Making Place for the Plover: Conservation, Belonging, and Multispecies Relations at Alberoni Beach, Venice

Recent years have seen growing concern for the conservation of the Kentish Plover amid its steady decline along the Italian coastlines, with particular attention to managing its coexistence with humans in highly anthropized environments. This thesis addresses the socio-ecological tensions within the protected natural area of Alberoni (Venice), where the Kentish Plover has become a focal point of the intersection between environmental stewardship and place attachment. Conservationists and volunteers frame the oasis as a habitat of critical importance and stress the importance of the Plover’s protection, emphasising its ecological role and affirming its right to inhabit the place. In opposition, other imaginaries of the beach suggest a strong affirmation of human-centered dimensions, which emerge as multiple and dispersed ways of relating, and un-relating, to the non-human. From an Environmental Humanities interdisciplinary perspective, encompassing ecology, anthropology, and philosophy, this thesis analyzes how different actors locate the Plover and its stewardship across the multiple dimensions of the beach environment. This study employed an ethnography-led mixed-method approach involving participant observation, semi-structured interviews, and a survey distributed over six months of active fieldwork. By adopting a multi-species approach, this study uncovers the belonging ontologies that manifest and renegotiate the beach environment through enabling and disabling practices and narrations. Secondly, it demonstrates how grief plays a central role in the conservation of endangered species such as the Kentish Plover, enhancing resilience and fostering action towards its protection. The study finally shows, thanks to the interlocutors, how conservation of the Kentish Plover is dismembered and remembered again through multiple modalities of relating, belonging, and making kin. This thesis is meant to spark positive change within the area of study in response to the established wildlife conservation challenge and provide valuable insight for similar socio-ecological contexts.