conservation

This essay charts and reflects on developments in the environmental history of the Americas over the past decade, arguing that the field has become more inclusive and complex as it tackles a broader spectrum of physical environments and moves beyond an emphasis on destructiveness and loss as the essence of relations between humans and the rest of the natural world.

This article argues that during the interwar period in Australia, contrary to assertions that social, political and economic pressures stifled environmental debate, there were a wide range of interests pushing for conservation, the development of National Parks and limits on development schemes.

While many of Marsh’s novel conservation insights were universal and true for citizens of all countries, his key warnings about degradation were characteristically American—having been interpreted, produced, and packaged by an American for Americans.

This article challenges the premise that Marsh was unique in laying out an ecological justification for conservation. It suggests that these principles were common currency in early American natural history.

This paper argues that Marsh was not simply influenced by American versus European contrasts in environmental change, nor was his work based only on conservation ideas, being influenced also by the examples of acclimatisation movements within the British empire settlement colonies.

This paper examines the reception of Marsh’s ideas in New Zealand in the 1870s along with the ideas of the largely-forgotten Titus Smith about human impacts upon the vegetation of Nova Scotia in the nineteenth century, prompting reflection upon the relevance of tales of environmental understanding from two colonial realms for the practice of environmental history in the twenty-first century.

This study examines environmental work by the ornithologist and conservationist Perrine Moncrieff between 1920 and 1980.

This article examines the complex history of the grey seal problem in Britain since 1914.

Based on a review of international conservation literature, three inter-related themes are explored: a) the emergence in the 1860–1910 period of new worldviews on the human-nature relationship in western culture; b) the emergence of new conservation values and the translation of these into public policy goals; and 3) the adoption of these policies by the Netherlands Indies government.

This paper explores the ideology of forest conservation and the evolution of silviculture in the post bellum Cape, as well as the socio-economic impact of these policies, focusing in particular on African populations residing in the Eastern Cape and the impoverished woodcutters from the Knysna Forests.