Declaring nature reserves has long been considered a good strategy to preserve wilderness and achieve conservation goals. However, reservation often comes paired with tourism, which in turn destroys natural landscapes. In the case of the Stirling Range National Park, complete preservation ignored the relationship between the landscape and the indigenous Noongar people. Using the entangled environmental history of the Stirling Range National Park as an example, Andrea Gaynor shows that reservation does not necessarily ensure preservation and that this idea is part of a dualistic paradigm in which nature and culture are completely separate. Instead, Gaynor concludes, new means are necessary to protect both nature and humans on a bioregional scale.
DOI: doi.org/10.5282/rcc/7911