While national parks are important for a range of reasons, arguably their most important role is to conserve the natural environment through providing habitat, refuge and protection for native species, especially those that are endangered, threatened or iconic. The assumption that national parks are spaces where natives belong is engrained in ideas of what national parks are and often goes unquestioned. However, this assumption about the role of national parks, is challenged by recent moves in human geography that argue nature is not pure and separate to culture and that nativeness is not straightforward. Kangaroos are an iconic native animal that should belong in Australian national parks. However, I look at the management and understandings of kangaroos in Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park, New South Wales, to show that this is not always the case. By following the stories of 12 Eastern Grey Kangaroos, I show that native nature does not necessarily belong in national parks. Drawing on a more-than-human, performative approach I tell a story of an awkward engagement in which native, culture and kangaroos become blurred and multiple belongings are created.

According to Buller (2013) we need new and creative methodologies in animal geographies that “reveal what matters, or what might matter, to animals as subjective selves” (p.380). In this paper I introduce the notion of the visceral, those “ways of being that emerge from sensory engagement” (Longhurst 2009 p.334), as a contribution to developing those creative methodologies. I base my discussion around the three categories of visceral geographies described by Hayes-Conroy and Hayes-Conroy (2010), namely mattering; relating and defying; and the potential this approach has to impact political and social change. I begin with the movie Finding Nemo, which promotes an anthropocentric portrayal of both human and fish to emotionally engage with a human audience, but reveals deep and contradictory human perspectives. I then move to Heron Island on Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, where multisensory but conflicting engagement with living and once-were-living fish is offered. I conclude by proposing the question from the subjects’ perspective, allowing for fish as geographers (reflecting Buller 2013) and question what the visceral looks like to a fish.

This paper examines the interactions that emerge at the contact zone of the beach when nonhuman animals are enlisted in shore-control. In New South Wales the Shark Meshing (Bather Protection) Program (SMP) has provided a means for governing the near-shore ocean adjacent to popular city beaches since the 1930s. The Program seeks to keep people safe by preventing sharks from establishing territories. It employs gillnets to catch and kill sharks deemed to pose a threat to beach-goers. Lethal methods of managing risks associated with human-shark encounter are common. But in recent years, kill-based strategies have come under strong criticism. The SMP case illustrates competing notions of ‘territory’ relevant to multi-species cohabitation. At the policy’s core is an assertion that sharks establish and defend territory. Through recreational and professional pursuits, beach-goers enter the ‘territory’ of sharks and other marine life. The NSW government asserts the near-shore ocean surrounding beaches as human territory, by defending it in the most aggressive way possible: through killing. In doing so, the state government must negotiate federal and international agreements for protection of marine environments and threatened species, while enlisting nonhuman animals as territorialising agents in the shifting space of the urban shore-zone.

There is growing concern among scientists and animal rights advocates about the welfare of invasive nonhuman animals. However, survey research shows that the general public defines invasive animal welfare differently to scientists and animal rights advocates. There is little social research that examines how differing views on the invasive animals and their control are reconciled, if at all, in public fora. This paper examines how invasive animals and their control are discussed in two newspapers, one urban (The Sydney Morning Herald) and one rural (The Land), in New South Wales, Australia. The findings reveal that the public prioritises the welfare of companion, farm and native animals over invasive animals. As such, control methods are sought that minimize the impacts to valued animals and that rapidly and effectively reduce invasive animal numbers. This is mostly achieved without directly talking about the taking of animal lives. The new wave of biosecurity policies currently being designed and implemented in Australia needs to take into account the ways in which some animals are prioritized over others and the aversion to talking about, let alone undertaking, the ending of animal lives.