The Rhino With No Name and Other Stories: How Storytelling Creates Transformative Change in Conservation

Stories remind us of the values we want to live by and create visions of the future. Using autoethnography, I present four stories about animals whom I encountered on fieldwork in Kenya, South Africa, England, and the Netherlands. With these stories, I reflect on three topics with significant implications for biodiversity conservation: communicating with animals, communicating about animals, and the researcher as a change agent in this process. Utilizing interdisciplinary literature from the humanities, social and natural sciences, I discuss how stories shape societal values with regard to animals. I discuss the role of stories as a scientific and pedagogical tool to bring about transformative change toward more compassionate and just multispecies societies. I conclude that conservation and animal studies scholars should dare to go beyond scientific objectivity by telling stories about animals because the empathy this generates can ultimately influence governance processes positively for animals.