An introduction to seven articles—five of which are written by current doctoral or recent postdoctoral students—that explore ideas, themes, and methods relating to research in the field in New Zealand.
Three species of the family Mustelidae (stoats, weasels and ferrets) were initially introduced into New Zealand (and granted statutory protection) in an attempt to control a burgeoning rabbit population…
While many saw the landscape transformation which followed the European settlement of New Zealand as firmly within the prevailing ‘doctrine of progress,’ this transformation was viewed with misgivings by others, who observed how deforestation led to erosion and floods, and advocated more prudent forest management.
Using New Zealand as a case study, Beattie demonstrates the strength of settler beliefs in the connections between existing environments, environmental transformation, and their own health.
This article, using colonial New Zealand as a case-study, and integrating environment, empire and religion into a single analytic framework, contends that Christian and environmental discourses interpenetrated and interacted in irreducibly complex ways during the long nineteenth century.
The importation providing the focus of this paper is that of members of the family Mustelidae, specifically weasels, ferrets and stoats.
This paper examines the reception of Marsh’s ideas in New Zealand in the 1870s along with the ideas of the largely-forgotten Titus Smith about human impacts upon the vegetation of Nova Scotia in the nineteenth century, prompting reflection upon the relevance of tales of environmental understanding from two colonial realms for the practice of environmental history in the twenty-first century.
The author’s own research into the early years of European settlement plots an evolving cultural engagement with the indigenous environment, and in particular with forest or ‘bush,’ which ran parallel with its extensive replacement by agroecosystems.
New Zealand’s literature (1890–1925) offers a wealth of information for the environmental historian that is unparalleled by most other countries.
This study examines environmental work by the ornithologist and conservationist Perrine Moncrieff between 1920 and 1980.
