By Stephen J. Pyne (NHC Fellow, 1979–80; 2002–03) Fire is a defining element in Canadian land and life. With few exceptions, Canada’s forests and prairies have evolved with fire. Its peoples have exploited fire and sought to protect themselves from its excesses, and since Confederation, the country has devised various institutions to connect fire and … Continued
By Christopher C. Sellers (NHC Fellow, 1999–00) Although suburb-building created major environmental problems, Christopher Sellers demonstrates that the environmental movement originated within suburbs–not just in response to unchecked urban sprawl. Drawn to the countryside as early as the late nineteenth century, new suburbanites turned to taming the wildness of their surroundings. They cultivated a fondness … Continued
Edited by Shepard Krech, III (Trustee; NHC Fellow, 1993–94; 2000–01), John Robert McNeill, and Carolyn Merchant In order to address today's global environmental challenges, it is important to understand them within the context of humankind's influences on its environment throughout the ages. The Encyclopedia of World Environmental History provides much needed explanation of urgent social and environmental … Continued
By Thomas Miller Klubock (NHC Fellow, 2005–06) In La Frontera, Thomas Miller Klubock offers a pioneering social and environmental history of southern Chile, exploring the origins of today’s forestry "miracle" in Chile. Although Chile's forestry boom is often attributed to the free-market policies of the Pinochet dictatorship, La Frontera shows that forestry development began in the early twentieth … Continued
By Ellen Stroud (NHC Fellow, 2009–10) The once denuded northeastern United States is now a region of trees. Nature Next Door argues that the growth of cities, the construction of parks, the transformation of farming, the boom in tourism, and changes in the timber industry have together brought about a return of northeastern forests. Although historians and … Continued
By Stephen J. Pyne (NHC Fellow, 1979–80; 2002–03) "Painting, architecture, politics, even gardening and golf—all have their critics and commentators," observes Stephen Pyne. "Fire does not." Aside from news reports on fire disasters, most writing about fire appears in government reports and scientific papers—and in journalism that has more in common with the sports page than … Continued
By Shepard Krech, III (Trustee; NHC Fellow, 1993–94; 2000–01) Before the massive environmental change wrought by the European colonization of the South, hundreds of species of birds filled the region's flyways in immeasurable numbers. Before disease, war, and displacement altered the South's earliest human landscape, Native Americans hunted and ate birds and made tools and … Continued
By Nancy Langston (NHC Fellow, 1996–97) Water and land interrelate in surprising and ambiguous ways, and riparian zones, where land and water meet, have effects far outside their boundaries. Using the Malheur Basin in southeastern Oregon as a case study, this intriguing and nuanced book explores the ways people have envisioned boundaries between water and … Continued
Who studies roads as mini-environments? Very few scholars do, in fact almost none. Highway engineers know a great deal about engineering roads but admit to knowing little about their ecological and cultural effects. But look again. Every road is a sort of ecosystem that ecologists are only just now starting to study. Paved roads transformed … Continued
With fire, humans claim a unique ecological niche: this is what we do that no other creature does. We apply and withhold it according to social institutions, cultural norms, perceptions of how we see ourselves in nature. Different people have created distinctive fire regimes, as they have distinctive literatures and architectures. In this way fire … Continued