NATURE AND THE REPRODUCTION OF ENDANGERED SPACE - THE SPOTTED OWL IN THE PACIFIC-NORTHWEST AND SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA

Recent efforts to protect biodiversity in the United States often repr oduce the literal and figurative divisions of space that have original ly endangered target species. Nature as redefined by these efforts is as much a social construction as it is some biophysical entity under s iege by humans. We focus on the categorical and spatial distinctions b etween landscapes prioritized for protection and landscapes given less priority or ignored altogether. These distinctions, we wish to demons trate, reflect pragmatic considerations of habitat quality and politic al expediency, but they also are enmeshed in dualist nature-culture id eologies that serve to legitimate and ultimately to reproduce the diff erent practices that occur on these landscapes. We focus on protection of spotted owl habitat, one of the most important cases of biodiversi ty conservation in the United States since the passage of the Endanger ed Species Act. We consider recent spotted owl protection efforts in t he Pacific Northwest and southern California. In the Pacific Northwest , spotted owl protection plans on public forests have been cited as ju stification for easing habitat protection on private lands, in spite o f the major historical biodiversity role of these forestlands. In Cali fornia, spotted owl policy deliberations for the urbanized forests of southern California have lagged far behind those in the Sierra Nevada, even though owl populations have declined faster in southern Californ ia than anywhere else in the state. These cases are indicative of a na ture epistemologically understood and ontologically constructed as sep arate from culture, of what Latour would call an act of purification s et up against the undeniably hybrid character of nature-cultures in la te modernity. It is precisely this recognition of nature-culture inter twining, however, that will prove central to the creation of sustainin g habitats for nonhuman life.