchin pin of the Habitats Directive’(p. 139), the term remains contested (McKay and Regier, 2000) andas I will show in Section 4, difficult to apply on-the-ground. Whilea broad definition of “favourable conservation status” is given in theHabitats Directive

there remains a lack of clarity in the interpretation of this term orthe means by which to implement it. There is a risk that, at themoment, it can be interpreted in many different ways, to suitdifferent, and often conflicting, purposes. This ambiguity makes itchallenging to implement (HalahanandMay, 2003,WWF, on-line).

Deciding upon what constitutes ‘reasons of overriding publicinterest’ is also on-going source of debate and ambiguity. The word‘public’ is important here. As Linehan explains:

Purely private interests ordevelopmentswill not suffice although,of course the dividing line will not always be clear and in somecases it may be possible to argue perhaps for a public benefit orinterest deriving from or being associated with, a largely privateplan or project (2005:13).

That these reasons can now include those of ‘a social andeconomic nature’, extremely broad categories in themselves, furthercomplicates the situation. The pivotal Article 6 of the HabitatsDirective is thus rife with interpretative ‘grey areas’.

Implicit in the Habitats Directive is the application of theprecautionary principle which requires that the conservationobjectives of Natura 2000 should prevail where there is sufficientuncertainty (Cooney, 2005; European Commission, 2001). A Euro-pean Commission paper providing methodological guidance toMember States on the provisions of Article 6 states that:

In carrying out the necessary assessments it is important toapply the precautionary principle and the focus of the assess-ment should be on objectively demonstrating, with supportingevidence, that there will be no adverse effects on the integrity ofthe Natura 2000 site. Where this is not the case, adverse affectsmust be assumed (European Commission, 2001: 25)

However, Cooney describes how there exists ‘very little sharedunderstanding’ of the term in the context of biodiversity (Cooney,2005: 13) and its application is further complicated by difficultiesascertaining what ecological ‘integrity’ actually means (McKay andRegier, 2000; Callicot et al., 1999; Angermeier and Karr, 1994). Andyet, in spite of a myriad of ambiguities and uncertainties (Opdamet al., 2009) ‘EU case law currently demands certainty providedby science’ (abstract).

The meanings of these terms then, can never be consideredclosed, settled or fixed in line with some internal logic, ontologicalreality or ethical rationale. Instead, they exist as multiplicities,always ‘in the process of becoming’ while proliferating in complexand unexpected ways, continually ‘translated’ as they travel intime-space (Callon and Law, 2004). This creates great uncertaintyfor those charged with implementing the scheme at national andlocal levels, as I discuss further in Section 4. These ‘cracks in thenarrative’ (Murdoch, 2006: 8) also allow opponents of the schemeto craft alternative meanings. Hill farmers in theWest of Ireland, forexample, describe their own “conservation status” as “unfav-ourable” and believe the “integrity” of their lifestyles and liveli-hoods are ‘under threat”. In contrast to the ‘special’ (scientized)nature “of Community interest” at EU level, landholders on theground point to the mundane, ordinary nature “of community

4 An example of this is fluctuating (and uncontrollable) weather patterns whichas Opdam et al. (2009) point out can alter the abundance (or ‘actual presence’) ofspecies in particular locales, irrespective of local conditions. Boundaries, as Ingoldargues, cannot protect nature from the connecting flows of ‘life in the open’ (Ingold,2005, 2008, 2011).


interest” at more local levels, such as cattle, pets, fields, bogs andfarms. Unlike the original unqualified text of the Birds Directivewhich drew strict and definitive natureesociety boundaries, Article6 of the Habitats Directive requires that repeated conceptual“boundary-work” (Gieryn, 1999) is conducted at local levels eachtime there is a dispute regardingwhat can or cannot be permitted indesignated areas (as ‘social’ factors are oncemore teased apart from‘natural’ ones and weighed in “significance”). With each episode ofboundary work, these meanings are precariously re-enacted inheterogeneous relational networks.

2.3. Constructing the annexes

Annexes to the Birds and Habitats Directives outline (inter alia)the species and habitat types considered to be “of CommunityInterest”. The entire designation process and the network it createsthus essentially revolve around these pivotal lists. However,a reading of the scientific papers relating to the creation of theselists reveals ‘widely varying levels of taxonomic perspectives’ and‘leaves the feeling that the scientists do not unanimously see themas scientifically sound’ (Pinton, 2001: 337). Thus scientific termswithin the Directive are ‘vague’ and themethodology underpinningthem is ambiguous. The scientific basis of Directive, she concludesis ‘uncertain, incomplete and controversial’ (Pinton, 2001: 329).

The scientific rationale behind the choice of habitat types andspecies ‘of Community Interest’ was far from clear. As Pinton ask‘were the habitats and species on the list chosen because of theirrarity, meaning that they are remarkable or because of theirecological function? What “referential” is used for them and whatjustifications were given?’ (Pinton, 2001: 337). To fully understandthe significance of this question we must consider an evolvingdebate within ecology.

Kricher (2009), Berkes (2004), Adams (2002) and Callicot et al.(1999), among others have discussed conceptual shifts in ecology,including a shift towards a “humans-in-ecosystem approach”,which effectively acknowledges how ‘all creatures, human and non-human are fellow passengers in the oneworld inwhich they all live,and through their activities continually create the conditions foreach other’s existence’(Ingold, 2005: 503). There is also a shift fromreductionism to a systems view. The shift towards a systems viewentails a move away from the old command and control approachbased on ‘linear cause-effect thinking’ and ‘mechanistic views ofnature’ as ‘productive, predictable and controllable’ (Berkes, 2004:622). The systems approach to ecology, often termed ‘non-equilib-rium’ ecology, dismisses the notion of any natural equilibrium or‘balance of nature’ (Kricher, 2009). Nature, from this perspective, isdynamic and highly variable (Drenthen et al., 2009; Adams, 2002).Callicot et al. (1999) refer to this current thinking as ‘functionalism’

and contrast this with the old school of ‘compositionalism’. Com-positionalists, they argue, focus more on protecting the componentparts of ecosystems (from human interference) whereas function-alists focus more on protecting the processes or functions ofecosystems (of which humans are considered a part). Theseprocesses include nutrient transport, fixation of nitrogen, the watercycle, decomposition of organic matter by invertebrates and so on.

While Natura 2000 on one hand suggests a shift towards moreintegrated natureesociety relations in line with more functionalistthinking (i.e. a shift towards “humans-in-ecosystems” and awayfrom the ‘reserves’ philosophy), it is primarily informed by ‘a staticapproach to biodiversity protection’ (Ledouxet al., 2003: 258) basedon ‘a “no net loss” policy. Ledoux et al. go on to argue that ‘thephilosophy’ that underlies the network ‘either seems to ignoredynamic ecosystem changes (including those linked to climatechange) and the consequent management problems, or fails tomake sufficient allowance for natural change, or for co-evolutionary

feedback effects4’ (Ledoux et al., 2003: 258) (see also Opdam et al.,2009; Turner et al., 1998). In Natura 2000, boundaries are drawnaround scientifically valued habitats and their component parts(or their most valued component parts) are counted and controlledin an attempt to protect them from social-ecological change e orrestore them to an ‘ideal state of nature’ (Katz, 1998; Cronan, 1996).Nature conservation relies on the chosen nature being ‘present ormade present’ in the case of restoration (Hinchliffe, 2008: 88). Theultimate goal, as Bowker (2004:112) explains is “to render thepresent eternal” (cited in Hinchliffe, 2008). The Natura 2000methodology is thus an uneasy blend of functionalist and compo-sitionalist traditions of ecological thought: a compromised endproduct of epistemological power struggles between competingversions of natureesociety line-drawing.

Cultural differences between Member States further complicatedthe task of assembling these all important lists. Species witha particular symbolic or heritage value in some Member States weresupported more than others. Countries without a longstandingculture of nature conservation (such as Ireland) were less inclined tosupport the inclusion of certain native species, especially those ofminor anthropocentric interest. Annexes to the Habitats Directives(andAnnex I inparticular)wereheavily basedon theCORINEbiotopesclassification system which was the only existing classification atEuropean level (Van Oudheusden, 2005). Waterton notes how:

Lack of attention or lack of knowledge of a particular species,genus or habitat type in particular classifications or nationalinventories of habitats caused anomalies in the way that theEuropean CORINE biotopes classificationwas constructed. Someof the semi-natural habitats relevant to Ireland, for example, areabsent from the CORINE classification, due to a lack of docu-mentation of those habitats in Irish conservation inventoriesand nomenclatures (2002: 195).

Lorimer highlights the role of ‘non-human charisma’ in natureconservation and shows how ‘interaction between non-humancharisma and conservation prioritisation leads to a narrowing of thescope of what gets conserved and challenges the stated diversity ofbiodiversity conservation’ (Lorimer, 2006: 21, see also Lorimer, 2007).In the negotiations conducted to hammer out the annexes, speciesand habitats unfortunate enough to have no one willing or able tochampion their cause were sidelined whereas those fortunateenough to be well-liked (emblematic species) or well-researchedwere much more likely to gain the privileged ‘annexed’ status.Presence on these lists denotes “Community interest” and spells life-changing trajectories for the nature in question, although there is noguarantee this will be experienced positively, as I show in Section 4.Presence, however, inevitably entails absence (Hinchliffe, 2008) andthis begs the question as to whether absence implies “Communityun-interest” in the form of a “two-tier Europe” for non-humanEuropeans? In this respect, Pinton’s research reveals that.

There were valuable species in Corsica which were removedbecause there was no-one there to defend them.. (an expert)(Pinton, 2001: 337).

Theseannexed lists of species andhabitats ‘of Community interest’thus emerged from a painstaking process of negotiation whereindivergent scientific viewpoints, cultural attitudes and political factorswere all jostling for position. Natureesociety boundaries were thus


drawn, re-drawn and temporarily settled, however ambiguously.While it is perhaps not surprising that the Directives and theirannexes reflect the cultural commitments, choices and interests ofthosewhodevised them (seeWaterton andWynne,1996,1998, 2004)the Commission ‘defends a purely scientific approach’ (Pinton, 2001:337). In fact the scientific basis of Natura 2000’s methodology iscontinually cited in its legal and informative publications andbrochures and is considered, as Pinton argues ‘essential for thecredibility and the proper application of the Directive’ (p. 337).

