Castor canadensis and urban wetland governance ⿿ Fairfax County, VA case study

Urban Forestry & Urban Greening 19 (2016) 306–314

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Castor canadensis and urban wetland governance − Fairfax County, VA case study夽 Gwendolin McCrea Department of Geography, Environment and Society, University of Minnesota-Twin Cities, 414 Social Sciences, 267 19th Avenue South, Minneapolis, MN, 55455, USA

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Article history: Received 1 August 2015 Received in revised form 27 June 2016 Accepted 28 June 2016 Available online 4 July 2016 Keywords: Beavers Dispositif Governance Nonhuman and more-than human Power analysis Wetland management

a b s t r a c t Nonhuman power is evident in urban ecologies, from droughts to tree diseases to everyday encounters with wildlife. Some urban environmental governance literature takes up questions of nonhuman agency, generally focusing on human-environment relations and their influence on decision-makers involved in planning, politics, and management. However, results from current research on a wetland restoration project suggest that there is more to nonhuman agency in environmental governance than its effects on human actors. This restoration project, located in a Washington D.C. Metro Area park, involved the installation of a berm and a water control system for the management of a hemi-marsh habitat. Resident beavers (Castor canadensis) emerged from the planning and proposal process as major players influencing the project design and implementation. The research traces the development of this urban wetland, drawing on assemblage theories of power to analyze how the elements of the managing apparatus (dispositif)—including animal ethology, technological expertise, environmental ethics, and the concept of biodiversity—function to govern the space. Nonhuman agency in the network compelled park managers to incorporate beaver behavior and perception into the governing apparatus. Both humans and nonhumans emerge from this dispositif as coproducers of place and as political subjects playing a part in urban ecology governance decisions. The research shows that beavers not only exert their agency on the ecological network in the wetland, but also that their perceptual worlds (umwelt) form part of the logic of governance that guides management decisions. Ultimately, this research suggests that critical social theory frameworks coupled with nonhuman ontologies will help us to better understand the lively and productive human-environment relationships that are at the core of urban ecosystems. © 2016 Elsevier GmbH. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction Huntley Meadows Park (HMP) is located just across the Potomac River from Washington D.C., nestled among residential developments, commercial zones, and major transportation corridors. This park, one of nine natural resource-focused parks in Fairfax County, Virginia, is notable for its large size (over 607 ha) and its 17 ha wetland. As the location of both the largest coastal plain depression swamp in the state of Virginia and the largest non-tidal wetland in the region, the park also contains critical habitat for many regionally rare and endangered species. The wetland recently underwent a major restoration project with the aim of maximizing biodiversity—a goal explicitly tied to the park’s dual mission

夽 This article is part of a special issue entitled “Power in urban social-ecological systems: Governance, knowledge production, and marginalization”, published in Urban Forestry & Urban Greening 19, 2016. E-mail address: [email protected] http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ufug.2016.06.025 1618-8667/© 2016 Elsevier GmbH. All rights reserved.

of natural resource conservation and education. This research is concerned with the governance and management of that project. “Governance” is a term widely used in policy and research. Although precise definitions vary, in general it refers to decisionmaking that is not limited to the state and formal government. The concept encompasses the interplay of institutions, civil society, individuals, and other stakeholders in the processes of defining parameters and implementing visions for the arrangement of life, economy, politics, and space (Goodwin, 2009). More specialized areas of research, such as urban governance or green governance, are generally distinguished by their objects of study rather than any fundamental differences in approach. Yet there do exist wide variations in methodologies, including choices of focus on institutions, stakeholders, or coalitions and research questions designed to elicit information about political sway, social capital, or other metrics of influence (Lawrence et al., 2013). One strand within governance research directs its focus on relations and networks. Again, the scope of this literature is vast, but what is often referred to as “assemblage thinking” has lately been

