Towards a New Approach for Studies of Endangered Species Management Technologies of government in Norwegian wolf management (1960s–2010s)

The doctoral thesis develops a new approach for studies of endangered species management by drawing on recent developments in science and technology studies, governmentality studies and environmental history. By making technologies of government its main object of study, the approach enables research not only of that which is commonly perceived as political, but also of techniques and instruments that enable and effect politics in practice. It argues that the proliferation of technologies of government over recent decades has transformed endangered species management and protected organisms in profound ways, and that these developments constitute a blind spot in the existing literature on endangered species management. The thesis identifies and investigates such developments in Norwegian wolf management through four articles. Article one investigates how genetic techniques were incorporated into Norwegian wolf management in the 1990s, and argues that this process of ‘molecularisation’ was decisive in efforts to construct and stabilize Scandinavian wolves as natural, vulnerable and worthy of protection. Article two investigates how an extensive monitoring system, which enabled detailed and intensive ‘nationwide field studies in absentia,’ was constructed between the 1960s and the 2000s. Article three investigates how the protection of wolves in Norway has been conducted in practice by asking ‘how many wolves it takes to protect the population.’ It examines the employment of ‘minimum viable population size’ in regulations of wolf numbers, and argues that transitions in the authority to define its content, first from biologists to nature managers, and later from nature managers to politicians, involved major transitions in the number of wolves considered necessary for protecting a viable population. By drawing on the empirical findings of the other three articles, article four investigates whether the proliferation of technologies of government in Norwegian wolf management has ‘preserved the wolves by transforming them.’ The article further explores whether nature management, in general, has transformed so much that the recent period warrants the label ‘the age of biodiversity,’ and whether issues of naturalness, wildness and authenticity are new and typical management challenges of the period