While many saw the landscape transformation which followed the European settlement of New Zealand as firmly within the prevailing ‘doctrine of progress,’ this transformation was viewed with misgivings by others, who observed how deforestation led to erosion and floods, and advocated more prudent forest management.
This paper explores how economics, technology, politics and ecology interacted in causing ups and downs in the production of traditional iron making, and its subsequent decline in the early twentieth century.
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.
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.
The author argues in this paper that the basis of these cattlemen’s use of fire to manage the land was their understanding of the practices during the ‘pioneering’ period of European settlement and of Aboriginal people before that.
Spanish dehesas, the most extensive wood pastures in Mediterranean Europe, are a vivid example for demonstrating that the impact of rural communities on forests has not always been a bad thing.
An essay review of books by Arun Agrawal, Peder Anker, David Arnold, Gregory A. Barton, Richard Drayton, and S. Ravi. Rajan.
