Comparing Perceptions of Nature in Land-Use and Conservation Plans at Three Sites of Violence Against the Double-Crested Cormorant

The central goal of this research is to clarify the roles of land-use planning and conservation planning in the human-nature relationship. To do this, I analyze the language used to describe nature in land-use plans and conservation plans at three sites in the Great Lakes of an age-old conflict between humans and one particular form of nature, the double-crested cormorant.
Some human-wildlife conflicts are so persistent that they require renewed investigation across many human generations to move closer to reconciliation and human-cormorant conflict is one such as this. Land-use plans provide a novel perspective on this conflict, a conflict which is currently only addressed in conservation plans. I found that nature is not thoroughly addressed in in the land-use plans in this study. Yet, land-use planning is a major force that influences human-nature relations. Through its maps, goals, and recommendations planning prescribes the way people interact with, and think about, nature. However inadequate nature’s representation in land-use plans may be, they are nonetheless an interesting place to look for insight into human-nature relations.
Land-use plans do not usually deal with specific human-wildlife interactions, and I knew this going into the research. The investigation therefore needed a counterpoint, so I included conservation plans, which deal directly with human-wildlife interactions. Together, these two types of plans manage the human-nature relationship. I found that where land-use plans treat nature in broad, general terms, conservation plans treat nature in specific, detailed terms. The conceptualization of nature in each type of plan is very different. In the paper I ask how language might affect the human-nature relationship. In particular, I look at the way humans describe their relationship with species that cross a plan’s boundaries, such as double-crested cormorants.
This research aims to help land-use and conservation planners imagine, and write, the human-nature relationship otherwise. This relationship is currently structured by an anthropocentric hierarchy, but that must change if we hope to resolve conflicts like the one between people and cormorants, or reach larger environmental sustainability goals. When humans and nature have a relationship structured by equality and reciprocity, cormorants may no longer be culled. Of course, this change must occur in culture as much as in plans, if not more. But plans have creative power as world-building endeavours. A plan casts an image of the future into the present. It is a form of collective imagining. This research, an investigation of the power of language, can encourage planners and policy writers to consider the words they use as a source of creative power that influences society’s relationship with nature.