Lively Transgressions at the Urban–Ocean Edge: Conflict, Coexistence and Animals on the Move

ABSTRACT Human–wildlife conflict has become a dominant framework for understanding the challenges of coexistence. In the context of global environmental change and new geographies of wildlife encounter, this paper intervenes in two bodies of work: ‘Species on the Move’ and human–wildlife conflict. We do so by drawing on two seemingly disparate examples that both concern animals on the move and the fraught politics of coexistence—urban gulls in Northern Europe and sharks at Australian city beaches. Using ethnographic research, the paper examines the makings of human–wildlife ‘conflict’ through three areas of concern: representations of conflict and the interplay between the media and policy; the relationship between mobility and the articulation of rights through property and deterrence; and emergent forms of multispecies justice through physical entanglement. We make two arguments: first, that foregrounding animals' mobilities is critical to reframing human–wildlife conflict and coexistence; and second, that the social sciences are fundamental to revealing the systems that shape and prohibit coexistence, while attending to the lived geographies of place. To conclude, we argue that discomfort and conflict should be considered central components of coexistence and that at a time of significant environmental change and harm, challenging the equation of coexistence with harmony is fundamental to advancing more plural conceptions of justice.