By Chase A. Niesner and Alejandra Echeverri

The Potential Complexity of a Species of Passionate Interest: SPI like the Chinook Salmon (Oncorhynchus tshawytscha) can become the locus of manifold passions involving a variety of cultural practices, ranging from (A) Indigenous customs and livelihoods, pictured here as Karuk dip net fishing, (B) Sport fishing, (C) Hydropower extraction and stillwater recreation, (D) Irrigation for industrial agriculture, and (E) The science of riparian ecology. Where these passions overlap, the work of conservation becomes navigating the political reality of these different mis/understandings [Photo A from The Times Standard; photos B, C, D, from Creative Commons; photo E from The Trinity River Restoration Program].

This Plain Language Summary is published in advance of the paper discussed. Please check back soon for a link to the full paper.

When we aim to conserve biocultural diversity, we are inevitably navigating the powerful feelings people hold towards the species that matter to them. In our new research, we explore how traditional conservation usually focuses on protecting ecologically vital species and sometimes the local or Indigenous cultures that have come to rely on them for their continuance. While these approaches are invaluable, they often fall short in modern, complex settings where many different interest groups—such as ranchers, local residents, industrialists, and the conservationists themselves—hold intense, and often conflicting, emotional attachments to the exact same species.

To address this gap, we introduce a new concept called the “Species of Passionate Interest.” Rather than measuring a species solely by its ecological utility or cultural appeal, we look to where strong, publicly expressed emotions, whether reverence, love, pride, grief, fear, disgust or anger, concentrate around a given species. By tracking these intense feelings, conservationists can pinpoint where human relationships are entangled in a dense web of meaningful relations, seek to understand why different groups interpret the same species differently, and approach environmental conflicts with an eye towards repair.

We take inspiration from the intellectual history of the Cultural Keystone Species concept for our research, and expand this work to examine diverse examples of Species of Passionate Interest, from the Gray Wolf and Chinook Salmon, to Oil Palm and the common mosquito, demonstrating how collective emotion directly shapes the fate of species and cultures simultaneously. Ultimately, our work suggests conserving biocultural diversity and transforming social relations must go hand in hand. By attuning to the feelings surrounding complex conservation issues, bitter disputes can become opportunities for shared coexistence, helping both wildlife and a diversity of human communities flourish together.