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influential, especially within the realms of green governance and urban governance (Braun, 2015; Jacobs, 2012; McFarlane, 2011). Assemblage thinking draws inspiration from Actor-Network Theory (ANT), agencement as articulated by Gilles Delueze and Felix Guattari, and the dispositif of Michel Foucault (Deleuze and Guattari, 1987; Foucault, 1980; Latour, 2005; Legg, 2011). There are important differences between these approaches, yet they all theorize power as located in the relations among and between members of networks. In broad terms, they posit that agency is not the ability to act on another, but the ability to affect another. This conceptualization of power opens the political and the social to nonhuman elements including ideas, institutions, and technologies. This relational approach to power is important to many researchers working within the nonhuman turn in the social sciences (Grusin, 2015). Nonhumans are understood as key actors in shaping our shared spaces, both because of their representative roles in making human meaning (Patterson et al., 2003; Pearce et al., 2015; Yeo and Neo, 2010) and because of their material presence in the landscape (Collard, 2012). Nonhumans even “force thought” in specific ways within the production of knowledge about them (Braun and Whatmore, 2010; Whatmore and Landström, 2011; Whatmore, 2013). The nonhumans in the work of these scholars encourage us to re-think our past as histories of lively entanglements among humans and nonhumans that have shaped our bodies and our landscapes (Atkins, 2012; Biehler, 2013, 2011). Crucially, they help us to see cities as always more-than-human, and they complicate the idea that the “natural world” is the backdrop against which human agency plays out (Braun 2005; Braun 2006; Kaika 2005). In the same way that theories of ecology help us to understand how energy flows through a habitat, “assemblage” theories provide a framework for analyzing how power is exerted on a network by both human and nonhuman actors. This article examines the governance of Huntley Meadows Park, in which beavers (Castor canadensis) played a significant role in defining the parameters, implementation, and management of the wetland restoration project. The wetland itself has been constituted through the relational ties among a vast community of more-thanhuman actors. Of course, beaver behavior has profound impacts on the landscape, yet something more is occurring in this park. When faced with an imperative to maximize biodiversity in the park, engineers, scientists, and natural resource managers incorporated beaver perceptions and aims into their understanding of the wetland ecology and their proposals for restoring and managing the wetland. The project design and wildlife conflict policies have also arranged the landscape in a way that makes beavers visible and curates the potential interactions between beavers and park visitors, in service to the mission of environmental education. This research shows not only that beavers exert their agency as landscape engineers on the ecological network in the wetland, but also that beaver priorities and actions are incorporated into the logic of governance that informs the management of the park. 1.1. Analytical framework One way to approach a relational analysis of power is through Actor-Network Theory (ANT). ANT is an empirically-driven methodology focused on describing the continual process of making and re-making networks. It is based on an ontology in which the material is as important for creating meaning as the semiotic; consequentially, anything has the potential to be an “actant”—from a river to a chemical mixture to a human being (Latour, 2014, 2004). Such assumptions about nonhuman agency make ANT particularly helpful for this project. HMP is an actor-network in which the power of the nonhuman to affect the rest of the network plays a large part in making the park what it is. Beavers are landscape engineers of the highest order, and their actions in the wetland cre-

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ated a set of conditions that managers and engineers were forced to grapple with. However, as the research progressed it became clear that beavers not only affected the decisions that humans made regarding the park, but that they were making their own decisions about the value of the landscape and the alterations—dams, lodges, trails, and canals—that make it more valuable to them. While ANT provides a robust methodological framework for tracing relational ties and their effects, its assumption that no a priori differences exist between forms of agency leaves us without specific tools for understanding what appear to be actions (human and nonhuman) taken for the purpose of governing space (Sayes, 2014). An additional approach is called for to analyze this urban wetland park in which both beavers and humans deliberately act on the landscape to order, alter, and manage the space. The case at Huntley Meadows Park required an analytical approach that could take into account not only the priorities and capacities of beavers and humans, but also the institutions of urban public parks, the ethical positions of environmentalisms and the public good, and the materiality of the site itself. Like ANT and agencement, dispositif1 interprets power as webs of influences and effects. But the dispositif approach is also explicitly concerned with governance; as an analytical tool it is oriented toward the practices and discourses that emerge in relation to each other and in response to a common imperative. Those elements influence one another, creating an assemblage of forces and patterns that shape and are shaped by the thoughts and actions of those subject to it. Dispositif is “. . .a thoroughly heterogeneous ensemble consisting of discourses, institutions, architectural forms, regulatory decisions, laws, administrative measures, scientific statements, philosophical, moral and philanthropic propositions—in short, the said as much as the unsaid” (Foucault, 1980). Dispositif is an analysis of material agency as well as discursive power; an important distinction if we are to take nonhuman agency into account. Although Michel Foucault was not particularly concerned with nonhuman subjects, many researchers have expanded the frameworks of dispositif to make sense of human and nonhuman relations (Rinfret, 2009; Robbins, 2007; Rutherford, 2011). Its assertion that living beings are shaped by the relations of power of which they are a part has meant that dispositif has been particularly productive for understanding the emergence of specific kinds of animal subjects through relations of power (Agamben, 2009; Holloway, 2007; Lloro-Bidart, 2014; Srinivasan, 2014, 2013; Taylor, 2013). The double meaning of “subject” is an important aspect of this framework; the living beings that emerge from relations of power are both subject to that power and also subjects with the power to act. How they express that agency, however, is shaped by the dispositif from which they emerged. Yet until now this framework has not been used to consider the agency of nonhumans as governing subjects. While ANT provides a starting point for taking seriously the agency of nonhumans and the complexities of relational networks, the analytical tools of dispositif—the identification of an objective of governance and the elements that coalesce around it, the tracing of the influence of those elements and the emergence of altered objectives, elements, and subjects—will provide insights into the nature of human and nonhuman power in the governance of this urban wetland.2 By analyzing its elements and their relations to

1 Dispositif is often translated into English as “apparatus”. Following Gilles Deleuze, I use dispositif to distinguish the term from state or security apparatus, a form to which this framework has often been applied. For more, see Agamben, 2009; Bussolini, 2010; Deleuze, 1992. 2 For more on Actor-Network Theory, “assemblage thinking”, and animal agency, see Collard, 2012; Grusin, 2015; Müller and Schurr, 2016; Nimmo, 2012.

