Authentic Crows: Identity,Captivity and Emergent Forms of Life

Captive Breeding: Conserving Behaviour?

Holding animals in captivity raises a range of significant problems. As the long history of private menageries and zoological gardens illustrates so clearly, some animals simply will not live in captivity; others, like the giant panda, either will not reproduce at all, or will only do so with great effort and expense on the part of both their human keepers and the animals themselves (Braverman, 2012; Chrulew, 2010). But getting animals to survive and reproduce in captivity has always only been the first part of the struggle. If animals are to be held captive over multiple generations, then a range of additional problems arises. Foremost among them is inbreeding and the loss of genetic diversity, which is particularly difficult to manage in small populations, as most highly endangered species are. In response, a variety of tactics are now deployed to ensure that under-represented genes are retained while over-represented genes are not reproduced any further. These tactics include detailed cataloguing of pedigrees, circulation of animals and/or their gametes, artificial insemination and forced pairings, and even the ‘zoothanasia’ of those that are ‘surplus’ to a ‘species’ needs’ (Bekoff, 2012; Chrulew, 2011; Friese, 2013; van Dooren, 2014a). In most cases, the goal of captive breeding programmes in this area is simply articulated in numerical terms: retaining x percent of the remaining genetic diversity for the next x years.

These concerns over genetic diversity have usually taken a central place within discussions of the challenges of the captive breeding of endangered animals. Historically, the impacts of captivity on behavioural development have been less frequently acknowledged, and have only recently begun to be taken seriously (Curio, 1994: 164). In practice, the social and physical environments of captivity, alongside dietary and reproductive constraints and a whole range of other factors, usually mean that animals reared in captivity simply do not behave in the ways that free-living conspecifics do. Ultimately, ‘behaviour’ is far too miserly a term for what is at stake here. Depending on the species in question, a whole range of learned behaviours, vocal repertoires and social skills – what some have referred to as animal ‘cultures’ (Lestel, 2002) – often require processes of interaction and learning that are not, and in some cases cannot be, conserved ex situ. Among many other similar programmes of ‘re-education’ for captive reared animals, efforts to teach whooping cranes to migrate with ultra-light aircraft highlight just how much is learned and how problematic ex situ conservation can be when it comes to release (van Dooren, 2014a). ⁶

But in the captive breeding of endangered animals for conservation purposes, holding on to this thing called ‘behaviour’ is absolutely central. Whether released animals will count as members of the given species, and indeed whether they will survive long enough to establish a self-sustaining population (the standard goal of endangered species conservation), in no small part rests on whether and in what ways they ‘retain’ their behavioural repertoire. ⁷

‘Alalā offer an instructive example of the ways in which animals might be redone in the captive breeding facility. In an interview with Alan Lieberman, who for many years oversaw the ‘alalā project, I asked about the challenges that this situation poses.

[The ‘alalā is] a bird that is [evolutionarily] selected for learning – with a long period of parental care. We work with other birds that know everything they need to know right out of the egg. It doesn’t matter if they’re with a parent, without a parent, you release them and they do fine. They forage fine, they breed fine, and they die two years later. Hard wired, all the way. Then you have the ‘alalā that learns a lot. We put them into a learning environment as quickly as we can. We never raise a bird alone; we raise them in a group; we raise them in full view of adults all the time. We don’t put them in with the adults because the adults will harm them, but they can at least see them, learn the calls and whatever else is available. ⁸

In many cases, however, behavioural ‘losses’ are irreparable. For example, with all of the remaining ‘alalā now in captivity, it is widely thought that the vocal repertoire – or vocabulary – of the species has significantly diminished; perhaps they have less to talk about, or perhaps juvenile birds simply haven’t been exposed to enough chatter from their elders. Whatever the cause, if these birds are to make it back into the wider world at some stage in the future, they will likely need to reinvent a workable means of communication. It remains unclear whether or not this diminished vocabulary will impact on these birds’ ability to socialize and survive after release – for example, in their coordinated mobbing of Hawaiian hawks (‘io) and other predators. In the context of all this uncertainty, it is understandable that where keepers have any control over behavioural and cultural development a great deal of effort is now often invested in ensuring that animals learn what they can and that any significant behavioural changes are avoided.

