International conservationism and local problems: research on penguins in Patagonia

Abstract

In Argentina, until the 1970s, Magellanic penguins were investigated by local scientists as species of "commercial interest." A short time later, the situation changed drastically: penguins became a threatened species that needed to be conserved. This article investigates the role of the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), one of the largest NGOs in the world, in changing the way of problematizing, investigating and intervening penguins. Through the case study, I dialogue with various studies that investigate the “neocolonizing” effects of the internationalization of conservation-oriented research in Latin America, as a peripheral region. I argue with these studies insofar as they only observe that international cooperation tends to make invisible, subordinate and control local ways of thinking and intervene on nature. Instead, I propose that international cooperation also allows global recentralization of research from peripheral territories. To do this, I investigate three aspects of research on penguins: a) how it was positioned, from Patagonia, as an indicator of climate change as a global problem, b) how the diversification of international scientific funding allowed the development of innovative research for the field of conservation of penguins, c) how the conservation movement allowed the Patagonian coast to be positioned as a world center for wildlife-based tourism. This research uses various qualitative methodologies based on interviews, field observations, institutional documents, researcher curricula, and funding data from Web of Science.