Agrarian change and predators’ mobilities: A more-than-human political ecology of wolf impacts

In the midst of increasing human-wildlife interactions and conflicts globally, the critical social sciences are arising to the challenge of articulating new possibilities for more just, responsible and sustainable multispecies relations. In this article, we build on the blossoming literature of a more-than-human political ecology to explore and make sense of conflictual dynamics of cohabitation with wolves in Tuscany, Italy. We contribute to an explicit conceptualisation of animals’ mobilities as enmeshed in and emerging through wider political economies. Based on a twelve-month multispecies ethnography—involving local farming and hunting communities, as well as observations of guardian dog, sheep and wolf behaviour—we focus on how ongoing processes of agrarian change in Tuscany may be affecting wolves not only materially but sensorially, exacerbating local conflict levels. Wolves’ altered experience and navigation of landscapes of fear, landscapes of bonding, sound-scapes and smell-scapes in contexts of agrarian change are shaping the conditions for greater conflict to emerge. In highlighting these aspects, we complement current politicised understandings of human-wildlife conflict, advancing a link between political economy and the how of conflict (in addition to previous links drawn between political economy and the where and why of conflict). Wolves can become particulalry problematic in certain environmental and social contexts, fundamentally requiring systemic change for improved human-predator relations. We encourage further research to engage critically with animals’ mobilities, to address human-wildlife conflict.