Enacting Protected Areas Through Monitoring: Knowledge Practices as Multispecies Spatiotemporal Achievements in Neusiedler See–Seewinkel National Park

Protected areas are seen as one of the primary instruments to halt biodiversity loss, but it is not always clear if a protected status designation contributes to the preservation of endangered species and ecosystems. One way to address the issue is through monitoring, the regular counting and measuring of 'nature'. However, more than merely representing nature in a protected area, monitoring enacts nature. In this article, I explore a specific protected area by way of an ethnography of different monitoring programs in Neusiedler See-Seewinkel National Park in Austria. Characterized as a quintessentially naturecultural landscape, the formal boundaries of the national park only partially match when and where monitoring is done. To make sense of the differences, I trace practices of monitoring of the soda lake ecosystem, vegetation, and geese as multispecies activities, shaped by both human and non-human performances in and of space and time. I thereby suggest considering protected area monitoring as a distinct knowledge practice that contributes to shaping protected areas as lived conservation infrastructures.