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1975: Fairfax County acquires approximately 567 hectares of land from the federal government though the Legacy of Parks Program. 1977-78: The park manager notices beaver activity, and an emergent marsh begins to form in the area that will eventually become the central wetland. Late 1970s-Early 1980s: The trail system and boardwalk are built using Conservation Corps grants for materials, equipment, and labor. Grassroots community organizers successfully prevent a four-lane highway being built through the park. 1983: Construction is completed on a visitors’ center. 1985: Weekly “Bird Walks” begin, organized by volunteers. Bird counts are submitted to the National Audubon Society. August 1985: A major rainstorm precipitates a mass influx of silt into the wetland; approximately six tons of silt enter the wetland over a 24-hour period. This event, coupled with a steady inflow of smaller amounts of silt and changing beaver activity, leads to a drop in the water level and a resultant decrease in plant biodiversity over the following years. 1992: Bird watchers notice a decline in the number of breeding pairs of locally rare and endangered marsh birds. Public meetings begin and occur regularly throughout the next two decades; eventually over 60 meetings will be held to elicit public input and to explain the wetland restoration project. 1993: The first of three wetland studies and project proposals is completed. Ethology of many species of birds, mammals, reptiles, and amphibians is included, as is the impact of water levels on the structure of the plant community. Removal of beavers from the park is considered as an option. 1994: The boardwalk is replaced and reopened to the public. Mid 1990s: Park staff begins conducting regular wetland surveys and monitoring, which continue to the present day. 1999: Breeding pairs of rare marsh birds are observed for the last time. 2004: One of several park authority bonds is approved by voters. The restoration project will eventually have a budget of US$3,000,000. 2007: The second study and project proposal is submitted. The proposal calls for a high dam and a large overflow outlet. These features would be expensive to build and would have a significant impact on the habitats in the park; the proposal does not move forward. 2009: Significant rainfall creates hemi-marsh conditions in the wetland for the first time since the 1980s. Dry marsh conditions return the following year. 2012: A third project proposal is submitted. Major features include an earthen berm, a water control system, additional habitat pools in the wetland and the surrounding forest, habitat islands with brush pile shelters, and an expanded wetland footprint (from 9 hectares to 19). 2013: The proposal is approved and construction begins on the wetland restoration project. 2014: The restoration project construction is completed. An initial three-year adaptive management plan begins. Fig. 1. Timeline for Huntley Meadows Park central wetland.

one another, I will trace how the urban wetland park has come into being not only as a place, but also as an entity that must be governed. Ultimately, dispositif provides a structure for understanding the specificity of relations of power among the human and nonhuman subjects in the park. Although it is not necessary that power relations be understood as power relations, they must be perceived, or at least their effects must be felt, for these processes of subject formation to take place. For that reason, nonhuman perception is an important element in this analysis (Kohn, 2007). Umwelt is a foundational concept in the fields of animal ethology and biosemiotics. It translates as “outside world” or “environment” and refers to the world as perceived by and/or lived in by an animal (von Uexküll, 2010). Different creatures may live in the same spaces, but they inhabit different worlds (Dyer and Brockmann, 1996). All species (and perhaps even individual animals) perceive different environmental cues and exist in relation to their environment differently, even when they inhabit the same spaces. The case study covered in this article highlights the significance of umwelt in defining relations between humans and beavers. Beavers are particularly attuned to the movements and sounds of running water. They also utilize odor cues to select food sources, and they evaluate topography, water current, and proximity to their lodge in their choice of trees to take down (Müller-Schwarze, 2011). These environmental cues have meaning for them, and their

responses are central to the story of power in the urban wetland park.

1.2. Case study Huntley Meadows Park is located in the southeastern portion of Fairfax County, Virginia. The county is a suburb of Washington, D.C. with a population of 1.1 million. HMP is surrounded by singlefamily housing on one side and mixed residential development on the other. It is also located in close proximity to Interstate 95/495 and State Route 1, both of which are major regional transportation corridors. The park contains several streams and wetlands, the largest of which is the target of the restoration project. This central wetland was created in the mid-1970s when a colony of beavers dammed one of the streams entering the park (see Fig. 1). The dam flooded a bottomland forest, and soon the area had transitioned to an emergent wetland. Within ten years, the wetland had become a major attraction for wildlife, particularly marsh-breeding birds—rarities in this suburban location where many other wetlands have been drained, filled in, and paved over. The beaver colony continued to build onto the dam, which raised the water level further and occasioned a shift from a hemi-marsh (50% water, 50% vegetation) to a lake marsh with significantly more open water.

