GSSC Seminar Series
04 February 2025
Wildlife, Tsetse and Pathogens: Rewilding between Disease Eradication and Coexistence in Southwestern Zambia
Léa Lacan, University of Cologne
12:00-13:00
In southern Africa, transboundary conservation like in the Kavango-Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area aims to reconnect ecosystems and rewild landscapes where wildlife can move freely in coexistence with humans and their livestock. But what if wildlife comes with pathogens? Many wildlife species are known reservoir hosts for trypanosomiasis, a human and livestock disease transmitted by the tsetse fly. Historically, since colonial times, trypanosomiasis and tsetse control in the region have therefore been closely linked to wildlife management or even culling. Current rewilding plans in southwestern Zambia are raising concerns about the spread of the disease.
This presentation focuses on the changing roles of the tsetse fly and wildlife animals between disease spreaders, agents of wilderness, and potential neighbours. Based on archival research and interviews with farmers living in and outside tsetse control areas in southwestern Zambia, it explores the historical and ongoing synergies and tensions between tsetse control and wildlife conservation. It shows that evolving knowledge and methods of tsetse control are casting tsetse and wildlife in different roles, from pathogenic and 'wild' agents to be eradicated, to controllable enemies or even tolerable co-inhabitants. It also explores local fears of tsetse and trypanosomiasis and the possibilities for coexistence with tsetse triggered by rewilding. Ultimately, this presentation interrogates the ‘killability’ of tsetse and wildlife and the possibilities for living with ‘dangerous others’ between dreams of disease eradication and aspirations for ‘wilder’ coexistence landscapes.
Léa Lacan is a postdoctoral researcher in environmental anthropology at the University of Cologne, Germany and a member of the Global South Studies Center (GSSC). She did her PhD in anthropology within the Collaborative Research Center 228 “Future Rural Africa” at the University of Cologne on forest conservation and human-forest relations in Kenya. She is now working on the 'Rewilding the Anthropocene' project in the Kavango-Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area in Southern/Central Africa. Her current research focuses on the politics of local wildlife conservation in southwestern Zambia at the intersection of political ecology and more-than-human anthropology.