6 This re-steering of implementation is similar to the French experience where

3. Contested boundaries at national level: Natura 2000in Ireland

3.1. Line-drawing and re-drawing

In 1997, the Habitats Directive was transposed into Irish Lawand, as in many other Member States, it was met with enormoushostility from affected landholders, especially from the rural,farming communities most affected (Siggins, 1998, 1999). Whiledepoliticisation is a deliberate strategy in the European Union’ssystem of public policy making (with the technocratic and expertdriven nature of policy making expected to act as an insulationfrom domestic concerns (Boh, 2004)), once the Habitats Directive‘hit home’ it immediately became highly politicised and in partic-ular, it brought farming groups into fierce confrontation with stateand conservationist groups (Laffan and O’Mahoney, 2004). Farminggroups viewed Natura 2000 as a ‘horrific intrusion’ by Brussels(Laffan and O’Mahoney, 2004). Designations, they protested, wouldlead to land-use restrictions which would compromise their abili-ties to farm and devalue their lands. Natura 2000 was thusconsidered an affront to their constitutional property rights and anunacceptable threat to their livelihoods. At one point, the IrishFarmers Association (IFA) led a “Dúchas keep out” campaign wherelandholders blockaded their lands, physically preventing stateofficials from Dúchas, the state body primarily charged withimplementing the scheme (since renamed the National Parks andWildlife Service, NPWS) from entering their lands (IFJ, on-line).

While designation under Natura 2000 undoubtedly instigatedcountry-wide concerns and disputes located in some urban as wellas rural districts, there is no doubt that rural areas, particularlythose in the relatively disadvantaged west were disproportionatelyaffected. It is particularly ironic perhaps that the vast majority ofdesignated sites considered of high nature value are located inthese poor quality agricultural lands where livelihoods are partic-ularly vulnerable (Department of Agriculture and Food, 1999). Inthis respect O’Rourke asks:

Is it just a co-incidence that nature has been particularlybenevolent in these geographically disadvantaged areas or, as iscommonly believed by the local people, is it simply a reflectionof their own marginalisation and under-development?(O’Rourke, 2005: 78).

The vehement opposition of the farming lobby effectively forcedthe state to engage in a lengthy process of negotiationwith farminginterests. To this effect the farmers used their engagement in SocialPartnership (a form of neo-corporatism that emerged in Ireland inthe mid 1990s) to press for a ‘package’ on habitats (Laffan andO’Mahoney, 2004: 12).5

5 Through partnership negotiations, every four years the Irish governmentestablishes pay, wage, tax and welfare deals with its ‘social partners’ (industry,trade unions and farmers). Because these are handled directly by the Taoiseach’soffice, this brought the issue of the Habitats Directive right into the heart of publicpolicy-making.

The ‘package’ centred around demands for compensation,consultation, and an appeals procedures. Although a number ofconcessions were included in the 1997 regulations, disquiet amongfarming groups meant that the Government was forced to revisitthem. Bilateral negotiations with farming groups from 2003 to2004 culminated in a ‘landowners agreement’ which made provi-sion for a number of further policy alterations and concessions.6

These negotiations succeeded in shifting spatial-geographicboundaries in the form of ‘river margins’, i.e. the extent of desig-nated farmland alongside river habitats. They also succeed inrelaxing conceptual boundaries regarding ‘acceptable’ humanenature relations and activities in protected areas. New ‘flexible’guidelines for planning authorities were issued regarding theimplications of designation for development (Sustainable RuralHousing Guidelines, see Government of Ireland, 2005) and ‘revisedadvice’ was offered on the compatibility of windfarms and conif-erous forestry and SPAs (Cullen, 2003). Farmers, in other words,rejected the state’s initial attempts at line-drawing as overly rigidand prohibitive, they put forward their own more flexibleconceptual boundaries and tried to reduce the areas of specialnature designated. To some extent they succeeded in shifting andrelaxing boundaries.

Conflict at home, meant that Ireland, along with many other EUmember states, had failed to meet any of the implementationdeadlines set in the Habitats Directive. Between 1997 and 1999 theNational Parks andWildlife Service (NPWS) within the Departmentof the Environment were under enormous pressure to complete thefirst step of sending to the Commission lists of proposed siteshousing the species or “representative samples” of habitat typeslisted “of Community interest”.

During this controversial period of early implementation,a network of six Irish environmental conservation groups beganactively lobbying the Irish government and to an even greaterextent the European Commission, in an attempt to ensure thecomplete implementation of the Habitats Directive in Ireland.7

Their main concern was what they perceived as the state’s ‘cosyrelationship’ with the farming lobby. Vested interests, they argued,were being allowed to interfere inwhat should be a purely scientifictask of natureesociety line-drawing. Also, unlike farming interests,whom they argued were being allowed an inappropriate role in theform of private, bilateral negotiations with the government, NGOconservationist groups were effectively excluded from the process.As one conservationist explained: ‘wewere completely ‘shut out’ ofdiscussions, it was all done behind closed doors with the farmerscalling the shots’.

Conservationists hoped to use their relationship with theCommission to counterbalance the influence of farming groups atnational level. Frustrated with the state’s limited progress incompiling lists of proposed sites for Brussels, in 1999 a wildlifegrant from the Irish Heritage Council, allowed them to employ theirown conservation expert to draw up a ‘shadow list’ of sites. This listidentified over 200 proposed sites left out by the Irish authorities.In October 2000, the NGOs presented their ‘shadow list ‘of sites tothe Commission (almost 600 compared to the 364 then proposedby the state) (Irish times, 7.9.2000 cited in Laffan and O’Mahoney,2004).

pressure from a coalition of rural opponents (hunters, foresters, agriculturalists andso on, known as ‘group 9’) succeeded in ‘re-launching’ implementation of theDirectives (Alphandéry and Fortier, 2001: 321).

7 The network was made up of An Taisce (the National Trust), Birdwatch Ireland(BWI), the Irish Peatlands Protection Council (IPPC), Coastwatch Ireland, the IrishWildlife Trust (IWT), Friends of the Irish Environment (FIE) and the NationalAssociation of Regional Game Councils (NARGC).


Dissatisfied with the state’s line-drawing exercise, conserva-tionist groups, in other words, proceeded to draw their own (moreextensive) spatial-geographic boundaries and presented these tothe higher line-drawing authority of the Commission. Conceptualand spatial-geographic boundaries, they argued, were being drawnby politics when they should have been drawn on the basis ofscience. Natureesociety boundaries at local levels, they claim, were(and still are) regularly ‘breached’ as state bodies charged withimplementing the scheme (from the National Parks and WildlifeService down to local county councils planning officials) allowdamaging developments to proceed in designated areas withoutthe appropriate assessments required under Article 6 of the Habi-tats Directive (O’Sullivan, 2000; An Taisce, 2007).

How, when and to what extent social, cultural and economicfactors should be taken into account remains a frequent source ofconcern and confusion. References to these in both Directives wereregularly cited by landholders interviewed in this study who insistthat these should have been taken into account at the designationstage. Article 2(3) of the Habitats Directive states that “measurestaken” pursuant to the Directive shall take account of economic,social and cultural requirements and regional and local character-istics. Because the selection of sites might be considereda “measure”, Scannell et al. point out that ‘it could therefore beargued that Member States, in selecting sites, could take account ofthe factors listed in Article 2(3)’ (1999: 66). This was effectively thecase in France where (after several years of conflict) site boundarieswere finally drawn in conjunction with ‘non-scientific’ stake-holders (Pinton, 2008). Early European case law, however, suggeststhe contrary, i.e. that such non-scientific factors be considered onlyat the site management stage. Scannell et al. argue that:

The philosophy of the Habitats Directive would appear tomandate selection of sites on scientific criteria only whilereserving consideration of other factors to the controls stage.There is still some scope for an argument that, particularly inidentifying sites (other than priority sites) for protection,Member States have some discretion to take economic, socialand cultural requirements, etc. into account (1999: 67).

This has been the source of much confusion. While conserva-tionists claim that site boundaries are often ‘re-drawn’ for socio-political (rather than scientific and thereby ‘objective’ and ‘impar-tial’) reasons (Clerkin, 2002) and insist that this runs contrary to thecorrect application of the Directive, landholders claim that thescience-led designation process is completely at odds with thenotion of a more holistic approach wherein socio-economic orcultural factors are taken into account. There are on-going conflicts,in other words, about where the lines should be drawn between‘nature’ and ‘society’ (Irwin, 2001), the rigidity or malleability ofthese boundaries and the extent to which science alone should beentrusted to devise them.

3.2. The voices of nature and society?

In the contest to influence line-drawing at state level, farminglobby groups and in particular the Irish Farmers’ Association (IFA)presented themselves as ‘the voice of affected landholders’.However, there is considerable evidence to suggest that these largefarming organisations do not represent the views of all farmers on-the-ground (Visser et al., 2007). Many of those interviewed in thisstudy felt that the IFA only present the viewpoints of more inten-sive, prosperous farmers. Not all affected farmers are activelyaffiliated with these organisations e nor indeed are all affectedlandholders primarily or exclusively farmers.

The IFA’s position as negotiator in the conflict was challenged bythe Turf Cutters Association who rejected the bog compensation

scheme negotiated in relation to turf cutting in 2004. The associ-ationwas set up in reaction towhat is described as ‘bog evictions inthe Republic of Ireland’ (Turf-cutters Association, on-line). The IFA,they argued, had ‘no mandate from the people’ and hence ‘no rightto speak on our behalf’ (RTE, 2004, on-line). One newspaper reportsuggested that:

The Turf Cutters Association accused the IFA of participating in“secretive negotiations with EU officials in Brussels in order toarrange what is effectively a buyout of owners’ interests”..said a statement . “This was not simply a question ofcompensation but concerned the disappearance of a way of life”it said (Smith, 2004, on-line).

To counter the farming lobby’s self-portrayal as ‘the voice ofaffected landowners’, environmental/conservationist NGOs pre-sented themselves as ‘the voice of nature’: ‘we out speak for nature,for its protection and appreciation’, a representative emphaticallyasserted. But who can speak ‘for nature’ when there exits, as non-representational theorists suggest, a multiplicity of hybrid naturessimultaneously enacted (Hinchliffe, 2010). There is no correctrepresentation of a pre-formed ‘authentic’ nature to draw on.Instead we are confronted with a multiplicity of nature-cultures in-the-making. Not only does the nature “of Community interest”differ in lay and expert experiences and accounts, even amongenvironmental experts there is no automatic consensus on the ideal‘natural’ state of nature (Robertson and Hull, 2003) (Lavau, 2011).Depending on their particular areas of interest, ecological expertsperform multiple (and at times incompatible) accounts of a givenecological reality. Actions taken to protect certain natures, in theform of species and habitat action plans, for example, can haveunintended negative consequences for other (often less valued)natures ‘that are not the specific target of these action plans’ (Wood,2000: 94).