The Authentic Crow?

At the heart of the way that behaviour is conceptualized and managed in the captive breeding facility is a set of understandings oscillating around some notion of the ‘authentic animal’. Authenticity is a complex domain but in this context it aligns quite closely with stasis: ‘alalā being released from KBCC are authentic if they are as similar as possible to those that previously existed in the island’s forests. But similarity, and so authenticity, might be thought about and gauged in a range of different areas. This section explores what it means to be an authentic crow with regard to questions of eating and being eaten (or avoiding being eaten). In this particular captive breeding programme these important topics have been central sites for some of the many discussions and decisions about what kind of ‘alalā conservationists ought to be trying to rear and release.

In my conversations with biologists, conservationists and others in Hawai‘i, and in my reading of the relevant literatures, three broad reasons emerged as justifications for this desired similarity. On the face of it, the first reason is a pragmatic one: survival. Many of the behavioural changes experienced by captive animals will ultimately undermine their chances of survival once released. Not knowing which foods to eat, lacking a complex vocal repertoire, tameness in the face of potential predators (including humans), perhaps even having imprinted on a human keeper and now seeking out a human mate: all of these common behavioural changes can be disastrous for released animals (and so their species). In this context, it makes a great deal of sense to work to ensure that change is kept to a minimum. Where changes that might threaten survival do occur, efforts are often made to ‘undo’ them. For example, it now seems likely that in the lead up to their release, ‘alalā will be required to undertake some form of predator avoidance training to instil in them the knowledge that they ought to avoid the Hawaiian hawk. ⁹ During the last attempted releases it seems that captive reared ‘alalā did not avoid ‘io or work together to mob them as biologists suspect they once did. In this context, training is viewed as the reinstatement of a lost knowledge/behaviour. ¹⁰

A second key reason for desired similarity is also broadly pragmatic: ecological function. Here, ‘alalā offer us another important example. During their time in captivity, these birds have been introduced to a range of native plants, seeds and flowers (Culliney et al., 2012). In part this focus on the ‘native’ seems to be grounded in a view that these are the foods ‘proper’ to ‘alalā, but it seems that some conservationists also view this familiarity as a core part of ensuring that released birds resume the important ecological role that their species once played in dispersing seeds for these plants. ¹¹ In acting as seed dispersers, these ‘authentic’ crows will help to maintain ‘authentic’ Hawaiian forests.

The final broad reason for desired similarity is more nebulous. I refer to it here as essence – and, like most things with this label, it is hard to pin down. Beyond practical concerns with the survival of the species and the fulfilment of its ecological functions, this more essentialist perspective values behavioural stasis for the simple reason that behaviour is a key part of the identity of the species. If released ‘alalā fail to act as their forebears did, in what sense would they be the ‘same’ species? This concern with identity came to the fore at a few key points in my conversations with conservationists. For example, in a discussion about the captive breeding of ‘alalā with John Marzluff, a former member of the official ‘alalā recovery team and a recognized expert on crow biology and behaviour, he noted that:

We made a conscious decision not to make those birds ‘garbage birds’. We could have easily trained them to feed at the dumpster down at Costco in Kona. But the committee, the recovery team, made a very conscious effort to say this is not what we’re trying to do here; we’re trying to make these crows as wild, and frugivorous, and forest loving, as possible. And I think that’s still the right approach, but it does make it more difficult. ¹²

Of course, the conservation community is a diverse one. Different people take different approaches to these questions of stasis and authenticity. For some, any change is a change too much. For others, a little ‘enhancement’ – especially if it makes the difference between survival and extinction – is a reasonable compromise. There are no firm answers here, just an ongoing effort to negotiate perceived changes between a captive population and an imagined archetype (often based on very imperfect records and observations). Nonetheless, however imperfectly mobilized, authenticity plays a powerful role here in determining which kinds of animals conservationists try to produce in captive breeding facilities. ¹³

In these sites, practical survival, ecological function and essentialist priorities and commitments are thoroughly interwoven with each other, unable to be teased apart in any conclusive way. This tight coupling of ideas was evident in an interview with Rich Switzer, the current head of the ‘alalā programme and director of the San Diego Zoo’s Hawai‘i Endangered Bird Conservation Program. When I asked Switzer about the possibility of training or encouraging captive ‘alalā to scavenge human waste he replied:

I think that what they eat and what they do and how they behave [is important]. This is also about the role that they’re fulfilling in the ecosystem. [He went on to discuss the role that ‘alalā plays in the regeneration of the native forest as a seed disperser.] … If you change the species, and you change its role in the ecology, then it ceases to function as the species that it is purported to be.

