This paper explores the social and political factors that historically limited the national nature conservation movement’s influence in Japan, and outlines recent developments which may lead to both a greater emphasis on the greater participation of non-governmental organisations in the political process, and a greater emphasis on the protection of the natural environment.
This paper explores the history of trees and scientific forestry in South Africa and how it changed southern African hydrologies.
The aim of the paper is to understand our predecessors’ understanding of their environmental predicament and any contingent steps they may have taken, in order to put in context the contingencies of our own understanding.
Four centuries of colonial extraction lead to severe ecological degradation of the forests and soils of the Atlantic region of Brazil. This article discusses the management of soil fertility and the relationship between agricultural practices and forest stands based on agricultural manuals published in Brazil over a period of more than two centuries.
Recent research on Africa has emphasised conservation and trypanosomiasis control as the major factors, which first motivated colonial officials and scientists to embark on forestry preservation and bush clearing policies. This paper contends that in Chepalungu, Kenya, forestry preservation and bush clearing were implemented with the objective to create a racially and tribally segregated landscape.
This paper explores imperial forestry networks by focusing on a single individual, Sir David Hutchins, who spent the final years of his life in New Zealand extolling the need for scientific forest management in the Dominion.
This article examines the conflicts behind the scenes, within the AAS, between the AAS and the Snowy Mountains Hydro-Electric Authority (SMA), and within the SMA. It argues that the scientists’ conflict with the SMA over plans for the summit area of Mount Kosciusko (now Kosciuszko) not only established ecology as a scientific basis for conservation thinking: It foreshadowed the current idea that management of a healthy country involves recognition of the links between aesthetic and scientific thinking.
This study reviews the main changes of the vegetation and fauna in northern Portugal during the Holocene, using literature from palaeoecology, archaeology, history, writings from travellers and naturalists, maps of agriculture and forestry and expert consultation.
An introduction to the seven papers in this issue of Environment and History. The papers are based on presentations to the seventh conference of the Australian Forest History Society, held early in 2007 in Christchurch, New Zealand.
The introduction to Australia Revisited, which provides an opportunity to consider the developments in environmental history over the past decade, and reflect on how Australian environmental historiography sits in relation to that of the rest of the world.
