ABSTRACT
This chapter engages with the biological concept of “ecotones” to understand the complex mosaic of community ecologies involving humans and other animal species in the Emerald Triangle of Northern California, which is the largest cannabis-producing area of the United States. Ecotones are where different biological communities, ecosystems, or biotic regions meet. This chapter examines social life in these spaces of contact to consider how different assemblages of biological species have been reshaped through the expansion of capitalist development along the Redwood Coast, first through settler colonialism and extractivism, and more recently through the transition from illicit clandestine cannabis growing to large-scale legal enterprises. It considers the consequences of multiple divergent land management strategies across the redwood landscape and looks to local traditional ecological knowledge of Indigenous nations in the regions for viable solutions to pressing environmental crises. How has capitalist expansion shaped these multispecies contact zones in the Emerald Triangle? How can we imagine alternative futures that support the capacities of humans to partner with the environment instead of promoting extractive relationalities? We consider ecotones to be a generative concept that creates new questions about co-occupation, coexistence, and conflict and helps to understand the shifting conditions of human and more-than-human relations.