In this context many of our more common definitions of biological species don’t seem to adequately capture the kind of identity that is at issue for conservationists. Neither the ‘biological’ species definition centred on reproductive possibilities (Mayr, 1996), nor more ‘evolutionary’ (genealogical/phylogenetic) definitions centred on separate lineages (Simpson, 1961) are at all concerned about where an ‘alalā gets its food. These conventional definitions may work well for taxonomic purposes (although that too is debated), ¹⁵ but when it comes to conservation it seems that at least part of what is important about a species – a behavioural and perhaps cultural form of life – is not registered. ‘Alalā that have been taught to scavenge human waste will reproduce with other ‘alalā just fine (although this change could eventually give rise to distinct populations). Similarly, they will share a phylogeny with them. And yet, for some people at least, they would not be quite right. If we add in the fact that they may not avoid and mob predators or even sing and chatter as they once did, perhaps we are now talking about a bird that is ‘different’ in some fundamental sense. ¹⁶

In my conversations in Hawai‘i this point of view was expressed most succinctly by Cynnie Salley, a passionate advocate for ‘alalā. It was on her family’s land that the last free-living birds made their homes. She watched them closely for decades and was involved in conservation efforts – though she has often disagreed with the approaches taken. From her perspective, the birds that now remain are not really ‘alalā at all. Reminiscing about the crows that once lived on her property, and a past (unsuccessful) release attempt, she commented:

They were kind of like the kings and queens of the forest. They chased the hawks and the hawks had a healthy respect for them. As a matter of fact, it took four or five years of releasing young birds [‘alalā] before the hawks realized that these were different than the ones that used to chase them around and that they had fair game.… All of those birds that were originally wild are now gone. All of the birds there [at KBCC] have been raised by puppets. ¹⁷ So I truly feel that whatever happens in the forest now with these birds, it’s a different species. ¹⁸

However, there is also a lingering danger in these notions of authenticity. In their more extreme forms these demands for stasis for animals who are behaviourally identical to their free-living conspecifics are grounded in a problematic essentialism about species identity. From this perspective, there is a singular, proper, way for ‘alalā and other animals to be. Captive animals will usually fail to express this essence, and so fail to be authentic. This perspective threatens to undermine the legitimacy of the form of conservation conducted in the captive breeding facility.

These notions of a fixed and essential species identity – and its potential undermining in captive environments – find support in numerous critiques of the zoo. Philosopher Bernard E. Rollin, for example, argues that:

an animal is defined by its telos, the set of powers constitutive of its nature – the ‘pigness of the pig,’ the ‘lion-ness of the lion’. The animal is what it does, following its nature as predator, or rooter, or burrower. The tiger in the Mirage window [a hotel/casino in Las Vegas] is not a tiger, but the body of a tiger, not hugely different from a stuffed tiger. (Rollin, 2010: 107–8)

In a recent chapter on life in the zoo, Matthew Chrulew takes up this question of behavioural change and diminished forms of life. He references Keekok Lee, who in a criticism of the institution of the zoo notes that zoo animals are not wild, but might better be understood as ‘biotic artifacts’ (Chrulew, 2010: 329–30). Chrulew is himself highly critical of the institution of the zoo and the animal subjects that it produces, but is reluctant to accept that these kinds of interactions with humans are necessarily ‘taints’ that undo the animalness of the animal. Instead, his position is one of careful attentiveness to the multiple forms of becoming that are made both possible and impossible in captivity. The point here is not simply to note that there are, in general, often significant behavioural differences between captive and free-living animals of the same species, but to pay attention to how those differences take shape, and with what consequences for whom. As he puts it: ‘understanding that zoo animals are ontologically altered by captivity should be the beginning, not the endpoint, of analaysis’ (2010: 330).

