Kākā amongst the pines: Contested relations in the multispecies city

In Aotearoa New Zealand's capital city of Te Whanganui a Tara Wellington, the endemic kākā parrot has become a poster child for urban conservation success. Big, loud, and sociable, their return to the city after 70 years of absence has transformed the urban area for good. But while their charismatic screeching presence has made kākā a Wellington icon for many, their practice of stripping bark and killing city trees has led to rumbling tensions and questions about who truly belongs in the city. This article investigates multispecies relations in urban areas, in particular how cities are continuously remade through relations and meaning-filled collaborations with more-than-human beings. Through a focus on the dynamic relations between kākā, humans, and trees in Wellington city during a period of significant change following the release of captive-bred kākā, we reveal the productive role that more-than-human beings have in co-producing meaning and materiality in the city. Drawing Karen Barad's agential realism into productive conversation with Catherine Hill's reconceptualization of human-wildlife conflict, we propose that the rumblings of kākā-human tension was not a singular event that has since been managed by human institutions but a productive force which was vital to the emergence of new urban multispecies relations; relations which have unsettled established histories, amplified conservation discourses, and brought new urban worlds and identities into being. Ultimately we suggest that reframing human-wildlife conflict as neither a management failure, nor as evidence of ‘misbehaviour’ by a particular group, but as an intense period of relational meaning making between species, could provide both analytical insight and guidance for navigating shared spaces.