Environment and History (journal)

This article examines of the daily journals covering the first decade of Dutch VOC occupation of South Africa’s Cape of Good Hope, and the origins of European exploration, exploitation and conservation of natural resources at the Cape.

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 paper looks at early experimentation with tree planting in Canterbury and its encouragement, which predated attempts elsewhere in New Zealand.

While modern penal institutions exist, putatively, to transform the people held within them into law-abiding citizens, it is not generally recognised that since the early twentieth century, Australian and New Zealand penal systems have also sought to transform ‘wastelands’ into ordered, productive landscapes.

The forces that started formal forestry education in Australia and New Zealand from 1910 and 1924 respectively are traced.

The magnitude of this two-way trade created domestic timber shortages on both sides of the Tasman Sea, and stimulated conservation efforts from the early years of the twentieth century.

Taking a long-term approach following one family of Pakeha through four generations of interaction with the Hauraki Plains wetlands, this study argues that the environmental transformation that happened there was less a question of culture than of a specific time and place (context of civilisation).

This paper traces the dynamic of a rapid transition from forest to grass on Banks Peninsula, South Island, New Zealand, from 1850 to 1900, as well as the subsequent partial transition back towards forest.

This article addresses the direct impacts of war on the physical landscape and why the magnitude of disturbance has increased significantly over the past century.

During the last 50–100 years, large numbers of species associated with semi-natural grassland have declined. One reason for this is the considerable reduction of grassland area. Another possible explanation is the loss of historical management practices.