Strongly essentialist notions of species don’t invite this kind of analysis. Instead, they disavow the dynamism and change that is an inherent part of evolutionary and adaptive life forms. Over evolutionary timescales, species are always changing, always becoming other than themselves (van Dooren, 2014a). As Elizabeth Grosz notes, from an evolutionary perspective ‘being is transformed into becoming, essence into existence, and the past and the present are rendered provisional in light of the force of the future’ (Grosz, 2004: 7). But even over much shorter ontogenetic timescales, through the duration of an individual organism’s life, crows and other animals are involved in processes of learning, adaptation and development, responding to new threats and opportunities.

In short, each ‘alalā, like all living beings, is the product of (what we might think of as) ecological, evolutionary and developmental processes, playing out in their own particular ways. In this context, behaviour is not something that is simply ‘retained’ between generations. Rather, behaviour is a relational and developmental achievement (as are all aspects of biology when it comes down to it, as work in Developmental Systems Theory (Oyama et al., 2001) and Ecological Developmental Biology (Gilbert, 2001) highlights so well). While there are certainly aspects of an organism’s developmental becoming that are more or less inherited, more or less flexible, everything that is arises through interactions that are never fixed and guaranteed once and for all. As Donna Haraway has put it:

Developmental unrolling into whatever it is that critters are throughout their lifetime, turns out to be a becoming-with not a becoming. A sympoetic engagement not an autopoetic one. So that organism, after organism, after organism, turns out to need partners to be at all. (Haraway, 2014)

In this context, the simple fact of inter-generational difference cannot be so easily read as the ‘loss’ of anything, certainly not an ideal authentic state. Instead, our attention is drawn towards the agency of non-humans in the shaping of their own individual and species identities: as crows around the world move into cities and learn new ways of life, they conduct experiments in emergent forms of crow-ness. Far from any singular telos, individuals and species are engaged in multiple forms of becoming, all of them reiterative and ongoing, all of them co-constitutive and collaborative (even if unequal). The jungle crows in Japan that have learned to use moving traffic to open tough nuts (and red traffic lights as a means of safely retrieving their contents), are just one example of what it might mean to be a crow in the 21st century (Marzluff and Angell, 2005). ¹⁹

These are spaces of ‘relational sociability’ (Buller, 2013) in which identity is achieved through the interactions between crows, but also with their humans, a range of other species and the wider environment. In this context, KBCC is, like the farms that Buller (2013: 167) describes, ‘a more-than-animal place, a more-than-human place, a place of constantly shifting multispecies interactions, practices, relations and adaptations’. While the freedom that ‘alalā have to explore new forms of crow-ness is currently curtailed in many ways by their captive life, there is no reason that their inter-generational differences shouldn’t be understood in a similar light to those of jungle crows. Species and individual organisms always become with others – including human others – within diverse fields of freedom and constraint (indeed, what counts as freedom for whom is part of what is produced in these entangled co-becomings). ²⁰ In this context, co-becoming with people doesn’t make current ‘alalā (or their Japanese counterparts for that matter) ‘not real crows’ – in fact, the behavioural plasticity, the capacity to adapt to and make use of humans and the changed environments we produce, is itself a key part of what it is to be an intelligent generalist like a crow. ²¹

Alan Lieberman may have been heading in this general direction in our discussion. Reflecting on Cynnie Salley’s views on real ‘alalā (the two of them are old friends), he noted that:

she feels that once they’ve lost the wisdom of their elders the ‘alalā will never be an ‘alalā again. I agree. It will never be what it was, because that culture has been lost. We haven’t been able to transfer the ‘alalā culture from one generation to the next. But we’ll do the best that we can and we’ll create a new culture.

Performative Species Identities

The understanding of identity that I have in mind here is a performative one, an understanding that might get us outside of the discourses of authenticity that can function in some conservation contexts to position particular identities as ‘false or derivative, and others [as] true and original’ (Butler, 1999: viii). Species identity understood as performative is not an essence but a ‘doing’, as Karen Barad (2003: 822) has succinctly put it. ²² Like Barad, the notion of performativity that interests me is a thoroughly material one – what she terms ‘posthumanist performativity’ – in which the constitution of material bodies and their identities occurs through reiterative processes of ‘materialized refiguration’ (Haraway, 1994). Bodies and identities are remade, but they are not made purely out of social and discursive practices that are too often imagined to be solely human affairs.