While farming interests succeeded in including their voice atnational level negotiations, conservationist voices were eventuallyheard (and continue to be heard) at EU level as the Commissionregularly chides the Irish state for inadequacies relating to the Birdsand Habitats Directives. Over the years, Ireland has received a suiteof complaints and European Court of Justice rulings for its failure tocomply with all aspects of the Natura 2000 endeavour (King, 2004;Paavola, 2004; Wood, 2007; Curia, on-line). Relations between theIrish state apparatus are historically closer with farming groupsthan with nature conservationists (see Section 3.3) who haveforged an extensive relational network in Europe. Thus whilefarmers found they could influence line-drawing at national level,conservationists continue to take specific cases to Europe in anattempt to force the Irish state to draw and manage these bound-aries differently (i.e. more extensively and more rigidly). The scaleof governance with respect to these boundary disputes is thus bestconceptualised in ‘non-territorial terms’ where scale becomesdistance or the ‘length of relation’ (Amin, 2002: 391).

Line-drawing in Natura 2000 was thus to some extent‘hijacked’ by lobby groups claiming to represent the ‘natural’ onthe one side and the ‘social’ on the other e with neither grouprepresenting the experiences of ordinary farmer-landholders andordinary (as opposed to ‘special’) natures affected. The findings ofthis research support Visser et al.’s assertion that the positions andviewpoints of farmers and conservationists ‘on-the-ground’ areless far apart than traditionally assumed and may be bestdescribed as ‘mutual ignorance of each others expertise’ (Visseret al., 2007: 10). Not all farmers are opposed, or as opposed toconservationist concerns as farming lobby groups would suggest,although most are infuriated by the science-first, top-down, non-communicative manner in which decisions were made anddesignations were conducted.

9 Conflict around Natura 2000 in both Finland (Hiedanpää, 2002) and Germany(Stoll-Kleeman, 2001a, b; Stoll-Kleeman and O’Riordan, 2002) has also been linked


3.3. Constraints, obstacles and dilemmas

Against this background, the NPWS had the onerous task ofdrawing these controversial lines, in this case geographic lines ona map identifying and encircling boundaries around the ‘special’nature of interest. In doing so they were confronted with a numberof constraints and obstacles and dilemmas.

Unlike the UK and many other EU member states, Ireland doesnot have a long tradition of nature conservation. Distrust of natureenthusiasts, especially in rural quarters, stems from their pastassociations with colonial interests (Feehan, 1997). This engrainedsuspicion means that nature conservation is a ‘hard sell’ in ruralIreland. Attempts to conserve nature through the specific form ofland designation are further exacerbated by the significance oflandownership in Ireland, ‘the pride that comes from land-ownership in a relatively recent postcolonial society’ (Crowley,2006: 51). As the ‘first intrusion by Brussels into the control ofland use within EU Member States’ (Grist, 1997: 88), Natura 2000 isoften perceived by rural landholders as a new form of ‘colonialism’.This mindset presents a formidable obstacle to the achievement ofnature conservation objectives.

Parallels between the threat of designation and the old threat ofland appropriation under colonialismwere continually drawn by allthose resisting the designation process. Laffan and O’Mahoney’sstudy found it ‘remarkable’

the number of times that reference was made to a hate figure inIrish nationalist historiography, Oliver Cromwell (Protector from1649 to 1658), who had pushed the Irish off their land during hisIrish campaign in 1649e1650. In the Parliament, Sile De Valera,who became minister in 1997, claimed that the then Minister,Michael D. Higgens, was “casting himself as some sort of newCromwell trying to take over land without consultation orcompensation” (Dáil Debate, 26.11.1996, cited in Laffan andO’Mahoney, 2004: 9).

The following excerpt from a governmental debate on Natura2000 designations is a particularly colourful example of thisdiscourse:

Farmers have held their precious land, which has been defendedcourageously over the years and coloured by the blood of thosewho resisted the tyranny of the land-grabbing English plantersand the vile Black and Tans,8 dear to their hearts. They now feeltotally betrayed at being routed from the very land where evenCromwell was prepared to leave them. What hurts most is thatthey believe they have been sold out by their own government(Cowley, 2003).

This political unpopularity has resulted in the chronic under-funding of nature conservation initiatives. Personnel within theNPWS were thus completely under resourced, with inadequatebudgets, technology and manpower at their disposal. They hadlittle or no biodiversity ‘baseline data’ to draw on andwhat they didhave was fragmented and in various incompatible scales andformats.

The unsettled ecological terms in the Directives as mentionedearlier further complicated the task. Scannell et al. note that thefailure to clearly define these terms into Irish legislationmeans that‘the highly vague and ambiguous European definitions must berelied upon which can result in uncertainty and impede access to

8 The term refers to the Royal Irish Constabulary Reserve Force which wasa paramilitary force employed by the British Government to suppress revolution inIreland in the 1920’s. They become known as the Black and Tans because of thecolour of their uniforms. They had a reputation for brutality.

information’ (1999: 57) thus lending further doubt and complexityto the line-drawing exercise.

In the light of this ambiguity, conservation rangers within theNPWS find it hard to justify designations with landholders on-the-ground who frequently question these terms and conceptsexposing ‘cracks in the narrative’ (Murdoch, 2006: 8). A conserva-tion ranger explains how:

Each Member State is required to conserve the “favourableconservation status” of these species and habitats concernedwith “representative samples”. But in North Mayo as a case inpoint, what is a “representative sample” of Atlantic BlanketBog? How do you define that? Do you designate every squareinch of Atlantic, there is a lot of Atlantic bog [..] so how canwe apply the Habitats Directive to one section of bog north ofthe road at [inaudible] and then south, an identical habitat 50metres away, there is no designation on it. How can you justifythat? Or how can you allow a [turf cutting] machine go in and‘feck up’ that bit but 50 yards away you are dictating theHabitats Directive?[...] so we took physical boundaries and drew a line aroundit and said that’s as far as it goes. But how do you justify that tothe guy on the ground? It’s very hard to sell it.

Finally, in spite of the science-led nature of the network,member states are strongly urged (by the European Commission)and increasingly expected (by the general public) to engage in somedegree of public consultation. In this respect the NPWS were con-strained by an institutional culture of non-engagement with thepublic. With no experience of meaningful interaction with non-scientific worldviews to draw on, their approach came across as‘arrogant’ and ‘elitist’. This is similar to the experience of severalother member states where the institutional mindset was ‘tech-nocratic’9 (Boh, 2004).

At the time of writing, the politicised conflict at national levelhas subsided due to a series of bilateral agreement with the mainfarming organisations. Site specific conflicts, however, oftenaround issues of planning or land-use continue to play out at locallevels. On the part of landholders there remains a general resis-tance to Natura 2000 although this is frequently negotiated interms of livelihood vulnerabilities and other aspects of local well-being including issues around peopleeplace relationships andidentities (Bryan, 2009). With the greening of the Common Agri-cultural Policy and decoupling, most farming incomes are linkedto EU payments either directly relating to conservation concerns(e.g. the Rural Environmental Protection Scheme) or heavilydependent on cross-compliance with conservation-driven targetsand policies (e.g. the Single Farm Payment). Nevertheless, a recentnewspaper article describes how a group of rural turf cuttersrepresenting 6000 families ‘have vowed to go to prison’ ratherthan comply with obligations under the Habitats Directive whicheffectively bans turf cutting on 32 raised bogs across the country(Craig and Ó Fátharta, 2010). The next section moves from nationalto local stage. We will see how attempts to draw boundaries toprotect hen harriers played out on-the-ground in an area in theSouth-West of Ireland.

to the top-down, non-communicative manner in which designation was beingcarried out. Stoll-Kleeman et al. describe the German implementation as one of‘institutional non-communication’ (see Stoll-Kleeman and O’Riordan, 2002: 173)where ‘nature protection agencies maintained an elite culture’, proceeding asthough engaged on an ‘ecological mission’ (Stoll-Kleeman, 2001b: 38e40). Morerecent attempts to implement the project in Slovenia, Boh argues, are driven bya closed circle of ‘epistemic communities’ (Boh, 2004).


4. Contested boundaries for Hen harriers

4.1. The Hen harrier

The hen harrier is a medium sized raptor with distinct male andfemale plumages. While not in decline globally, its range isthreatened in several parts of Europe, not least Ireland and the UKwhere it has suffered from persecution (from humans and otherspecies) and loss of habitat. The birds breed (often communallywith Merlins andMarsh Harriers) on moorland, bogs and farmland,where they hunt small mammals and birds (Scott, 2010). Tradi-tionally viewed as something of a ‘pest’ by farming communities,hen harriers (Latin name: Circus cyaneus) are not among the mostpopular birds in rural Ireland. They have also suffered illegalpersecution by gamekeepers in the UK due to competition forred grouse (Thompson et al., 2009). Once relatively abundantthroughout Ireland there are an estimated 120 to 130 pairs of henharrier left in the republic.

Protected under Annex I of the Birds Directive, in principle thesebirds enjoy the highest level of legal protection available in Ireland.In 2005e09, during the empirical research for this case study (some25 years after Ireland signed up to the Birds Directive) not one SPAhad been designated for hen harriers. Procedural moves to considerland for designation were leading to bitter land-use conflicts in theSouth-West of the country. This research was conducted as siteboundaries were literally “under construction” so here I could tracethe process of line-drawing as it occurred both geographically(as place boundaries are drawn around the birds habitats), andcognitively (as decisions regarding the birds natural requirementswere made in human-inhabited areas).

4.2. The Stacks-Mullaghereirk candidate SPA

When controversy around hen harrier designations initiallyarose in 2003, the NPWS had yet to designate any sites for henharriers and was under increasing pressure from Brussels to do so.Based on the content of survey work carried out by networks ofornithological experts (see Norriss et al., 2002), in May of 2003, itproduced a map outlining 9 ‘indicative areas’ considered importantbreeding and foraging areas for the birds. In linewith criteria for SPAdesignations, these sites were identified as holding >1% of the all-Ireland breeding population.10 This early attempt to establish henharrier habitats in Ireland found that most sites were concentratedin upland areas in the SouthWestern counties of Limerick, Kerry andCork. It included over 80,000 acres of marchland, moorland andpoor quality agricultural land stretching over adjacent parts of thesecounties, known as the ‘Stacks-Mullaghereirk candidate SPA’. Forthose concernedwithhenharrier conservation, the proposed regionis highly valued in nature conservation terms.

