Welcome to the Forest Ecosystem Research and Applications Lab at Western Washington University.
Why feral?
feral, for many reasons.
feral was a temporary solution to the paralyzing decision that is naming a lab, a product of many people coming together, after a single PI while knowing a lab name gives meaning, cause, and place to community.
feral was an unnecessary commitment to a bit1.
feral is a gesture towards the knowledge that “wilderness” is an idea constructed by humans2, that distinguishing between “people” and “nature” is a weapon of colonialism and racism3, that we as a lab, as scholars and as a species are an inseparable part of the ecosystems we study.
Footnotes
the temptation of “go check the feral lab philosophy” or “this is my feral labmate” was too strong to resist↩︎
The Trouble with Wilderness, William Cronon↩︎