In short, biology – avian and otherwise – and other forms of materiality, matter. The cognitive and emotional competences that ‘alalā inherit from their parents and others open them into some possible worlds and not others, some ways of being and not others. ²³ Only some big black birds can be ‘alalā. American crow eggs brought from the mainland and reared by ‘alalā will not become ‘alalā in some significant senses – while they certainly may in others. The point here is not that biology and materiality place limitations on how we become, but rather that they too are part of the field of agencies that are at play in the ‘particular (entangled) processes of materialization’ (Barad, 2003) that produce bodies and worlds. ²⁴

A similarly performative notion of species is embraced by Sarah Whatmore and Lorraine Thorne (2000) in their discussion of elephants, and by Kersty Hobson (2007) in her discussion of moon bears rescued from a bile farm in China. In both cases, what is at stake is an understanding of what it means to be a particular kind of animal that moves beyond static and fixed identities to embrace an attentiveness to the way in which these animals themselves exert their own agency in remaking what counts as ‘natural behaviour’ for a being of their ‘kind’ (?). Here, we see that ‘natural behaviour’ is – like most things with the designation ‘natural’ – always up for grabs, always being remade and newly pieced together, and not just by people. The task here is not to look deeper and deeper for the ‘real’ natural behaviour – and so essential identity – but to recognize that these identities are always being performatively reiterated in ways that dip into and out of our knowledge.

Vinciane Despret (2008) offers a complementary account of animal life in her discussion of Irene Pepperberg’s work with Alex, a grey parrot of Gabon. Despret insists that Alex, who learned to talk working with Pepperberg, does not authorize some sort of new understanding of what, or who, parrots fundamentally are.

I cannot … affirm that all parrots talk, nor that all the grey parrots of Gabon talk. Alex is not representative of parrots; no parrot could be. The givens appear to us instead as a means of sketching out the competences that can, with the appropriate environmental support, figure in the list of capacities of the species. Here then is not what parrots are but what they might be rendered capable of. (Despret, 2008: 127)

One important consequence of this understanding of identity is that it thrusts us into the realms of politics and ethics. As Arun Agrawal (2005: 171) notes: ‘It is this recognition of contingency that introduces the register of the political in the creation of the subject.’ In this context, the questions that emerge are not about authenticity or even how much change is acceptable, but are rather centred on the practical labour of learning to be part of the constitution of flourishing forms of crow-ness; learning to ask what matters to and for others (Despret, 2013), what forms of life are possible for (once) captive animals within the breeding facility and beyond its walls.

The first thing to note in this context is that notions of ‘the wild’ will be of no help to us. Although ‘the wild’ is deployed in a wide range of different ways, it pretty much always stands in contrast to the (civilized) human (Palmer, 2010). While ‘the wild’ is in some ways preferable to the ‘wilderness’ (Cronon, 1995), both share a core dualistic orientation in which the human is the (anti-) measure of all things: when it comes to animals or landscapes, to be wild is to be (relatively) uninfluenced by people. A simplistic preference for ‘wild’ birds (in this sense of the term) positions humans as ‘intruders’, outside of the best/preferred/natural set of interactions that produce birds how they ‘ought’ to be – their most authentic selves. But control and influence are everywhere in entangled relations of co-becoming. In some cases a great deal of human involvement will be required to form and maintain flourishing communities and ways of life; in other cases some or all of our particular forms of presence may undermine these possibilities for other animals. In short, the devil is always in the detail. A blanket preference for the wild in the form of minimal human involvement won’t always yield the best of possible worlds.

In addition, ‘the wild’ only asks us to pay attention to one kind of influence or power: human power over others. At the same time, a focus on ‘the wild’ covers over the incredible diversity within human forms of influence and involvement in others’ lives. Instead, what is needed is an attentiveness to diverse forms of power and influence, human and non-human, in the shaping of bodies, lives, worlds and their possibilities for flourishing. Having said that, however, this article focuses primarily on the specific roles that humans do or might play in interactions with endangered crows – in part because people are just so central to animal life in captive environments, but also because I am interested specifically in how those people involved might learn to be part of flourishing forms of crow-ness.

