PhD defence Monica Vasile

Keywords: Wildlife conservation, Endangered species, Reintroductions, Animal agency

"Saving Species: A History of Wildlife Reintroductions and Recovery"

This thesis examines wildlife recovery and reintroductions as an evolving set of conservation practices. It asks what it meant, in practice, to attempt to save species from extinction through direct human intervention. It does so by showing how captive breeding and reintroductions developed and operated as recovery practices, who the key actors were, how knowledge was produced and acted upon under uncertainty, how intervention techniques were managed, and how animals themselves shaped conservation outcomes. Recovery hinged less on planning or predictive knowledge than on sustained engagement with animals whose behaviour, tolerances, and refusals repeatedly reshaped conservation outcomes. The study centres on three cases: the recovery of the flightless takahē rails in the alpine tussock and island sanctuaries of Aotearoa New Zealand; the return of the Przewalski’s horse to the steppe and desert margins of the Gobi Desert in Mongolia; and the rescue of the Vancouver Island marmot in alpine meadows of coastal Canada.

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