Information suggest that between 33 and 40 breeding pairs livethere [Stacks-Mullaghereirks] which is one third to one quarterof the total number of hen harriers in the country. Thatemphasises that this area is one of great importance..it mustbe regarded the best place in the country for the species(Craig, 2003).

But this place is valued in many other ways by other land-usinggroups. As one of the most densely afforested places in the country,

10 An ornithological expert explained how the limited number of hen harriers leftin Ireland makes application of this criterion difficult: ‘strict application of this rulewould mean designating anywhere even one or two pairs of birds are spotted [..]it isn’t always feasible so decisions have to be made as to the most appropriatesites’.

foresters value it in resource productivity terms. Given its uplandlocation, and the prevailing westerly Atlantic winds, it is alsoa significant area for windfarm development with large parts of itearmarked as ‘open to consideration’ (Limerick County Council) or‘preferred areas’ (Kerry County Council) for windfarm developments.

As with many parts of rural Ireland, the towns and townlands inthis region have not benefited from Ireland’s recent period ofeconomic growth to the same extent as urban areas. Most aredesignated ‘disadvantaged areas’ by the Department of Agricultureand Food and are also CLAR11 areas, designated on the basis thattheir populations have fallen by more than 50% since the founda-tion of the State. The landscape consists mainly of poor qualitygrazing, bogland, heath and conifer plantations. Given the poorquality of the land from an agricultural perspective allied to anincreasingly uncertain future for conventional agricultural prac-tices, farming in the area (mainly dairy, beef and suckler farming) ison the decline. Following government and EU policy prescriptionsto diversify, landholders (mostly farmers) in the area are increas-ingly pursing the alternative land-use options of forestry or wind-farming. Speaking at a governmental committee meeting in 2003,the IFA’s Western Committee Chairman underlined the socio-economic significance of these alternative land-uses in the area:

The countryside in the area is rough and it is difficult to makea living from the land. One must have an off-farm income tosupplement one’s farm income. The people that were born inthat area want to remain there. Their farm incomes come in theform of forestry and wind energy (O’Flynn, 2003).

Forestry, he argued is ‘part of living in the area’ providinganother much-needed form of income. Windfarms, he added ‘willhelp keep people in places such as Rockchapel, Abbeyfeale,Mountcollins and Tournafulla. People want to live in these areas’(O’Flynn, 2003). While the extent to which these often controver-sial developments are actually encouraging locals to remain orabandon these places is open to question (Cody, 2004; Herlihy,2006) for those pursuing these alternative land-use options,however, they clearly present new locality-based livelihoods.

4.3. Ambiguous boundaries: how they were handledand how they were resisted

Natura 2000 stipulates that we rely on science to deviseconceptual and geographic lines between nature and society. Thiscase study reveals difficulties drawing these boundaries on thebasis of science that is ‘uncertain, incomplete and controversial’(Pinton, 2001).

First, there is the difficulty of proving the validity of thegeographic boundaries put forward. At the time of site selection,the onus is on the NPWS to legitimise its proposed boundaries withadequate science, i.e. in this case the extent to which the birds arepresent in the area, and if so, the area’s relative importance in thenational context, judged on the number of birds found. Subsequentto designation, however, in the event of an appeal, the onus is onthe landholder/landuser to provide scientific data that refutes thisoriginal claim. At this point, the burden of proof is thus relocatedfrom the proponents to the opponents of designation. The NPWSprocedure for site selection, however, was viewed cynically bylandowners. Because no definitive scientific data could be producedto ‘prove’ that sufficient numbers of birds were present in the area,opponents of designation were sceptical of the site selectionprocedure:

11 The CLÁR programme is a targeted investment programme for rural areasexperiencing population decline.


They’re are making very serious land-use decisions that reallyaffect people’s lives on very scant knowledge you know, some-times on the basis that hen harriers may have been in thevicinity sometime previously and like how can you argue withthat? That’s very hard to accept. (IFA representative). how can anyone come along and put a line on a map and saythese areas are SACs or SPAs without coming up first of all andproving why that is so. That is totally unacceptable. (Landholderspeaking at an IFA organised public meeting)

‘Recording embodied presence’ as Hinchliffe (2008) explains ‘isfar from straightforward’ (p. 91) due among other things, to themobility of living organisms and contingencies in ‘lines of sight’.Presence is thus ‘as much about intersecting trajectories as it isphysical co-presence’ (Hinchliffe, 2008). It also requires a degree oftrust between those (ornithologists) who claim sighting theseenigmatic and elusive birds (Scott, 2010) and those whose lives arepotentially affected by these sightings. Doubts in relation to thevalidity of these boundaries, and the NPWS’s apparent attempts to‘push ahead’ with designations nonetheless, led disgruntled land-holders to view this as a cynical attempt to shift the “burden ofproof” onto their shoulders. As one landholder explained

and how can we prove the birds didn’t fly overhead? It’s veryhard to prove a negative.

Absent and uncertain knowledge about hen harrier require-ments meant that the NPWS had difficulty deciding what aspects ofthe ‘cultural’ landscape might impinge upon ‘natural’ habitats ofhen harriers. Whether windfarms can become part of the dwellingexperience of hen harriers remains an open question complicatedby the unpredictability of the birds’ behaviour (Percival, 2003). Asan NPWS scientist explains:

The bottom line is we don’t know, there is a collision risk, youcan build models all you like but they are not very sophisticatedand they are not really able to model the birds behaviour.

Depending on its stage of growth, coniferous forestry is both‘friend’ and ‘foe’ to the birds who thrive in young plantations butare displaced by mature mass forestry (Scott, 2010). They appear torequire a mosaic landscape with various stages of forestry (fornesting) intersected with open moorland (for hunting). However,achieving this requires careful and coordinated land-use manage-ment not least because forestry keeps changing and there remains‘uncertainty’ regarding the value of second rotation forestry to thebirds (Coford Connects, 2006: p. 5e6). In fact the hen harriercontroversy became embroiled in an on-going debate about the‘naturalness’ of these (non-native) conifer plantations in Irelandwhich many conservationist NGOs argue are ‘out of place’, butironically play a part in the hen harriers natural habitat in Ireland.

Then of course the birds may not respect these humanlydevised boundaries. As one ornithologist explained ‘a lot hinges onthe behaviour of birds’ and the extent to which they may or maynot adapt to the changes they experience which is somethingdifficult if not impossible to establish with any certainty. Whileordinarily ground nesting birds there are documented sightings ofhen harriers nesting in tree tops in Co Antrim, suggesting theiradaptation to different stages of forestry. Scott (2010) notes howthis ‘enigmatic behaviour’ of the birds in the North of Ireland isunique in Europe. Some locals claim sighting harriers flying at easebetween wind turbines and even nesting around themwhile some(but again not all) ornithological experts feel there remain realrisks of displacement and collision with turbines. If the birdrelocate to other parts of the country the question remainswhether these areas will be de-designated and new boundariesdrawn elsewhere.

There is also a lack of clarity regarding the ‘appropriate’ pop-ulation of hen harriers required by European legislation in the Irishcontext. Article 2 of the Birds Directive states that Member Statesmust maintain the population [..] at a level which correspondsin particular to ecological, scientific and cultural requirements,while taking account of economic and recreational requirements,or to adapt the population of these species to that level.

An IFA representative interviewed in this research explainedhow ‘no-one [in the NPWS] seems capable of telling any of us whatthis appropriate level should be’ and questioned ‘how many henharriers will we need to have before we’ve reached an appropriatelevel and what do we have to sacrifice in order to get there?’Ornithological experts interviewed explained how this ‘appropriatelevel’ is still being debated at EU level.

These uncertainties plagued the decision-making process andled to confusion and indecision among the various bodies chargedwith implementing the scheme, leading at one point (in 2006) to aneffective ‘blanket ban’ on all new forestry applications in the area.Unsure of the exact implications of designation, the NPWS providedvery little information to the public. Their non-engagement withconcerned parties and their failure to fully disclose and discuss theknowledge gaps and uncertainties stalling the decision-makingprocess infuriated an already mistrusting group of rural land-holders who were aware that their lands were ‘under consider-ation’ for designation but had no understanding of what this mightentail. The authority’s inability to outline the implications ofdesignation was perceived as unwillingness to do so, which led toa further erosion of trust and goodwill. The information vacuumthat developed allowed farming groups to paint a “worst-case-scenario”whereby all landholders would ‘have to apply to Brussels’if they wanted to spray a ditch or move a stone.

These local anxieties were greatly fuelled by the media whosomewhat ironically portrayed these threatened birds as threat-ening to local livelihoods and ways of life (Prendiville, 2001; Lucey,2003, 2005; Raleigh, 2003; Hogan, 2004; Feehily, 2005; Kelliher,2007). At one point a dead hen harrier was shot and posted toa local newspaper who ranwith the title ‘Shoot the b***ards’, whichwas allegedly quoted at a mass IFA demonstration in the area(Feehily, 2003). Although the scheme had set out to ‘protect’ them,the birds had essentially become ‘targets’ for those determined thattheir lands would not be designated. There is anecdotal evidence ofother shootings and ‘questionable fires’ rendering some areas ofland ‘no longer suitable’ for hen harrier designations, suggestingdeliberate sabotage by those opposed to designations. From theperspective of hen harriers, ‘annexed’ status as ‘special’ naturewould appear to be a mixed blessing at best.

Eventually, in 2007, a stakeholder working group was set up toestablish an agreement with respect to forestry and windfarmingand compensation packages for those affected. Although anextended version of the Stacks Mullaghereirk region was amongthe 6 sites designated, the original country-wide map of potentialsites was ‘consolidated’ or as some environmentalists would argue,‘whittled back’. Some boundaries shifted and some disappeared.Many conservationists remain unconvinced that the measurestaken to date are sufficient to protect the birds (FIE, 2007; FIE, on-line).

