Ecological infrastructures

Scientific restoration efforts in the American West, which seek to amplify or initiate natural processes, are necessary to restore degraded habitat. However, the cultural, scientific, and capitalist systems rooted in colonial hierarchies, progress, and commodification that structure such interventions fail to account for an animate Earth. This essay explores how scientists’ and restoration specialists’ use what we term ecological infrastructures in beaver-based restoration efforts, including beaver relocation and beaver dam analogues (BDAs). Through this, we show the obstacles created by a lack of attunement to the ecological rhythms so essential to working with our non-human kin to restore watersheds.