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The higher water level drowned out parts of the plant community, and some of the animal biodiversity began to decrease as well. Some years later, the beavers abandoned the central wetland dam, which researchers and park staff attributed to their having depleted the nearby food sources. The abandoned dam allowed more water to drain from the wetland. The change in beaver activity, along with a dramatic event during which a storm washed over six tons of silt into the wetland over a 24 h period, led to a transition to a dry marsh habitat in which the wetland was nearly dry during some months of the year (Fairfax County Park Authority, 2013a). These changes further reduced the levels of biodiversity in the park; locally rare and endangered marsh birds were of particular concern because there are so few wetlands that provide nesting habitats. As one park manager explained: [In a] place like Yellowstone, over a million acres, there might be thirty beaver wetlands there; you don’t really have to worry. One beaver wetland may be flooded out and all the vegetation die, but they’ve got twenty-nine others, and they’re all going through different stages. [This park]. . .is tiny compared to that, and if the wetlands are allowed to go through that successional phase, it could be thirty years before that biodiversity comes back. That’s thirty years that those animals have nowhere in Fairfax County to go, because this is the only large, non-tidal wetland. [interview 2015] In response to these biodiversity losses, the park, the county government, the public, and various private and non-governmental organizations became involved in a political process—that lasted over 20 years—to define the parameters of a wetland restoration project. Consensus about the project scope and aims—or even whether a project of this scale should be undertaken at all—was difficult. It wasn’t until 2013 that a plan was finally approved and construction begun on the restoration. The final proposal focused on maximizing biodiversity while working with the existing hydrology, topology, and wildlife ecology; advancing the education mission of the park; and fitting within the limits of budget and reasonable maintenance. The restoration project installed a mixed materials vinyl pile and earthen berm structure at the site of the former beaver dam; the berm also serves as a spillway during flood events. A water control mechanism consisting of underwater intake pipes and several sluice gates was also built. Construction was completed in March 2014, after which point the park staff began implementing a management plan based largely on the manipulation of water levels on a seasonal and yearly rotation.

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engineers, scientists, volunteers, and volunteer coordinators. Large sample sizes for the purpose of generalizing interview data were not necessary for this case study in which the decision-making processes of key individuals was the focus. These semi-structured interviews lasted approximately one hour and included openended questions about the park, the wetland restoration project, and relationships between humans and nonhumans in the park. Interviews were transcribed by the researcher. Participant observation was conducted over the course of a year, as the researcher attended volunteer events for the natural resource management division of the park. These volunteers met approximately once every two weeks to work on projects ranging from removal of targeted plant species to the wrapping of trees to prevent beavers’ felling them. During these events, the researcher asked questions about the purposes of the management projects and observed both spoken and unspoken indicators of the nature of relations between volunteers, natural resource managers, plants, and wildlife. Social science research with nonhumans presents particular methods challenges (Buller, 2015); for this reason field observations were supplemented with research into animal ethology and investigations of the specific ecological processes and relations present at the site. The construction of questions for interviews and the focus of field observations were iterative, with regular review of interviews, field notes, and memos informing each subsequent stage and potential points of interest and emphasis. An adapted analytical induction approach was used for its “ability to provide a rich understanding of complex social contexts” (Pascale, 2010). Analysis was conducted on field notes, memos, transcribed interviews, and over 120 documents including environmental assessments, scientific reports, project bids, management plans, project proposals, public and educational presentations, and notes from public and county government meetings. An initial round of open coding used codes based on preliminary research observations and methodological questions of tracing relations and effects (Berg, 2007). After the initial coding, themes were identified and the codes were finetuned and revised. A second round of coding consolidated themes and drew out nuances that were not apparent during the first round. Repeated document analysis and follow-up interviews were used to get further details, answer new questions, and determine the appropriateness of proposed themes, relations, and connections.

2. Methods 3. Results and discussion This site is located in a suburban area with a mix of residential and commercial development and in close proximity to major regional transportation corridors. It is also connected to a system of streams and wetlands in Fairfax County that serve as wildlife corridors and are managed under the jurisdiction of multiple park authorities. The restoration project itself was the subject of intense and long-lasting public engagement throughout the process of delineating the scope and aims of the wetland restoration, as well as during the design, implementation, and management of the project. The site was chosen because it presents an opportunity to explore complex overlapping relational ties between human and nonhuman. Initial research questions revolved around the human and nonhuman interactions in the park and the impact of those relationships on environmental governance decisions. The research was conducted using mixed qualitative methods, including interviews, participant observation, field site observations, and document analysis. Twelve interviews were conducted with park managers, natural resource managers, environmental

Beavers form a part of the governing dispositif at HMP in three ways. First, as HMP emerged as an urban wetland park, beaver ethology and, importantly, the knowledge of beaver ethology influenced the development of biodiversity as an organizing principle in the park and the determination that a restoration effort and water control mechanism would be required to restore the wetland to a more biodiverse ecological stage. Second, the capacity of beavers to radically alter the landscape, coupled with the affective position beavers had come to occupy for park patrons, led the engineering firm to seek out indirect ways of modulating beaver behavior so that they could co-exist in a space in which humans were controlling the water levels. Finally, the park’s wetland has been arranged in such a way as to make beaver lives and activities visible to park visitors for years to come. In this way, beavers have been enrolled directly into the programme of creating particular types of environmental subjects. This section will address each of these aspects of the governing dispositif in turn.