While the Irish state is obliged to protect the “integrity” of henharrier habitats, defining what this integrity entails and thus whatmight actually impinge upon it is problematic. The ‘naturalnesscriterion’ is ‘fraught with difficulties’ (Callicot et al., 1999). Natura2000 thus ‘confronts its future operators with a paradox which isnot easy to resolve, using not very credible scientific arguments tojustify choices that sometimes involve inhabited rural areas withhigh anthropological content’ (Pinton, 2001: 338). It also entails anon-going contest in natureesociety line-drawing as tensions


between “ecology first” or “people included” models of con-servationism continue to clash. Devising boundaries for henharriers in Ireland could not be achieved by allowing science ‘tospeak for nature’ (Yearley,1991). It was a socially negotiated processwherein the ‘social’ and the ‘natural’ were constructed and nego-tiated in tandem. The inherent uncertainty of this process plaguedthe decision-making process, exacerbating conflict on-the-ground.Whether hen harriers respect these humanly devised boundariesremains to be seen.

5. Resisting boundaries: ‘life in the open’

Finally, it is worth considering that unlike lobby groups at EUand national level who attempt to influence the designationprocess by drawing their own, alternative natureesociety bound-aries, ordinary landholders on-the-ground resist the scientizationof place by not drawing natureesociety boundaries. They resistnatureesociety “boundary-work” through a reliance on alternative,local ways of knowing and relating to nature and the habitualpractices of inhabiting places. In this respect, many draw heavily ontheir own stocks of situated knowledge in order to question, chal-lenge and de-legitimise expert accounts of place “integrity” ornatural “authenticity” (Bryan, 2009). For local communities, the“integrity” of these places is bound up with alternative under-standings of “authentic” co-evolving peopleeplace relationshipsand identities (Bryan, 2009; see Bowker, 2005 on how the sciencesof biodiversity “database the world” in a way that excludes certainspaces, entities, and times).

To engage in “out of place” practices ‘is also a form of resistance(De Certeau, 1984; Pile and Keith, 1997) against forces imposinga territorialized normative order ‘(Cresswell, 1996’, cited in Gieryn,2000: 480). Resistancemay involve highly symbolic, demonstrativebehaviours such as the shooting of hen harriers, or the burning orblockading of land e flagrant infringements of the rules of thegame. A more subtle form of resistance can involve the continua-tion of mundane, day-to-day traditional peopleeplace interactionssuch as turf cutting in non-permitted areas. Of course, those whoengage in these latter practices are likely to consider them anythingbut ‘out-of-place’. Indeed they are very much of the place as it isenacted and experienced locally. These actions perform anunwillingness to conform to newly imposed place meanings basedon unfamiliar articulations of natureesociety boundaries.

Of course the boundaries of the types discussed in this paper area particularly human pre-occupation. From rocks, trees, bugs andotters, tomicrobes, soils, gulls andbadgers, non-humanphenomena,do not delineate, label and locate themselves in ‘nature’ as opposedto some alternative ‘other’ realm of conceptual or spatial reality. Theurban fox has no concept of the urban. Whether conifer plantationsare ‘native’ or ‘exotic’ in a given locale means nothing to the henharrier, who concentrates his creative efforts on ‘being alive’ in his‘zone of entanglement’, a meshwork of lines, paths and places thatare carved out, inhabited, abandoned, re-claimed or re-inhabitedover time (Ingold, 2011). ‘Life’, as Ingold argues ‘is lived in theopen’ (2011: 80, drawing on Heidegger): it is ‘not lived withina perimeter but along lines’ (p. 83, emphasis added12).

Humans, on the other hand, are unique within nature in that wecan purposely draw, negotiate and/or reject boundaries to articu-late and legitimise positions, identities, interests, desires, anxieties,relationships and ethical positions. This is at least one area wherehumans differ fundamentally from the “non-human world”. This

12 Ingold is drawing on Deleuze and Guattari’s ‘haecceity’ where each organism isa ‘bundle of lines’ (1980) and Hägerstrand where the environment is discussed asan ‘immense tangle of lines’ (1976) (cited in Ingold, 2011).

capacity to reflect, plan and (at least somewhat) steer socio-ecological change in particular directions affords us powers andresponsibilities to “navigate” (Berkes et al., 2002) pathways that areethically informed while attentive to differences, uncertainties andmultiplicities (Hinchliffe, 2010). Ironically, however, the (at leastpartial) “letting go” of our preoccupations with boundaries may bea necessary next step in these precarious journeys, as I discussfurther in the next section.

6. Conclusions

From inception and negotiation at EU level to local imple-mentation on the ground, the Natura 2000 scheme entails repeatedline-drawing between what is considered ‘natural’ and what isconsidered ‘social’ at various scales and locales, or at various“events” in space-time (Anderson and Harrison, 2010). While thispaper looks primarily at the challenges and dilemmas thrown up inNatura 2000 “boundary-work”, it is worth underlining that ruralcommunities (in the “more than human” sense) affected by Natura2000 designations do not consider the ‘natural’ or the ‘social’ interms of boundary lines that can be located, mapped and quanti-fied. Two-dimensional, topographical ‘surface’ mappings renderinvisible a multiplicity of alternative spaces and places whereidentities are less reliant on boundary demarcations and wheremultiple space-times co-exist and fold in on each other (Thrift,1996). For those (humans and non-humans) who inhabit them,these places and pathways are homes, workplaces, properties,memories, futures, achievements, nesting places, resting places,walkways, flight paths, places to inhabit, places to flee from, placesto fight for e and a whole lot more. They exist, in other words asmultiplicities, endlessly made and forever “under construction”.Nature’s edge, as Ingold (2005) reminds us, does not begin or end at‘river margins’ just as society’s edge does not begin or end at theentrance to a city, an office or a laboratory. Nature and culture,while always “on the move” are bound together in these hybrid,relational assemblages (Whatmore, 2008) (Cloke and Jones, 2001).

Thus while tracing the ebb and flow of emergent conceptualand/or spatial boundaries following Irwin’s suggestion put forwardat the start is illuminating and useful, this should not preclude themapping of non-emergent boundaries, i.e. the boundaries that failto achieve an apparent “permanence” or the ‘deterritorializing linesof flight’ (Deleuze and Guattari, 1980) that tell of potential emer-gent trajectories of change. Nor should they obscure the hybridlifeworlds of humans and non-humans for whom these conceptualand spatial boundaries are anathema or meaningless. Thesemappings, in other words, should allow for ‘physical presences andabsences (as well as linguistic presences and absences’) (Thrift,1996: 31). Thus an analytic focus on line-drawing cannot in andof itself, provide a comprehensive understanding of Natura 2000and its discontents: too many stories are left untold. These are thelived experiences of local communities, ‘the bodily actions andimpulses, emotions and affective relations’ (Thrift, 2008) whosesignificance cannot be conveyed by “boundary-work” analysisalone (Bryan, 2009).

Just as Irwin, and sociology of scientific knowledge accountsmore generally, tend to underplay the significance of non-humanagency in general (Sutton, 2004), hybrid and relational accountsof socio-natural life on the other hand, while envisaging morediffuse and distributed forms of agency, tend to obscure the specificagencies of human and non-human actors (Lulka, 2009; Jones andCloke, 2008) while simultaneously masking relations of power.Through tracing the precarious threads of line-drawing in Natura2000, this paper has shown how specific agencies affect a multi-plicity of potential trajectories. For example, it has shown humandecisions, commitments, choices and value-judgments ultimately

13 Including, for example, the concept of recombinant ecology, i.e. ‘the biologicalcommunities assembled through the dense comings and goings of urban life’(Hinchliffe and Whatmore, 2006 drawing on Barker, 2000).


shape the knowledge employed to draw lines between ‘nature’ and‘society’ in ways which non-humans cannot. But this is nota process in which all voices are heard equally. While powerfullobby groups both for and against designations enjoyed some inputinto line-drawing at national and EU levels, this study reveals theextent to which people on-the-ground played little or no part inthese processes. If agency is defined as the ability to affect change(in this case boundary changes) clearly some actors, when actingwithin particular networks (e.g. farming and conservationist lobbygroups) are better placed to do this than others, although all suchattempts are highly contingent - embedded as they are withinmultiple relational assemblages where ‘action moves around’(Law and Mol, 2008).

Nevertheless, returning to the example of the hen harrier wecan also see how implementation of the scheme hinges signifi-cantly on the actions of non-humans. While humans can inten-tionally draw, negotiate and re-draw lines on maps and conceptualboundaries regarding what is perceived to comply with ‘natural’circumstances, the birds retain the particular ability to fly else-where, to disrupt or disregard these boundaries by relocating oradapting to changing circumstances. They navigate their own pathsor ‘lines of flight’ in these complex socio-natural assemblages.Although they cannot de-territorialise and re-territorialise theseand other spaces at will, given their apparent hunting and nestingrequirements, neither are they beholden to any humanly devisedboundaries.

We have seen how the ‘social’ can frustrate attempts to drawlines around the ‘natural’ but we must also acknowledge how‘nature’ co-constructs the ‘social’ and can equally frustrate attemptsto carve lines through the interwoven fabric of hybrid landscapes.In fact, some aspects of the lifestyles and livelihoods of localcommunities depend heavily on the ‘natural’ behaviour of henharriers. As one potential forester explained ‘if the birds turn uphere I can forget any plans for more forestry’. Another explainedhow local protests to curtail the advance of windfarms in his areahave had limited success but noted that ‘the arrival of enough henharriers might be our only hope’ and joked that ‘you have to havefeather to have any ‘pull’ around here’. Changing relationshipsbetween humans, hen harriers and all manner of heterogeneousactors (from Brussels and beyond to the bogs of Co Kerry) arerestructuring Ireland’s hybrid landscape and the lifeworlds of thehumans and non-humans that inhabit it. The “conjoined materi-ality” (Fitzsimmons and Goodman, 1998) of natureesociety iscontinually co-constituted and this renders any definitive attemptsat line-drawing highly problematic. Yet in on-going performancesof “boundary-work”, there are inevitably winners and losers (bothhuman and non-human) a fact that renders these processes of line-drawing highly political and hence a process that warrants carefulanalysis and transparency.

While international nature conservation initiatives areundoubtedly important, it is increasingly acknowledged by ecolo-gists, anthropologists, human geographers and natural resourcescientists that “the battle for biodiversity” will be won or lost atlocal levels (O’Riordan, 2002; Berkes et al., 2002; Campbell, 2005).Thus the specific agencies, tendencies, norms, practices and livedexperiences of nature-cultures “on the move” are of pivotalimportance to this goal. This necessitates a greater focus on hownatures and places are performed or enacted by, in and throughheterogeneous assemblages (relationships bundles that “hangtogether”, while always at least partly “pulling apart”) and theunpredictable “lines of flight” that continually threaten to re-assemble them (Deleuze and Guattari, 1980).

