Affiliation:
1. University at Buffalo, The State University of New York, Buffalo, NY, USA
Abstract
The story of the Hula Valley in the Galilee region of Palestine-Israel serves as the focus of this article, which draws on the concepts “more-than-One Health” and “settler ecologies” to highlight the harmful ecological implications of settler colonial projects in this region and elsewhere. Specifically, I tell the story of the Zionist drying of the Hula wetlands in the 1950s for the purpose of fighting off malaria and advancing agriculture in the region—and then of Israel's reflooding and rehabilitation of parts of the Hula in the 1990s in support of the massive annual bird migration. In winter 2021, more than eight thousand cranes succumbed to an avian influenza (H5N1) outbreak in the Hula Valley and over one million chickens in the area's coops had to be culled. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork conducted mainly in summer 2022, this article discusses the historical and socioecological conditions that have arguably enabled and exacerbated the avian outbreak, advocating for a more-than-One Health approach that is founded on acknowledging the settler colonial legacies of this place.
Reference65 articles.
1. The Political Construction of Wasteland: Governmentality, Land Acquisition and Social Inequality in South India
2. One Health of Peripheries: Biopolitics, Social Determination, and Field of Praxis
3. Ben Hamo O (2022) Avian Influenza outbreak was a manmade accident. Makor Rishon, 24 January. Available at: https://www.makorrishon.co.il/news/449973/ (accessed 13 March 2024).
4. Berger M (2021) Bird flu outbreak in Israel kills more than 5,200 cranes, with mass culling of poultry underway. Washington Post, 28 December. Available at: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/12/28/bird-avian-flu-h5n1-outbreak-israel/ (accessed 20 May 2023).