Aimee L. Schmidt and Douglas A. Clark examine the response of local people and agencies to a polar bear-inflicted human injury in Churchill, Manitoba, Canada, showing how human-bear conflict is often widely publicized and controversial, and how it shapes public expectations around bear management.
Owain Jones, a Professor of Environmental Humanities at Bath Spa University, offers ideas and resources about environmental humanities in this blog.
In episode 56 of Nature’s Past, a podcast on Canadian environmental history, Sean Kheraj joins Joanna Dean and Christabelle Sethna to discuss their new book Animal Metropolis: Histories of Human-Animal Relations in Urban Canada and, more broadly, the history of animals and cities.
Chrulew’s response to the Papal Encyclical Laudato si’ for the Special Commentary section discusses the appointment of Pope Francis in 2013, and particularly his call to shift from addressing only Catholics to caring for every living entity on Earth.
Lestel, Bussolini, and Chrulew present a bi-constructivist approach to the study of animal life, opposed to the realist-Cartesian paradigm in which most ethology operates.
Andrew Whitehouse considers the semiotics of listening to birds in the Anthropocene by drawing on Kohn’s recent arguments on the semiotics of more-than-human relations and Ingold’s understanding of the world as a meshwork, and comparing the work of Bernie Krause with responses to the the Listening to Birds project.
In this article, Monica Vasile discusses the recent reintroduction of bison in the Romanian Carpathians, and the surrounding local narratives and unresolved tensions.
McKenzie F. Johnson, Krithi K. Karanth, and Erika Weinthal evaluate compensation as a mitigation policy for human-wildlife conflict around four protected areas in Rajasthan (Jaisamand, Sitamata, Phulwari, and Kumbhalgarh), finding efforts insensitive to local livelihoods.
Etienne Sabatier and Charlie Huveneers examine media portrayals of human-shark encounters between 2011 and 2013 in the state of Western Australia, arguing that negative framing by media feeds public anxiety.
James Hatley’s article for the ‘Living Lexicon for the Environmental Humanities’ section discusses the horizon of the ‘Aion’ (as formulated in the four geological eons), and the fact that every species is linked in genetic kinship.