From EU bureaucrats and legislators to local site managers onthe ground, those implementing Natura 2000 need to bear thesefactors inmind. Drawing boundaries around nature and society will

always be an uncertain, provisional and tentative endeavour. Whilerecent thinking in ecology acknowledges “uncertainties” at theheart of all socialeecological systems (McKay and Regier, 2000;Bradshaw and Borchers, 2000; Berkes et al., 2002), these have yetto be fully embraced and accounted for in Natura 2000 in practice.Expectations of certainty remain a thorn in the side of the projectboth at local level as was the case in the hen harrier conflict, and atmore global levels where in spite of a myriad of ambiguities anduncertainties, ‘EU case law currently demands certainty providedby science’ (Opdam et al., 2009: abstract). Because human knowl-edges of natureesociety will never be ‘certain’ or ‘complete’ or‘impartial’ (Hull et al., 2003), less “top-down”, more adaptive stylesof management are needed (Berkes, 2004). This not only meansthat management prescriptions should be more tentative andexperimental, it also requires that they take on board the knowl-edges, skills, sensitivities and experiences of those whose life-worlds are intimately bound up with the natures ‘of interest’ ethose who experience these locales as places (or hybrid assem-blages) as opposed to habitats (based on the purification of natureand society).

This raises the question of the significance of boundaries innature conservationism and environmental decision-making moregenerally where anxieties about illegitimate boundary crossingsprevail. Concerns about the steady encroachment of the social onthe natural and the despoliation of the latter by the former are atthe very heart of the ecological movement. But it is worth ques-tioning this as an inevitability. There is no doubt that environ-mental discourse is pre-occupied with boundaries, classificationsand categorisations of one sort or another, whether nature/society,human/non-human, native/exotic and in the case of Natura 2000annexed or not. Also, nature conservationism, both in theory andpractice can, and as this paper shows quite frequently does involvethe construction and defence of boundaries. And yet Latourprovocatively argues that political ecology ‘needs to abandon thefalse conceit that ecology has anything to do with nature as such’but should be seen rather as ‘a new way to handle all the objects ofhuman and non-human collective life’ (1998: 222). This point istaken further in developing concepts such as ‘cosmopolitics’(Latour, 2004b; Hinchliffe et al., 2005; Stengers, 2010), ‘ontologicalpolitics’ (Mol, 1998) and ‘multinaturalist’ politics (Latour, 2011) eaccounts that acknowledge ecology as a deeply political matter butargue for an ‘ecologised politics’ as opposed to a ‘politicisedecology’ (the former politics being a “more-than-human affair”, seeHinchliffe et al., 2005 drawing on Mol).

This begs the formidable question as to whether the future ofnature conservationism relies upon the dismantling of ‘nature’ asa concept and locale and an alternative focus on fusions, hybrids,collectives, assemblages e heterogeneous, messy relationships andphenomena that cannot be disentangled, unravelled and purified.While to some extent this understanding is already informinginnovative environmental concepts and initiatives13, there remains,in myself as in many others, a wariness to let go of the ‘natures wecarry inside in our heads’ e a point that makes them no less real,valid or worth fighting for (Cronan, 1996). If in ecology, just as inpolitics there is no clear endgame, this should not dissuade us fromstaking our various (albeit contested) claims, for advocating somerelationships, fusions and hybrid assemblages as opposed to others(such as those based on sensitivity to difference and a ‘politics ofconviviality’, Hinchliffe et al., 2005). Relationalism need not implyrelativism. However the environment is construed and analytically


explored (e.g. through lines and boundaries, fusions and hybrids,nature or place) ecological decision-making will always, at least tosome extent, entail power struggles, competing interests andconflicting realities. This is after all the nature of politics and ‘thepolitics of nature’ (Latour, 2004a).

Acknowledgements

Research for this paper was funded by an EnvironmentalProtection Agency Scholarship (EPA, Ireland) and a Marie CurieFellowship under the Seventh Framework Programme (EuropeanCommission). Many thanks to three anonymous referees for theirvery helpful and insightful comments on an earlier draft of thispaper.

References

Adams, M.W., 2002. When nature won’t stay still. In: Adams, W., Mulligan, M. (Eds.),Decolonizing Nature: Strategies for Conservation in a Post-colonial Era, Editedby W. Adams and M. Mulligan. Earthscan, London, pp. 220e247.

Alphandéry, Pierre, Fortier, Agnes, 2001. Can a territorial policy be based on sciencealone? the system for creating the Natura 2000 network in France. SociologiaRuralis 41 (3), 311e328.

Amin, A., 2002. Spatialities of globalisation. Environment and Planning A 34,385e399.

An Taisce, Dublin, 2007. Spatial Planning and SACs e A Review: Are Natura 2000Sites (i.e. SACs & SPAs) Adequately Protected in the Light of Article 6 of theHabitats Directive? An Taisce.

Anderson, B., Harrison, Paul, 2010. Taking-place: Non-representational Theories andGeography. Ashgate Publishing Ltd, Farnham.

Angermeier, P.L., Karr, J.R., 1994. Biological integrity versus biological diversity aspolicy directives. Bioscience 44, 690e697.

Apostolopoulou, E., Pantis, J.D., 2009. Conceptual gaps in the national strategy forthe implementation of the European Natura 2000 conservation policy inGreece. Biological Conservation 142, 221e237.

Barker, G. (Ed.), 2000. Ecological Recombination in Urban Areas. The Urban Forum/English Nature, Peterborough.

Barker, K., 2008. Flexible boundaries in biosecurity: accommodating gorse inAotearoa New Zealand. Environment and Planning A 40 (7), 1598e1614.

Bennett, J., 2009. Vibrant Matters e Vibrant Matter: a Political Ecology of Things.A John Hope Franklin Center Book. Duke University Press Books.

Berkes, F., 2004. Rethinking community-based conservation. Conservation Biology18 (3), 621e630.

Berkes, F., Colding, J., Folke, C. (Eds.), 2002. Navigating Social-Ecological Systems:Building Resilience for Complexity and Change. Cambridge University Press,Cambridge.

Björkell, S., 2008. Resistance to top-down conservation policy and the search fornew participatory models. The case of Bergö-Malax’ Outer Archipelago inFinland. In: Keulartz, J., Leistra, G. (Eds.), European Nature ConservationPolicy: Case Studies in Multilevel Governance. Springer, Heidelberg,pp. 109e126.

Boh, T., 2004. Shielding Implementation from Politicisation? Implementation of theHabitats Directive in Slovenia OEUE Phase II. Occasional Paper. 6.3.-08.04.

Bowker, G.C., 2004. Memory Practices in the Sciences. MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass.Bowker, Geoffrey C., 2005. Memory Practices in the Sciences. The MIT Press, Lon-

don, UK.Bradshaw, G.A., Borchers, J.G., 2000. Uncertainty as information: narrowing the

science-policy gap. Conservation Ecology 4 (1), 7. http://www.consecol.org/vol4/iss1/art7/.

Bryan, S., 2009. Contested Boundaries, Contested Places: An exploration of Ireland’sContribution to Natura 2000. Unpublished PhD Thesis, Trinity College Dublin,Ireland.

Callicot, J.B., Crowder, L.B., Mumford, K., 1999. Current normative concepts inconservation. Conservation Biology 13, 22e35.

Callon, M., Law, J., 2004. Introduction: absenceepresence, circulation, andencountering in complex space. Environment and Planning D: Society andSpace 22 (1), 3e11.

Campbell, B., 2005. Changing Protection policies and ethnographies of environ-mental management. Conservation and Society 3 (2).

Castree, N., 2010. Natureesociety relations. In: Livingstone, D., et al. (Eds.), Hand-book of Geographical Knowledge. Sage, London.

Clerkin, Shirley, 2002. Incorporating biodiversity considerations in policy. Biologyand Environment 102b (3), 179.

Cloke, Paul, Jones, Owain, 2001. Dwelling, place and landscape: an orchard inSomerset. Environment and Planning A 33, 649e666.

Cody, M., 20th August 2004. Rockchapel group question windfarm policy. TheCorkman.

Coford Connects, 2006. The Distribution of Hen Harriers in Ireland in Relation toLand Use Cover, Particularly Forest Cover. Coford: National Council for ForestResearch and Development, Ireland.

Cooney, R., 2005. From promise to practicalities: the precautionary principle inbiodiversity conservation and natural resource management. In: Cooney, R.,Dickson, B. (Eds.), Biodiversity and the Precautionary Principle: Risk andUncertainty in Conservation and Sustainable Use. Earthscan, London,pp. 3e17.

Council Directive 79/409/EEC of 2 April 1979 on the conservation of wild birds.Official Journal L 103.

Council Directive 92/43/EEC of 21 may 1992 on the conservation of natural habitatsand of wild fauna and flora. Official Journal L 206, 22.7.1992 Amended byCouncil Directive 97/62/EC, Official Journal L 305/42.

Cowley, J., 2003. Dáil Debate vol. 561, 19.2.2003, on-line at: http://debates.oireachtas.ie (accessed 23.05.07.).

Craig, A., 2003. NPWS. Joint Committee on Environment and Local Government,05.03.2003. At: http://debates.oireachtas.ie (accessed 23.05.07.).

Craig, J., Ó Fátharta, Conall, 29 May, 2010. Turf cutters ready to go to jail in ban fight.Irish Examiner.

Cresswell, T., 1996. In Place/Out of Place: Geography, Ideology and Transgression.Minneapolis: Univ. Minnesota Press.

Cronan, W., 1996. Uncommon Ground: Rethinking the Human Place in Nature. W.W.Norton, New York.

Crowley, E., 2006. Land Matters: Power Struggles in Rural Ireland. Lilliput Press,Dublin.

Cullen, Martin (Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government),2003. Dáil Debate, vol. 564, 01.04.2003. At: http://debates.oireachtas.ie(accessed on 17.05.08.).

Curia: http://curia.europa.eu/en/content/juris/index.htm (accessed 23.11.09.).Curry, J.M., 2007. The natureeculture boundary and ocean policy: Great Barrier

Island, New Zealand. Geographical Review 97, 46e66.De Certeau, M., 1984. The Practice of Everyday Life. University of California Press,

Berkeley.Deleuze, Gilles, Félix, Guattari, 1980. A Thousand Plateaus. Trans. Brian Massumi,

London and New York, Continuum, 2004. Vol. 2 of Capitalism and Schizo-phrenia. 2 Vols. 1972e1980. Trans. of Mille Plateaux. Paris, Les Editions deMinuit.

