The emergence of native fauna as a theme in conservation is used to explore the changing relationship between nature and human culture in late nineteenth century and early to mid-twentieth century Australia.
Content Index
This paper traces the history of human-environment interactions in the Pacific Islands during the last millennium, focusing on three main periods: the Little Climatic Optimum, the Little Ice Age, and, in greatest detail, the transition around AD 1300 between the two.
The introduction of histories of nature in the late eighteenth century posed the epistemological problem of how to bring the diversity of empirical laws into theoretical unity…
Mention of the island nation of Madagascar conjures up images of exotic nature, rampant deforestation, and destructive erosion. Popular descriptions of the island frequently include phrases such as ‘ecological mayhem’ or ‘barren landscape.’
The forest area in Switzerland has been expanding for more than one hundred years, after a long period of contraction culminating in an apparently accelerated phase of deforestation in the first half of the nineteenth century…
The paper provides a case study of the range of preoccupations which the statutory planner, agricultural interests and mineral developer brought to bear on the conflict arising from the early twentieth-century development of the Yorkshire ‘concealed’ coalfield.
Despite the devastating impact that flooding, drought and fire associated with the 1982/3 and 1997/8 El Nino events had on both the natural environment and human society, there is little information on the persistence or impact similar events may have had in the ‘deeper’ past…
The ‘received wisdom’ is that bushes result from overgrazing, displace the climax community, and lower carrying capacity. In contrast, this paper is informed by non-equilibrium ecological and range management science, as well as recent challenges to degradationist interpretations about environmental change in Africa.
The article analyses the trajectory of a group of Brazilian intellectuals from 1786 to 1810, who inaugurated a systematic critique of the environmental damage caused by colonial economy in Brazil, especially forest destruction and soil erosion.
This paper employs the case of India’s forest administration to illustrate how the political-economic environment, authoritarianism and internal culture have militated against forest conservation and the incorporation of rural interests in forest management.