“Language is too often an overlooked point of leverage in wildlife struggles. In “Un-natural Discourse” Barbara shows how terms like “invasive” or “nuisance wildlife” can preclude conversation. In contrast, she notes, advocates actively reclaiming the narrative with terms like “ecosystem services” and “restoration” can effectively reshape the outcome as well.”

Heidi Perryman, Ph.D.

Today’s wildlife face unprecedented challenges as humanity changes the way, where, and how they can live at ever faster rates. Barbara Jones's Un-natural Discourse in the Age of Anthropogenic Landscapes: How We Imagine Wildlife offers fact-based stories of these wildlife difficulties and sometimes not so happy endings to reveal their causes, how our human dominance perspective is changing and the chance for a mutual way forward for all living things.

Gregg Servheen, Retired Wildlife Biologist and Natural Resource Manager

Jones skillfully combines multi-sited ethnography with a history of past and current perspectives on human-wildlife interactions in her call to reimagine how we perceive human relationships with wildlife and their ecosystems before it is too late. Un-Natural Discourse will prove prescient for how future human societies will merge with the lives of their non-human neighbors.

Anthony Balzano, Sussex County Community College