In this talk, I examine the interrelations between socio-environmental justice and elephant conservation efforts in Malaysia. To this end, I explore the implications of the Elephant Translocation Program—the flagship elephant conservation initiative across peninsular Malaysia—which, over the last few decades, has systematically displaced and relocated elephants experiencing habitat loss because of the expansion of monocrop plantations to remote forested areas of the peninsula. Specifically, I examine how and why, instead of successfully adjusting to their new environments, translocated elephants engage in gruesome acts of violence against ancestrally forest dwelling communities, i.e., Orang Asli. I employ the notion of ‘home ranges’—a term used in conservation biology to refer to the areas in which animals live and carry their regular activities—in order to contrast the conceptual underpinnings of the Elephant Translocation Program with vernacular approaches to multispecies co-existence prevalent among Orang Asli. I show how a more critical, capacious, and historically contingent understanding of elephant home ranges would benefit not only conservation biology, but also environmental studies by foregrounding possibilities for socio-environmental justice from within spaces of racialized extraction.
Aida Arosoaie | Anthropology