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3.1. Urban wetland park: actor-network and dispositif This assemblage analysis seeks to understand the relative power of the elements of the network, in contrast to an ecological study that might focus on relationships between organisms to understand population changes or nutrient cycling. HMP is produced and stabilized as an “urban wetland park” through relations in the actor network. Beavers are important, of course, as beaver activities in the 1970s led to creation of the wetland in the first place, and beaver structures alone controlled the hydrology of the wetland until the restoration project was completed (Burgess and Niple Inc., 2008). Their continued work on the dam raised water levels, and their abandonment of the dam caused water levels to drop. They are not the only powerful actants in the network, however. Consider the genus Ranavirus, which is likely endemic to the park and can cause the mortality of entire populations of amphibian larvae. Or Canada geese (Branta canadensis) that in 2014 consumed nearly all of the bur-reed (Sparganium) in the central wetland during their fall migration. Many of the plant and wildlife populations living in the park are those species that survive or thrive in areas with dense built environments and human populations. At the same time, the non-tidal wetland has attracted some animals that are otherwise seldom seen in cities. The marsh attracted nesting birds, who in turn attracted bird-watchers. The plants, animals, and landscape features in the park create an affective response in visitors that influences how they respond to changes in the wetland and its governance. Each of these interactions re-makes the actor network in new ways. The geographical characteristics of the surrounding urban/suburban area are crucial to this process of place formation. The chemical makeup, volume, and velocity of the water entering the wetland is shaped by the suburban landscape of impervious surfaces and lawns, which in turn create conditions for certain plants and animals to thrive, while others do not. Even topography and urban development are actants in this network. For example, different siltation technology (or better enforcement), different watershed patterns, or a less intense storm might have changed the outcome of the “siltation event” in 1985. When park staff began to explore the idea of managing the wetland, they brought to bear a whole new set of values, knowledges, institutions, regulations, and practices. The dispositif framework can help us to understand how this particular wetland came into being as an object to be governed. In order to manage the wetland, staff first had to decide what kind of wetland to manage. Multiple studies and proposals were considered, until the maximization of biodiversity was identified as the main target of the restoration project. But this objective was not a foregone conclusion; not everyone agreed that the wetland should be managed at all; some park staff and members of the public felt that allowing the wetland and the stream system it is connected with to evolve without interference would have been a better approach. During the early years of the research and proposal process, habitat conservation and restoration (specifically the hemi-marsh habitat) was the focus. This focus shifted to specific biodiversity goals as the park personnel received input from the public and from scientists working for the contractors hired to conduct research and proposals. The global biodiversity crisis provided a context, and local conditions informed the particular target species and habitats: The world is in a biodiversity crisis right now. . .so saying that our overriding goal is to protect and encourage biodiversity seemed like a good guiding philosophy. . .and then you keep getting narrower and you say we specifically want to encourage the biodiversity of a hemi-marsh that’s appropriate for the coastal plain in Fairfax County. . .and then you get even more focused and say, “let’s look at what was living here before the

silt came in, and let’s try to work around that community of hemi-marsh wildlife that lived right here.” So the biodiversity was the starting philosophy and then it took us right down to what are we trying to have the wetland look like literally each month of the year. [interview with park manager 2015] The call to maximize biodiversity, therefore, drew upon the framing of a global biodiversity crisis and connected that crisis to local conditions. In some ways, a focus on biodiversity and rare or endangered species reproduces a juxtaposition between “urban” and “natural”. Part of the rationale for aiming to maximize biodiversity is that many wetland species have nowhere else to go within the suburbs surrounding HMP. This argument relies on distinguishing between “urban” and “wetland” by focusing on the habitat needs of rare and endangered species, rather than the urban exploiters that can thrive in golf-course ponds. Those animals might tell a different story about the ability of humans and nonhumans to coexist. The choice to focus on biodiversity rather than, say, adaptability, is a result of the particular form of governance that emerged from the wetland restoration project. A management plan was designed to focus on maximizing biodiversity. Detailed records on bird sightings and behavior gathered by the local bird-watching group formed the basis for the specific biodiversity goals. Park staff developed a list of target species that are the focus of all management decisions. Like the goal of maximizing biodiversity, this list also emerged from a political process informed by different systems of value and knowledge production. While staff may have been focused on animals that are rare, endangered, or integral to the hemi-marsh ecosystem, some members of the public advocated for their favorite creatures. The park held dozens of public meetings to explain why they based their decisions on ecological significance rather than personal connections to the space and specific animals. The meetings are loci of the dispositif in which scientific knowledge production, institutions of government, and ecological values systems are deployed and from which particular types of subjects emerge. To create the conditions for maximizing biodiversity, natural resource managers would need to be able to influence the types and extent of specific plant communities in the wetland. The experience of managed wetlands in other parts of the country suggested that the best way to diversify the plant community was to adjust water levels on a seasonal and yearly basis. This regime of water control encourages soil consolidation and seed germination, while also allowing managers to create habitats of standing dead reeds by “drowning out” targeted plant communities. Managers also needed to have some measure of control over water levels during the marsh bird breeding season, so that they could attempt to provide adequate breeding habitat. Although beavers had first created the wetland that attracted diverse wildlife to HMP, ethological studies suggested that typical beaver pond succession would not provide the right variations in water depth at the right times for maximizing biodiversity. On the contrary, in this emerging urban wetland park dispositif, “beavers being beavers” would be capable of working counter to the stated goals of maximizing biodiversity. A water control system would be needed to maintain the wetland in a permanent “emergent marsh” state. 3.2. Beaver umwelt and diffuse power Once staff at HMP decided upon the goal of maximizing biodiversity and identified a list of target species, they needed to develop a plan for reaching those goals. Through their own observations and research on wetland management, they determined that manipulating the water level in the central wetland would allow them to alter the plant community, which would in turn create appropriate nesting and feeding habitats for the target species. The engineering

