In urban environments, encounters between animals and humans are frequently governed by conservation policy or narratives that render the species killable in the urban context, not necessarily because of ecological necessity, but through strategic, anthropocentric classification systems that prioritize human convenience and control. Viral individual accounts of a charismatic urban animal may create moments that briefly capture public attention. News stories sometimes expose a broader, largely unquestioned system in which even native species—such as raccoons, opossums, foxes, and coyotes—are routinely designated as “nuisance” and subject to lethal management when they appear in urban spaces (Johnston, 2026). This disjuncture reveals a critical inconsistency: the same species valued in conservation frameworks elsewhere are, in cities, stripped of protection through overlapping and often incoherent policies that, in practice, manufacture killability despite ambiguous or contradictory classifications.

This research project proposal prioritizes field-based, comparative research central to a transdisciplinary investigation of the native/nonnative classification system. Travel funding enables direct, in-situ observation of urban animal populations across governance regimes, forming the empirical backbone of a multispecies ethnography approach. Research expenses support a triangulated methodology, integrating ethnographic data, policy analysis, and institutional documentation to reveal how governance frameworks are enacted—and often contradicted—in practice.

The collaborative design addresses a critical gap in the field: the tendency for knowledge about “invasive species” to be self-referential and insufficiently comparative, particularly in urban contexts. By pairing scholars across divergent classification systems, the project generates new, systematic insights into how species are differently valued, managed, and understood.

Multispecies ethnography and triangulation of data interrogate the way the implementation of policies often significantly deviates from practice to examine how the native/nonnative binary is constructed, contested, and operationalized across global urban contexts. Particular attention is given to how classifications such as “nonnative,” “invasive,” and “nuisance” are mobilized within urban governance frameworks to justify management practices, including the routine killing of urban animals, often with limited empirical grounding or consistency in application. By pairing scholars working on the same species across “native” and “nonnative” designations, the project challenges dominant ecological narratives and contributes to debates in environmental governance, political ecology, and animal protection. Outputs will include a special issue featuring international scholars examining 8–12 highly visible and contested urban species.

The addition of a Science Communication & Public Engagement category ensures that findings extend beyond academic publication to inform public discourse and policy. This aligns directly with institutional priorities around improving human-animal-environment interactions and developing governance systems that more effectively represent nonhuman stakeholders.

Overall, the project integrates animal-human relations, urban studies, inclusion/exclusion, community formation of accepted/believed knowledge about urban species, and qualitative ethnographic methods to produce both theoretical and applied contributions to environmental and animal protection scholarship.

Contributions welcomed. Please reach out to Jacquelyn Johnston jajohnst@fiu.edu 

Johnston, J. J. (2026). Insignificant otherness: Manufacturing killability of native animals living in Florida's urban spaces. Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space, 25148486261437568. 

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