With the wild behind us, perhaps the best entry point into this topic is an attentiveness to the delicate interplay of distance and proximity in our relations with non-human others. In recent work Matei Candea (2010) has explored the balance between ‘engagement’ and ‘detachment’ in human–meerkat relations. For him, these two terms are not opposites (or at least don’t have to be), rather, ethical human–animal relations might often require the cultivation of ‘inter-patience’, of relationships grounded in careful and deliberate forms of detachment. Hugo Reinert (2014) has taken up a similar theme in his discussion of Sami reindeer pastoralism, focusing on the dynamics between ‘proximity’ and ‘distance’, ‘intimacy’ and ‘detachment’. In recent work on the captive breeding of whooping cranes, I have explored the use of costumes by human keepers in an effort to be intimately present in the day-to-day lives of young birds while also remaining visually and ontologically absent – so as to end up with cranes more capable of flourishing lives after release (van Dooren, 2014a).

In different ways, each of these approaches presents a non-dualistic understanding of human/animal entanglements – where all being is co-becoming and human presence is not necessarily a polluting force that undermines how animals ‘ought’ to be. And yet, in each case there is also a commitment to some effort to ‘hold back’ (in some ways in some places), some effort to provide respectful distance that will enable others to become on their own terms (even though absolute autonomy is both impossible and undesirable). As Val Plumwood (1993) taught us, this is one of the fundamental and ongoing challenges of multispecies relations: recognizing and respecting both sameness and difference, continuity and separation, within the context of a largely relational world view.

In recent work Reinert has provided another helpful glimpse into this space of what we might call ‘autonomy-within-relationship’. In his discussion of the diverse technologies and practices of surveillance that underlie the conservation of the lesser white-fronted goose (Anser erythropus), he is concerned by intensive forms of conservation in which a species might be conserved, while its ‘way of life’ in a fuller sense may still be lost. Here we are:

held in the pressured space between extinction (as a limit on numbers and time) and the fragile wild (as a limit on intervention). Fail to intervene, and the object is lost; intervene, and the object may also be lost, although in other ways. (Reinert, 2013: 22)

In captive breeding and ex situ conservation programmes more generally we are drawn into precisely this double bind. In cases like that of the ‘alalā, where most or even all of the remaining individuals of a species are in captivity, this is particularly so. Here we are reminded that in a time of extinctions, a constitutive withdrawal often needs to take place in our relations not just with individual animals but with entire species. In these contexts the captive breeding facility is a site of condensed co-becoming, of enhanced and intensified inheritance – which is always a process of simultaneous ‘carrying forward’ and ‘leaving behind’ (Derrida and Roudinesco, 2004; van Dooren, 2014b). In such a space the future trajectory of a whole species is shaped and formed, for better or worse.

The approach that I am suggesting here – grounded in an attentiveness to autonomy-within-relationship – doesn’t fit neatly into either of Bruno Latour’s principal camps: that of the (traditional) environmentalists fixated on ‘pure wilderness’, or that of the post-environmentalists imagining a complete breakdown of borders between humans and a wider more-than-human world.

Environmentalists say: ‘From now on we should limit ourselves.’ Postenvironmentalists exclaim: ‘From now on, we should stop flagellating ourselves and take up explicitly and seriously what we have been doing all along at an ever-increasing scale, namely, intervening, acting, wanting, caring.’ (Latour, 2011: 26)

It is far from clear what form this kind of relationship might take in different contexts. ²⁵ Outside of essentialism, however, what emerges is the possibility that conservation might become a practice grounded in an effort to cultivate and support diverse forms of becoming for a changing world. In this context, perhaps the most important and challenging question that we need to learn how to ask is: what kinds of relationships and forms of life are crows themselves interested in taking up? How would they like to perform their own crow-ness now and into the future? And, how might we support and make room for them to explore these possibilities – in captivity and beyond? ²⁶