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firm that developed the final proposal and oversaw construction built a vinyl pile and earthen dam in the approximate location of the original beaver dam. They designed it in such a way that water can flow over the top without damaging it; this allowed them to build a low structure that stands out less in the landscape. To control the flow of water out of the wetland, they built a system of four sluice gates that can be adjusted independently. Beavers presented a challenge for this system, however. They prioritize the safety of deep water and would be likely to block the gates if they sensed water flowing out of the wetland. Earlier proposals, recognizing this challenge, recommended the monitoring and management—including relocation and euthanasia—of beaver populations. However, beaver agency in the dispositif precluded such management strategies. Firstly, beavers are highly valued for their landscape-altering practices; they create the very habitats that managers are looking to re-establish. Their dams trap water, their underwater digging creates deep pools, and their shoreline canals create a varied landscape that attracts diverse wildlife. In this way, the actions of beavers and the priorities of park managers coincide, even if their justifications may differ. Secondly, beavers are now ubiquitous in Fairfax County; park managers found that no neighboring parks would accept relocated beavers as they already had established populations (TAMS Consultants Inc., 1993). The large population of beavers, their dispersal behaviors, and their capacity to so radically alter the habitats in the landscape compelled park managers to design a water control strategy that could work with beavers, rather than in spite of them. What’s more, in the eyes of local residents, beavers are symbolic of the park. As one park manager described this dynamic: “. . .the beavers were seen very much, as they should, as icons of the park, as creators of habitat, as valued members of the park community.” The affective relationship that many park visitors and staff have with the beavers made invasive or lethal population management options unpalatable. In the same interview, this manager identified the public perception of beavers (as opposed to, say, their landscape-altering behavior) as the major influence on park policy. So, although beavers’ activities often lead to steady, high water levels that may reduce biodiversity, the management plan specifies that “[b]eavers will not be trapped, removed, relocated or euthanized. They are an integral and valued part of the wetland’s diversity, productivity and long-term success” (Fairfax County Park Authority, 2013a). This tension runs through the park planning documents; beaver practices alternatively support and work at cross purposes with the evolving vision of the managed wetland. The park staff describes beavers as “partners in wetland management” (Fairfax County Park Authority, 2013b). Yet they are unruly partners with the capacity to prevent people from controlling water levels in the wetland, and their priorities for the central wetland are sometimes at odds with the priorities of park staff. Beavers maintain their dams to keep water from flowing out and to retain steady levels of deep water, while HMP managers aim to implement seasonal fluctuations in water level in order to diversify the plant communities. Both beavers and park staff are invested in the reproduction of this urban wetland, but they have competing visions of what that wetland should look like. These circumstances—beavers are valued partners and icons and will not be directly managed, but also create barriers to achieving maximum biodiversity—meant that the park had to come up with a method for managing beaver behavior without managing the beavers themselves. The solution was a Clemson Beaver Pond Leveler (CBPL). This technology, developed by researchers at Clemson University, functions by reducing the environmental cues that prompt beavers to construct dams. The CBPL installed at the park consists of four pipes, 30 cm in diameter and 9 m long. Each pipe has been drilled with an array of 360 holes, 5 cm in diameter. This arrangement reduces surface water current via underwater pipes

