Conservation Biologists and Borderlands

This project examines how the history of biodiversity conservation has shaped and been shaped in the context of key American borderlands in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, and how biodiversity conservation relates to local social and political issues. This project will foster relationships between stakeholders that span academia, community organizations, environmental non-profits and human rights organizations on both sides of the border in order to build more inclusive and equitable biodiversity science and conservation. This will also enhance public engagement with the environmental sciences in the borderlands and its effects on public policy. This research contributes to the fields of history of science and environmental history by investigating how border politics has shaped the history of scientific knowledge about endangered species. Using archival research and oral history interviews, the project seeks to answer the following research questions: How has the construction of the border wall between 1993 and 2021 shaped the scientific practices of conservation biologists researching endangered species in the borderlands? How has the politicization of environmental knowledge production in the borderlands influenced lines of scientific inquiry in conservation biology? How has scientific knowledge about endangered species been leveraged in debates surrounding the governance and politics of the borderlands? This research is significant because it casts light on the interlinkages between conservation biology, the national borders, and the nation state. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.