This paper builds on work about rewilding and human-animal relations by focusing on
Portugal's Côa Valley, where a concentration of prehistoric rock art animal figures shares a
landscape with a rewilding pilot which seeks to re-establish a population of wild horses. In
response to recent geographical debates, the paper offers a ...
This paper builds on work about rewilding and human-animal relations by focusing on
Portugal's Côa Valley, where a concentration of prehistoric rock art animal figures shares a
landscape with a rewilding pilot which seeks to re-establish a population of wild horses. In
response to recent geographical debates, the paper offers a sustained, situated analysis of
the temporalities of rewilding and related claims to nonhuman autonomy. In the Côa Valley,
ancient images of animal others are enrolled in efforts to return ‘wild’ horses to the
landscape, but conceptions of wildness and domesticity, and autonomy and temporality,
remain fluid and unfixed--even as they are implicated in the production of bounded spaces
and invoked in present day management imperatives. To conclude, we argue for an
appreciation of degrees of animal autonomy in rewilding contexts, moving beyond the
binaries that often seem to be the focus of rewilding debates. Understanding of these
degrees of autonomy, we argue, must be grounded in histories of landscape co-habitation
and co-production, and consider the intersection of past cultural tradition and conceptions of
desired future-natures.