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that diffuse water intake, and it reduces the sounds of moving water by locating the water outlets on the downstream side of the water control devices (Clemson University Department of Aquaculture, Fisheries and Wildlife, 1994). The CBPL requires that HMP managers understand the umwelt of beavers and anticipate their responses to environmental cues. This technology emerged from the elements of the urban wetland park dispositif that were in tension with one another; biodiversity goals, site hydrology, and budget all played a role, but beaver power to affect the wetland network compelled project engineers to answer to beaver imperatives. The CBPL engages with beaver umwelt, functioning only because of a clear understanding of the environmental cues that beavers perceive and the meaning that those cues transmit. By removing those signs, the CBPL exerts a type of disciplinary power on beavers that reduces their capacity to respond to water flowing out of the wetland. The CBPL is more than a clever engineering solution to a wildlife conflict. It is a technology built directly into the landscape that is designed to modulate beaver behavior without acting on the beavers directly. However, the CBPL also acted on the human elements of the dispositif, determining the scope, technologies, budgets, and required expertise to make the project work. The knowledge that beavers react to running water is the impetus for constructing the CBPL using perforated pipes to diffuse current. Water flow calculations and storm intensity predictions combined with the strength of current that beavers are likely to perceive determined the size of the pipes and the number of intake holes. Understanding that beavers might feel that current regardless, at least whenever there is a storm event, designers installed metal cages filled with rocks to exclude beavers from the area around the pipes. Natural resource managers must also plan to inspect the CBPL regularly for beaver activity, particularly after storms. The beavers’ capacity to perceive slight differences in water flow, attribute meaning to those sensations, and act upon them exerted a force in this dispositif that not only compelled the engineers to include the CBPL in the design of the water control system but also continues to impact the daily practices of park employees and natural resource volunteers. The power dynamics among all the elements in this dispositif—urban location, topography, biodiversity, wetland ecology, beaver activity and perceptions, environmental regulations and permitting requirements, budgets, public affection for the park, available labor and volunteers, soil structure, and many others—eventually led to the creation of this particular wetland restoration project. The CBPL added a technology that engages beaver umwelt as an element in the dispositif. Now all these elements operate in relation to one another in the regime of water level manipulation and other management techniques. The web of these connections and their relative, contingent effects on one another are the dispositif through which this urban wetland is governed, and beaver agency is apparent throughout.

3.3. Enrolling beavers to respond to imperatives of the dispositif If the CBPL highlights the way in which beavers’ agency and umwelt affect the elements of the dispositif, the next examples illustrate how beavers themselves have become enrolled as actors responding to the imperatives of governance in the urban wetland park. In this case, the elements of the dispositif that make it a “park” are critical. This park is public land, and one of its missions is to educate the public about natural resources, ecology, habitats, stewardship, and other ways of being-in-relation with the world around them. Park staff and volunteers offer educational programs and events, but the wetland restoration project is also being managed so as to create opportunities for visitors to observe beavers

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ing visible, thereby fulfilling the educational imperative. This set of relations enrolls the beavers themselves as an element of the governing dispositif directed toward the creation of environmental subjects.

4. Conclusion

Fig. 2. Active beaver lodge built on top of wetland boardwalk.

and learn from those observations. As one of the engineers who worked on the project design explained: We wanted to show people different habitats and how they relate to beaver activity, so the idea was to have these islands that are fenced off, and we let the trees and shrubs grow. And then on a five year rotation cycle, unfence one, let the beavers eat, so that people could see beavers at work right near an observation area. And then five years later that starts growing you fence it back again, you unfence another one. So you could always have an educational activity like that. [interview 2015] One of the imperatives of this urban wetland park dispositif is to produce environmental subjects who value the wetland and its biodiversity. However, the beavers’ role as ambassadors of the wetland habitat won’t work if they can’t be seen. Knowledge about beaver ethology in general and observations of the specific beaver colonies in the central wetland raise the potential problem that a large colony will consume all its food sources and then move to a different location (Müller-Schwarze, 2011). To avoid such a scenario, engineers developed this fencing strategy to regulate beaver food consumption. Another striking example of how beavers have been enrolled into the mission of environmental education is the continued existence of an active beaver lodge built adjacent to and on top of the wetland boardwalk (see Fig. 2). This lodge is currently in use, and visitors can often hear the beaver kits inside. Park visitors must walk around the lodge on their way into the wetland, and it serves as a clear model of the type of human-wildlife relations that HMP and the Park Authority promote (Fairfax County Park Authority Board, 2013). People walking on the boardwalk not only experience the practice of ceding space to animals, but also have access to a more intimate relationship with the beavers than they might otherwise have. Management decisions about what to do (or what not to do) regarding beaver activity in the landscape have the effect of keeping beavers visible and accessible to park visitors. The continued existence of the lodge on the boardwalk means that “beavers being beavers” is an integral part of the experience of visiting the park. Beavers’ capacity to move away in search of new food sources informed the plan to build and manage this landscape meant to keep them within view for the edification of park visitors. The fencing rotation plan is a technology for the modulation of beaver behavior. Elements of the dispositif—engineering expertise, volunteer labor, fencing, beaver ethology, and an environmental ethics of co-existence—are deployed in the service of ensuring that the actions of beavers will serve the aims of the dispositif. Park staff have arranged the environment to nudge beavers into remain-