Department of Agriculture and Food, 1999. Evaluation of the Rural EnvironmentalProtection Scheme. Department of Agriculture and Food, Ireland.

Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government (DEHLG), n.d.Living with Nature: The Designation of Nature Conservation Sites in Ireland.http://www.botanicgardens.ie/gspc/ireland/living.pdf (accessed 01.03.07.).

Doel, M., 1999. Post-Structuralist Geographies: The Diabolical Art of Spatial Science.Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh.

Doel, M., 2000. Un-glunking geography: spatial science after Dr Seuss and GillesDeleuze. In: Crang, M., Thrift, N. (Eds.), Thinking Space. Routledge, London,pp. 117e135.

Drenthen, Martin, Keulartz, Josef, Proctor, J., 2009. Nature in motion (introduction).In: Drenthen, M., Keulartz, J., Proctor, J. (Eds.), New Visions of Nature:Complexity and Authenticity. Springer, Dordrecht, pp. 3e18.

European Commission, 2001. Assessment of Plans and Projects SignificantlyAffecting Natura 2000 Sites: Article 6(3) and 6(4) of the Habitats Directive92/43/EEC. Office for Official Publications of the European Communities,Luxembourg.

Fairbrass, J., Jordan, A., 2003. EU biodiversity policy: the role of informal governancein policy development and implementation. In: Christiansen, T., Piattoni, S.(Eds.), Informal Governance in the European Union. Edward Elgar, London,pp. 94e113.

Feehan, John, 1997. Attitudes to nature in Ireland. In: Foster, John Wilson (Ed.),Nature in Ireland e a Scientific and Cultural History. Lilliput Press, Dublin.

Feehily, Patricia, 8th March 2003. Shoot the bas****s. The Limerick Leader.Feehily, Patrick, 9th July 2005. Hen harrier returns to haunt west Limerick. The

Limerick Leader.FIE, November 2007. Designations won’t save hen harrier. Forest Network News-

letter (FNN) (177).FIE, on-line, http://www.friendsoftheirishenvironment.net (accessed 08.07.10.).Fitzsimmons, M., Goodman, D., 1998. Incorporating nature. In: Braun, B., Castree, N.

(Eds.), Remaking Reality, Nature at the Millennium. Routledge, London, UK.Franklin, Adrian, 2002. Nature and Social Theory. Sage, London.Gbadegesin, A., Ayileka, O., 2000. Avoiding the mistakes of the past: towards

a community orientated management strategy for the proposed national parkin Abuja-Nigeria. Land Use Policy 17, 89e100.

Gieryn, Thomas F., 1999. Cultural Boundaries of Science: Credibility on the Line.University of Chicago Press, Chicago.

Gieryn, Thomas F., 2000. A space for place in sociology. Annual Review of Sociology26, 463e496.

Government of Ireland, 2005. Sustainable Rural Guidelines: Guidelines for PlanningAuthorities. The Stationery Office, Government of Ireland, Dublin.

Green, S.F., 2005. From hostile backwater to natural wilderness: on the relocation of‘Nature’ in Epirus, northwestern Greece. Conservation and Society 3 (2),436e460.

Grist, Bearna, 1997. Wildlife legislation e the rocky road to special areas ofconservation surveyed. Irish Planning and Environmental Law Journal 4 (3),87e95.

http://www.consecol.org/vol4/iss1/art7/

http://www.consecol.org/vol4/iss1/art7/

http://debates.oireachtas.ie



mailto:http://debates.oireachtas.ie

http://curia.europa.eu/en/content/juris/index.htm

http://www.botanicgardens.ie/gspc/ireland/living.pdf

http://www.friendsoftheirishenvironment.net


Halahan, Rebecca, May, Rebecca, 2003. Favourable Conservation Status to the Heartof EU Wildlife Legislation WWF on-line: www.wwf.org.uk/filelibrary/pdf/favconsstatus.pdf (accessed 10.08.07.).

Harvey, D., 1996. Justice, Nature and the Geography of Difference. Blackwell, Oxford.Herlihy, Maria, 11 April 2006. Windmills are a nightmare. The Corkman.Hiedanpää, J., 2002. European-wide conservation versus local well-being: the

reception of the Natura 2000 Reserve Network in Karvia, SW-Finland. Land-scape and Urban Planning 61, 113e123.

Hinchliffe, S., 2008. Reconstituting nature conservation: towards a careful politicalecology. Geoforum 39 (1), 88e97.

Hinchliffe, S., 2010. Working with multiples e a non representational approachto environmental issues. In: Anderson, B., Harrison, P. (Eds.), Taking-Place: Non-Representational Theories and Geography. Ashgate, Surrey,pp. 303e321.

Hinchliffe, S., Bingham, N., 2008. Securing life: the emerging practices of bio-security. Environment and Planning A 40 (7), 1534e1551.

Hinchliffe, S., Whatmore, S., 2006. Living cities: towards a politics of convivality.Science As Culture 15 (2), 123e138.

Hinchliffe, S., Kearnes, M.B., Degen, M., Whatmore, S., 2005. Urban wild things:a cosmopolitical experiment. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space23 (5), 643e658.

Hogan, Treacy, 1st June 2004. Bird of Prey harries massive V73 m wind farm out ofthe sky. The Irish Independent.

Hull, R.B., Richert, D., Seekamp, E., Robertson, D., Buhyoff, G.J., 2003. Understandingsof environmental quality: ambiguities and values held by environmentalprofessionals. Environmental Management 31 (1), 1e13.

IFJ-on-line, 28 December 2002. Irish Farmers Journal. http://www.farmersjournal.ie/2002/1228/news/currentedition/newsfeature.htm (accessed 05.06.10.).

Ingold, T., December 2005. Epilogue: towards a politics of dwelling. Conservationand Society 3 (2).

Ingold, T., 2008. Bindings against boundaries: entanglements of life in an openworld. Environment and Planning A 40, 1796e1810.

Ingold, T., 2011. Being Alive: Essays on Movement, Knowledge and Description.Routledge, London and New York.

Irwin, A., 2001. Sociology and the Environment. A Critical Introduction to Society,Nature and Knowledge. Polity Press, Cambridge.

Jones, O., Cloke, P., 2008. Non-human agencies: trees in place and time. In:Knappett, C., Malafouris, L. (Eds.), Material Agency: Towards a Non-Anthropocentric Approach. Springer, pp. 79e96.

Katz, C., 1998. Whose nature, whose culture? Private productions of space and the“preservation” of nature. In: Castree, N., Braun, B. (Eds.), Remaking Reality:Nature at the Millennium. Routledge, London.

Kelliher, Eve, 23 January 2007. Kerry farmers cry fowl as eagle returns. TheKerryman.

Kelsey, Elin, 2003. Integrating multiple knowledge systems into environmentaldecision-making: two case studies of participatory biodiversity initiatives inCanada and their implications for conceptions of education and publicinvolvement. Environmental Values 12 (3), 381e396.

Keulartz, Jozef, Leistra, Gilbert, 2008. Legitimacy in European Nature ConservationPolicy: Case Studies in Multilevel Governance Series: The International Libraryof Environmental, Agricultural and Food Ethics, vol. 14. Springer, TheNetherlands.

King, Tim, 30th January 2004. EU chides Ireland over wild birds. The Irish Times.Kistenkas, F.H., 2005. Integrating and interpreting the habitats and birds directives.

Tilburg Foreign Law Review 12 (3), 255e265.Kricher, J., 2009. The Balance of Nature: Ecology’s Enduring Myth. Princeton

University Press.Laffan, Brigid, O’Mahoney, J., 2004. Mis-fit, Politicisation and Europeanisation. The

Implementation of the Habitats Directive. Organisation for EU Enlargement.Phase II Occasional Paper. 1.3. - 08.04. Dublin European Institute, UniversityCollege Dublin.

Lamont, Michèle, Molnar, Virag, 2002. The study of boundaries in the socialsciences. Annual Review of Sociology 28, 167e195.

Latour, Bruno, 1988. The Pasteurization of France. Harvard University Press, Cam-bridge Mass., USA.

Latour, B., 1998. To modernise or ecologise? that is the question. In: Braun, B.,Castree, N. (Eds.), Remaking Reality: Nature at the Millennium. Routledge,London, pp. 221e242.

Latour, B., 2004a. Politics of Nature: How to Bring the Sciences into Democracy.English Translation by Catherine Porter of the French Book. Harvard UniversityPress.

Latour, B., 2004b. Whose Cosmos, which cosmopolitics? comments on the peaceterms of Ulrich Beck. Common Knowledge 10 (3), 450e462.

Latour, B., Spring 2011. From multiculturalism to multinaturalism: what rules ofmethod for the new socio-scientific experiments? Nature and Culture 6 (1),1e17(17).

Lavau, S., 2011. The nature/s of belonging: performing an authentic Australianriver. Ethnos (Special Issue: Performing Nature at the World’s Ends) 76 (1),41e64.

Law, John, Mol, Annemarie, 2008. The actor-enacted: Cumbrian sheep in 2001. In:Malafouris, Lambros, Knappett, Carl (Eds.), Material Agency: Towards a Non-Anthropocentric Approach. Springer, pp. 55e77.

Ledoux, L., Crooks, S., Jordan, A., Turner, R., 2003. Implementing EU BiodiversityPolicy: A UK Case Study. CSERGE Working Paper, GEC 2000-03. http://www.uea.ac.uk/env/cserge/pub/wp/gec/gec_2000_03.htm (accessed 02.09.09.).

Leibenath, M., 2008. Legitimacy of biodiversity policies in a multi-level setting. In:Keulartz, Jozef, Leistra, Gilbert (Eds.), Legitimacy in European Nature Conser-vation Policy: Case Studies in Multilevel Governance. Springer, The Netherlands,pp. 233e255.

Lien, Marianne E., 2005. ‘King of Fish’ or ‘Feral Peril’: Tasmanian Atlantic Salmonand the politics of belonging. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space23 (5), 659e671.

Linehan, C., 2005. Developments in Relation to Protected Areas. Paper presented atLaw and the Environment 2005. University College Cork, Faculty of Law. http://www.ucc.ie/law/events/environ05papers/linehan.doc (accessed 18.02.11.).

