Organizing Ecologies of (Human) Abandonment on Portuguese Wildfires

This presentation discusses how animals are considered in organizing practices in response to wildfires and their contribution to community resilience. It focuses on the phenomenon of mega-fires in Portugal, where human absence in former areas of rural production has transformed multispecies landscapes into ecologies of (human) abandonment that challenge practices of environmental governance. The literature on disaster management, organizing practices, and multispecies studies is used to challenge predominantly anthropocentric perspectives in fire and disaster management. Data was collected from participatory workshops with local stakeholders from four municipalities in Portugal most affected by the wildfires in 2017. The study analyzed the answers using qualitative content analysis. The presentation will argue that non-human animals can contribute to fire management practices by disorganizing them, unveiling the anthropocentric structure of land and disaster management, and opening new possibilities to reimagine them. The study also highlights the entangled vulnerability of human and nonhuman animals in the face of wildfires and the importance of considering the vulnerability of all species in social practices that organize fire management. In this regard, the study argues that attending to the vulnerability of some humans, who are systematically forgotten by public policy, is crucial to address the entangled vulnerabilities of non-human and human animals to wildfires. This means we need to intertwine different invisibilities, of animals and of (some) humans, if we wish to address their shared vulnerability to wildfires.