The idea that nonhumans, particularly animals, are agents with power is not new. What this case study offers is a way of understanding animal priorities as productive of a particular form of governance, through their proximity to and relation with not only an actor-network but also a governing dispositif. Although frequently used to understand the formation of nonhuman subjects, dispositif frameworks have rarely been used to understand nonhumans as governing subjects. In the case of HMP, beavers are not only a part of the actor-network that makes up the urban wetland, they are also active managers of the space who have been incorporated into the dispositif for the purpose of furthering the aims of governance. This research demonstrates the ways in which “assemblage thinking” might be used as an analytical framework to examine the power dynamics in urban ecological governance and the role of nonhumans in that governance. The approach described some of the elements that make up the urban wetland, then identified the control of water levels and the education of environmental subjects as the imperatives of the dispositif to which these elements were responding. Using the concept of umwelt to understand animal behavior, the research finds that the beavers living in the central wetland of this park were active participants in the shaping of the restoration project and continue to influence the day-to-day governance of the site. Beavers exert power in the governance of the wetland restoration project. They have been incorporated into the wetland as creators of habitat for other organisms and as outreach educators whose affectual relations with park visitors are meant to support the aims of environmental education. Their capacity to impede or advance the aims of governance helped to shape the values, aims, and implementation of the wetland restoration project and its management. This urban wetland park dispositif connects discursive elements such as scientific knowledge and environmental ethics with material elements like urban hydrology and the nesting behaviors of marsh birds. Each element operates according to its own logic and toward its own ends, but in doing so affects the others. The whole of these human and nonhuman elements and their relational ties determines the organization and priorities of management in the wetland park. The ontological stance of the nonhuman turn in the social sciences encourages us to understand beavers as subjects of their own worlds rather than pieces of the context within which humans make decisions. Beavers not only influence human decision-makers, they make decisions themselves. They act directly on the landscape to raise water levels for their own purposes, and in doing so they force responses from the other elements of the dispositif. They emerge from the dispositif as subjects changed by it—their behavior is modulated by the technologies of the CBPL and fencing rotations, and their actions are influenced by the power relations among elements. Yet beavers have also affected the process for determining the goals for the project, the design of the water control structure, the budget priorities, the management plans, the daily tasks of natural resource managers, and the modalities of environmental education. Beaver behavior both affects and forms part of this dispositif, making them active participants in wetland governance. Through the concept of umwelt, I have demonstrated how beavers perceive and react to their world and how natural resource managers in the park responded to beaver “propositions” for how

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to order the landscape. Beavers have priorities regarding steady water levels, food sources, and building materials. In the urban wetland park dispositif, those priorities are sometimes at odds with the biodiversity and educational imperatives of HMP governance. Yet beavers’ power in the dispositif precludes management strategies that rely on force. Instead, park managers must work to understand beavers and develop approaches that modulate beaver behavior by affecting their environment rather than acting directly upon them. Managers respond to beaver priorities by developing technologies that are built into the landscape itself and by encouraging park visitors to cede space to the animals. The tensions between human and beaver aims are worked out through negotiations within the dispositif, and the other elements are not unchanged by the interaction. Managers’ and volunteers’ time, energy, and bodily practices are directed by the “need” to manage beaver behavior. In this way, beaver perceptions and aims have also enrolled humans into a network of wetland management not entirely of human making. This case is not an example of relational ties that can be generalized to all nonhumans, or even to all beavers. The contingent characteristics of the case—the valuing of beaver lives, the missions of a public park—made nonhuman effects on governance possible. But that it can happen suggests that our analyses of power in environmental governance should remain open to the possibility of nonhuman relations of co-governance. Ultimately, this research implies that nonhumans not only influence human decision-makers, but that they may also have the capacity to cocreate and co-govern our shared spaces. Acknowledgments I would like to thank Bruce Braun and two anonymous referees for comments on drafts of this article; their thought-provoking suggestions helped me to develop a much stronger treatment of assemblage thinking and nonhuman agency. Thanks also to Nate Gabriel and Lindsay Campbell for editing this special issue and for facilitating an intriguing discussion on power and urban systems. This research was partially funded by a Summer Research Grant from the University of Minnesota Department of Geography, Environment and Society. Appendix A. Supplementary data Supplementary data associated with this article can be found, in the online version, at http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ufug.2016.06. 025. References Agamben, G., 2009. What is an Apparatus? and Other Essays. Stanford University Press, Stanford, CA. Atkins, P., 2012. Animal Cities: Beastly Urban Histories. Ashgate Pub Co, Farnham Surrey, Burlington, VT. Berg, B.L., 2007. Qualitative Research Methods for the Social Sciences, 6th ed. Pearson/Allyn & Bacon, Boston. Biehler, D., 2011. Embodied wildlife histories and the urban landscape. Environ. Hist. 16, 445–450, http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/envhis/emr048. Biehler, D., 2013. Pests in the City: Flies, Bedbugs, Cockroaches, and Rats. University of Washington Press, Seattle. Braun, B., Whatmore, S., 2010. Political Matter: Technoscience, Democracy, and Public Life. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis. Braun, B., 2005. Environmental issues: writing a more-than-human urban geography. Prog. Hum. Geogr. 29, 635–650, http://dx.doi.org/10.1191/ 0309132505ph574pr. Braun, B., 2006. Environmental issues: global natures in the space of assemblage. Prog. Hum. Geogr. 30, 644–654, http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0309132506070180. Braun, B., 2015. Futures: imagining socioecological transformation—an introduction. Ann. Assoc. Am. Geogr. 105, 239–243, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/ 00045608.2014.1000893. Buller, H., 2015. Animal geographies II methods. Prog. Hum. Geogr. 39, 374–384, http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0309132514527401.

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