Lorimer, J., 2006. Nonhuman charisma: which species trigger our emotions andwhy? ECOS 27 (1), 20e27.

Lorimer, J., 2007. Nonhuman charisma. Environment and Planning D: Society andSpace 25 (5), 911e932.

Lucey, Anne, 17th March 2003. Fears of bird defence over local economy. The IrishTimes.

Lucey, Anne, 29th July 2005. Hen Harrier to get 80,000 acres of protected habitat.The Irish Times.

Lulka, D., 2009. The residual humanism of hybridity: retaining a sense of the earth.Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 34, 378e393.

McKay, James, Regier, Henry, 2000. Uncertainty, complexity and ecological integ-rity: insights from an ecosystems approach. In: Crabbé, P., Holland, A.,Ryszkowski, L., Westra, L. (Eds.), Implementing Ecological Integrity: RestoringRegional and Global Environmental and Human Health. Kluwer, NATO ScienceSeries, Environmental Security, pp. 121e156.

Milton, Kay, 2000. Ducks out of water: nature conservation as boundary mainte-nance. In: Knight, J. (Ed.), Natural Enemies: People e Wildlife Conflicts inAnthropological Perspective. Routledge, London.

Mischi, J., 2009. Contested Rural Activities: Environmental Protection and BirdHunting in the French countryside. Paper presented at The XXIII ESRS CongresseVaasa, Finland 17e21 August 2009. Re-inventing the rural e between the socialand the natural. Working Group 1.4.

Mol, A., 1998. Ontological politics. A word and some questions. The SociologicalReview 46, 74e89.

Mol, A., Law, J., 2005. Boundary variations: an introduction. Environment andPlanning D: Society and Space 23 (5), 637e642.

Murdoch, J., 2006. Post-structuralist Geography: a Guide to Relational Space. Sage,London.

Norriss, D.W., Marsh, J., McMahon, D., Oliver, G.A., 2002. A national survey ofbreeding hen harriers Circus cyaneus in Ireland 1998e2000. Irish Birds 7, 1e10.

O’Riordan, Tim, Fairbrass, Jenny, Welp, Martin, Stoll-Kleeman, Susanne, 2002. Thepolitics of biodiversity in Europe. In: O’Riordan, Tim, Stoll-Kleeman, Susanne(Eds.), Biodiversity, Sustainability and Human Communities: Protecting beyondthe Protected. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp. 115e141.

O’Flynn, 2003. Joint Oireachtas Committee on Environment and Local Government,2 April 2003, (accessed 19.05.10.).

Opdam, P.F.M., Broekmeyer, M.E.A., Kistenkas, F.H., 2009. Identifying uncertaintiesin judging the significance of human impacts on Natura 2000 sites. Environ-mental Science and Policy 12 (7), 912e921.

O’Riordan, Tim, 2002. Protecting beyond the protected. In: O’Riordan, Tim, Stoll-Kleeman, Susanne (Eds.), Biodiversity, Sustainability and Human Communities:Protecting beyond the Protected. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge,pp. 3e29.

O’Rourke, E., 2005. Socio-natural interaction and landscape dynamics in the Burren,Ireland. Landscape and Urban Planning 70, 69e83.

O’Sullivan, Kevin, 16th February 2000. Trust report criticises planning process inconservation areas. The Irish Times.

Paavola, J., 2004. Protected areas governance and justice: theory and the EuropeanUnions’ habitats directive. Environmental Sciences 1, 59e77.

Percival, S.M., 2003. Birds and Wind Farms in Ireland: a Review of Potential Issuesand Impact Assessment. Ecology Consulting.

Pile, S., Keith, M. (Eds.), 1997. Geographies of Resistance. Routledge, New York.Pinton, Florence, 2001. Conservation of biodiversity as a European directive: the

challenge for France. Sociologia Ruralis 41 (3), 329e342.Pinton, Florence, 2008. Between European injunction and local consultation

analyzing the territorialization process for a public nature conservation initia-tive in France. In: Keulartz, Jozef, Gilbert, Leistra (Eds.), Legitimacy in EuropeanNature Conservation Policy: Case Studies in Multilevel Governance Series: TheInternational Library of Environmental, Agricultural and Food Ethics, vol. 14.Springer, Netherlands.

Prendiville, Norma, 20th October 2001. A £10 m windfarm threatened by risk tobirdlife. The Limerick Leader.

Raleigh, David, 14th March 2003. Farmers fear plan to protect hens. The IrishTimes.

Robertson, D.P., Hull, R.B., 2003. Public ecology: an environmental science andpolicy for global society. Environmental Science and Policy 6, 399e410.

RTE on-line, 2004. www.rte.ie/news/2004/0819/morningireland aired on 19 August2004, (accessed 14.10.10.).

Scannell, Yvonne, Cannon, Robert, Clarke, Martin, Doyle, Oran, 1999. The HabitatsDirective in Ireland. Centre for Environmental Law and Policy. Trinity CollegeDublin, Dublin.

Scott, Don, 2010. The Hen Harrier: In the Shadow of Slemish. Whitt WhittlesPublishing, Scotland, UK.

Siggins, L., 9th February 1998. Farmers fear they are losing out to conservation. TheIrish Times.

http://www.wwf.org.uk/filelibrary/pdf/favconsstatus.pdf

http://www.wwf.org.uk/filelibrary/pdf/favconsstatus.pdf

http://www.farmersjournal.ie/2002/1228/news/currentedition/newsfeature.htm

http://www.farmersjournal.ie/2002/1228/news/currentedition/newsfeature.htm

http://www.uea.ac.uk/env/cserge/pub/wp/gec/gec_2000_03.htm

http://www.uea.ac.uk/env/cserge/pub/wp/gec/gec_2000_03.htm

http://www.ucc.ie/law/events/environ05papers/linehan.doc

http://www.ucc.ie/law/events/environ05papers/linehan.doc

http://www.rte.ie/news/2004/0819/morningireland


Siggins, L., 22nd March 1999. Conservation decisions spark controversy. The IrishTimes.

Smith, Paddy, 3rd August 2004. Two organisations at Loggerheads over bogs Deal.The Irish Independent. www.independent.ie/ (accessed 10.5.07.).

Stengers, I., 2010. Cosmopolitics (R. Bononno trans.). University of Minnesota Press,Minneapolis.

Stoll-Kleeman, S., 2001a. Opposition to the designation of protected areas in Ger-many. Journal of Environmental Planning and Management 44, 111e130.

Stoll-Kleeman, S., 2001b. Reconciling opposition to protected areas management inEurope: the German experience. Environment 43 (5), 32e43.

Stoll-Kleeman, S., O’Riordan, T., 2002. From participation to partnership in biodi-versity protection: experience from Germany and South Africa. Society andNatural Resources 15, 161e177.

Sutton, P.W., 2004. Nature, Environment and Society. Palgrave MacMillan,New York.

Thompson, P.S., Amar, A., Hoccom, D.G., Knott, J., Wilson, J.D., 2009. Resolving theconflict between driven-grouse shooting and conservation of hen harriers.Journal of Applied Ecology 46, 950e954.

Thrift, N., 1996. Spatial Formations. Sage, London.Thrift, N., 2008. Non-representational Theory: Space, Politics, Affect. Routledge,

London.Turf Cutters and Contractors Association, on line, http://www.turfcuttersand

contractors.com/ (accessed 12.07.11.).Turner, R.K., Lorenzoni, I., Beaumont, N., Bateman, I.J., Langford, I.H., McDonald, A.I.,

1998. Coastal management for sustainable development: analysing environmentaland socio-economic changes on the UK coast. The Geographical Journal 164 (3),269e281.

Van Oudheusden, R., 2005. The CORINE Biotopes project. Alive and Kicking. NWS-I-2005-5. Utrecht University, WA http://www.chem.uu.nl/nws/www/publica/I2005-5.pdf (accessed 10.02.11.).

Visser, Marjolein, Moran, James, Regan, Eugenie, Gormally, Mike, SkeffingtonSheehy, Micheline, 2 April 2007. The Irish Agri-environment: how turlough

users and non-users view converging EU Agendas of Natura 2000 and CAP. LandUse Policy 24, 362e373.

Waterton, C., 2002. From field to fantasy: classifying nature, constructing Europe.Social Studies of Science 32 (2), 177e204.

Waterton, C., Wynne, B., 1996. Building the European Union: science and thecultural dimensions of environmental policy. Journal of European Public Policy3 (3), 421e440.

Waterton, C., Wynne, B., 1998. Public information on the environment: the role ofthe European Environment Agency. In: Lowe, P., Ward, S. (Eds.), British Envi-ronmental Policy and Europe: From a National to a European Perspective.Routledge, London, pp. 119e137.

Waterton, C., Wynne, B., 2004. In the Eye of the Hurricane: knowledge and socialorder in the European Environment Agency. In: Jasanoff, Sheila (Ed.), States ofKnowledge: The Co-Production of Science and Social Order. Routledge, London,pp. 87e108.

Whatmore, S., 1999. Re-thinking the Human in Human Geography e Material Book.Whatmore, S., 2002. Hybrid Geographies. Natures, Cultures and Spaces. Sage,

London.Whatmore, S., 2008. Materialist returns: practising cultural geography in and for

a more-than-human world. In: Johnson, N.C. (Ed.), Culture and Society: CriticalEssays in Human Geography. Ashgate, pp. 481e490.

Whatmore, S., Hinchcliffe, S., 2008. Hybrid geographies: rethinking the ‘human’ inhuman geography. In: Anderson, K., Braun, B. (Eds.), Environment: CriticalEssays in Human Geography. Series: Contemporary Foundations of Space andPlace. Ashgate.

Wood, B., 2000. Room for nature? Conservation management of the Isle of Rum, UKand prospects for large protected areas in Europe. Biological Conservation 94(1), 93e105.

Wood, Kieron, 9th December 2007. EU court to rule on treatment of Irish WildBirds. Sunday Business Post.

Yearley, S., 1991. The Green Case: A Sociology of Environmental Issues, Argumentsand Politics. Harper Collins, London.

http://www.independent.ie/

http://www.turfcuttersandcontractors.com/

http://www.turfcuttersandcontractors.com/

http://www.chem.uu.nl/nws/www/publica/I2005-5.pdf

http://www.chem.uu.nl/nws/www/publica/I2005-5.pdf

contested boundaries, contested places: the natura 2000 network in ireland

Documents