“You kill the dam, you are killing a part of me”: Dam removal and the environmental politics of river restoration

• Dam removals in New England are often characterized by conflict.
• Dam removals are a lens through which to investigate the politics of ecological restoration.
• Cultural dynamics, micropolitics, and competing interpretations of nature help to explain resistance to removals.

River restoration through dam removal provides an opportunity to investigate the changing nature of environmental conflicts and politics in long-humanized landscapes. In New England, where over 14,000 dams fragment the region’s rivers, dam removals are often highly contested. This is due, in part, to how the intertwined roles of history, identity, and aesthetics coalesce to create attachment to place and inspire the defense of dammed landscapes. Dam removal provides a useful lens to consider the following: How do the historical and geographical contingencies of this region shape and alter conflicts over dam removal in specific ways? In instances where conflicts emerge, what do the conflicts reveal about the politics of ecological restoration in highly altered landscapes? We use a political ecology approach to reveal how complex cultural dynamics, competing interpretations of science and the environment, micropolitics, and the role of multiple actors generate and shape conflicts over dam removal. We show that the historical geography of New England influence conflicts over removal in important ways, particularly with regard to the roles of aesthetics and identity in landscapes that are characterized largely by consumptive as opposed to productive uses. Our findings also suggest that restoration in long-humanized landscapes will embroil new constellations of human and nonhuman actors, requiring attention to the political and cultural, as well as the ecological, dimensions of restoration. This paper contributes to research on the political and social dimensions of dam removal, as well as to research at the nexus of ecological restoration and environmental politics.