For (soon to be) free-living members of highly social species, like ‘alalā, these are questions that cannot really be asked of individual birds in isolation. Despret is helpful here. Her work moves our attention away from the question of whether an animal – in her discussion a lion – that has been ‘changed’ through its interactions with humans would ‘no longer be lion enough to teach us anything on the subject of “lioness”’ (Despret, 2008: 126). Instead, Despret (2008: 126) proposes that a more interesting question than whether people would recognize this lion as a lion, is whether other lions would: ‘What matters, from the point of view of a lion, to make it say to another lion “you are still one of us”.’ ²⁷

Posing the question in this way reminds us that a performative understanding of identity is one in which the agency of not only individual animals, but that of their broader social circles, comes to matter profoundly. As humans involved in these processes of becoming, making room for others to explore and perform their own identities in company with others of their ‘kind’ (as determined by them) is an important part of a ‘polite’ conservation (Despret, 2006). Despret espouses the virtue of a particular form of politeness in our experimental interactions with non-human animals. This politeness is grounded in a practice of asking ‘what counts for others?’ (Despret, 2006, 2013). Despret’s focus is on experimental interactions aimed at producing knowledge about/with animals (and their scientists), but this virtue of politeness might also be employed in the kind of ‘experiments for life’ being undertaken in captive breeding and release programmes around the world.

To some extent current release plans for ‘alalā enable precisely these possibilities. In interviews both Switzer and Lieberman emphatically noted that released groups of ‘alalā would need to be given space and support to adapt to and learn about their new environment. In the case of past releases this kind of support hasn’t always been provided and staff are now planning a ‘soft release’ for the future. In Lieberman’s words:

Instead of just closing the aviary and saying ‘Now you’re an ‘alalā, be free’, if they get sick they [will] know that they can come back and get food. The first generation is going to be a real interesting generation. Like school kids going to school for a long time. It’s not a three-month release but a three-year release.

Switzer, Lieberman and others are particularly mindful that ‘alalā are not returning to a pristine wilderness (whatever this might mean). Nor are they returning to the forests that the species occupied 100 or even 30 years ago. Instead, these are landscapes in which food will be scarce – in particular due to introduced ungulates like pigs who have grazed down the understory in most of the island’s forests (van Dooren, 2014b). At the same time a range of new predators like cats and mongoose have arrived in the islands, along with new diseases like avian malaria and toxoplasmosis (to which ‘alalā have little resistance). Despite ongoing efforts to recover habitat in some key sites, things will be tough for released birds. And so, while the ultimate hope is still ‘to have a viable population out there long term with minimal human involvement’ (Switzer), it is readily acknowledged that this may require support for years to come.

In part, staff see such efforts as an attempt to ‘buy time’ for the forest ecosystem to recover and hopefully become better suited to ‘alalā needs. But this is not a vision of a forest changing around a static bird. At the same time this support is seen as enabling birds to adapt and develop new ways of life. Part of this adaptation will be physiological (e.g. developing disease resistance [Lieberman]), but much of it will also be behavioural – learning to forage for both old and new foods (including, perhaps, a range of introduced fruits), to rear young, to enliven the forests with a new vocabulary of raucous sounds.

How far this kind of thinking will be taken in the release of ‘alalā remains to be seen. There is, however, great promise in the work that this programme is doing to explore what it might mean to provide the support necessary for ‘alalā to take up new possibilities, to craft new ways of life. In this context, soft release might be about creating an environment and a set of relationships that enable ‘alalā to be ‘interesting’ in the sense that Despret (2006), following Barbara Smuts, deploys the term. Thinking in this way requires us to pay close attention to the fact that different spaces and relationships hold open or foreclose, encourage or dissuade, different possibilities for becoming – especially when we are talking about highly adaptive beings like ‘alalā who are keen social and environmental learners. With this in mind, perhaps what polite conservation in this era of incredible biodiversity loss requires is a wider set of practices that seek to create the conditions for other species to explore and develop their own emergent forms of life. This is work that will always be situated in a difficult space of ‘constitutive withdrawal’ that negotiates diverse forms of involvement and absence, of holding on and letting go, with all of their many consequences (Reinert, 2013). Importantly, it is also work that only becomes conceivable once we learn to value and understand species like ‘alalā as adaptive, emergent, ongoing achievements – more than their genes or any given behavioural repertoire. It is only in this way that we can begin to seriously take up the challenge of thinking with ‘alalā about how we might help them to stick around in the world a little longer.