{"title":"From Reintroduction to Rewilding: Autonomy, Agency and the Messy Liberation of the European Bison","authors":"M. Vasile","doi":"10.3197/096734022x16552219786618","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3197/096734022x16552219786618","url":null,"abstract":"In the age of the sixth extinction, human interventions to save endangered species have become bigger, bolder and costlier than ever. Yet, policies of species conservation have also favoured non-intervention, furthering the idea that humans have tampered too much with wildness and wilderness. This article examines a reintroduction of European Bison (Bison bonasus, also known as wisent) into the South-Western Carpathians of Romania in the 2010s. It compares it with longer-term recovery efforts in the Białowieża forest in Poland and reveals how interventions and non-interventions have been practised in the conservation history of this species. I trace the complexities of lived reintroduction processes, both contemporary and historical. I show that practices of recovering European bison have (slowly) shifted away from a controlling approach to reintroductions inspired by livestock breeding, and towards a hands-off rewilding approach. Yet, entangled human–wildlife histories, in which management has been paramount, challenge contemporary non-intervention rewilding paradigms that advocate for the autonomy and agency of wildlife. Reintroduction managers walk a fine line between intervention and relinquishment, care and containment, permanently recalibrating human–animal relationships.","PeriodicalId":45574,"journal":{"name":"Environment and History","volume":"43 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2023-10-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"90725956","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Ottoman Lakes and Fluid Landscapes: Environing, Wetlands and Conservation in the Marmara Lake Basin, Circa 1550–1900","authors":"Semih Çelik, C. Luke, C. Roosevelt","doi":"10.3197/096734022x16470180631460","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3197/096734022x16470180631460","url":null,"abstract":"The study of Ottoman lakes and wetlands from the perspective of management and conservation is an emerging field. Scholars have explored Ottoman strategies for managing agricultural and extractive landscapes, yet detailed investigation of socio-political responses to dynamic wetlands, particularly during periods of drastic climate shifts, requires deeper investigation. Our research on wetlands and lakes moves from the purview of waqfs (pious foundations) to the emergence of the Ottoman Public Debt Administration (OPDA). By examining the shifting perspectives of institutional authority and community responses to it from the early modern period to the nineteenth century, we discuss the complexities of wetland management in the Marmara Lake Basin within the sancak of Saruhan (contemporary Manisa) in western Anatolia. We argue that intimate knowledge of this specific ecosystem played a critical role in mitigating attempts at reclamation and land grabbing and ultimately in developing legal structures of and policies for Ottoman conservation strategies. We situate our discussion within the paradigm of environing made possible by detailed longue-durée archival narratives; these micro-histories afford a dynamic perspective into non-linear responses to ecological and political changes and provide a local lens into the scalar impacts of human agency.","PeriodicalId":45574,"journal":{"name":"Environment and History","volume":"141 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2023-10-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"80560197","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
ROBERT G. W. KIRK, NEIL PEMBERTON, THIBAUT SERVIANT-FINE
{"title":"The Birth of Hirudiculture: Parisian Medicine, Leech Farming and the Transformation of Marshland in Nineteenth-Century France","authors":"ROBERT G. W. KIRK, NEIL PEMBERTON, THIBAUT SERVIANT-FINE","doi":"10.3828/096734022x16384451127384","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3828/096734022x16384451127384","url":null,"abstract":"This article examines health, human–animal relationships and environments within nineteenth-century France, focusing on Hirudo medicinalis , the medicinal leech. Drawing upon medical, environmental and ‘more than human histories’, we investigate how a ‘mania’ for bloodletting in the wake of Parisian medicine and what Michel Foucault has characterised as the ‘birth of the clinic’ produced a trade in leeches that threatened to push the species to extinction. While urban-educated naturalists, physicians, pharmacists, merchants and politicians worried over the scarcity of what was widely considered a commodity of national economic and medical importance, rural ‘leech gatherers’ quietly developed ways to breed leeches artificially. The outcome was hirudiculture: the farming of leeches on an industrial scale. We argue that the birth of hirudiculture was more than a practical and commercial response to the needs of medicine; it reflected and embodied similar shifts in knowledge and reveals the complex and diverse ways in which rural and urban environments, human and non-human relationships, have shaped each other in the pursuit of shared visions of health.","PeriodicalId":45574,"journal":{"name":"Environment and History","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135944423","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"From Reintroduction to Rewilding: Autonomy, Agency and the Messy Liberation of the European Bison","authors":"MONICA VASILE","doi":"10.3828/096734022x16552219786618","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3828/096734022x16552219786618","url":null,"abstract":"In the age of the sixth extinction, human interventions to save endangered species have become bigger, bolder and costlier than ever. Yet, policies of species conservation have also favoured non-intervention, furthering the idea that humans have tampered too much with wildness and wilderness. This article examines a reintroduction of European Bison ( Bison bonasus , also known as wisent) into the South-Western Carpathians of Romania in the 2010s. It compares it with longer-term recovery efforts in the Białowieża forest in Poland and reveals how interventions and non-interventions have been practised in the conservation history of this species. I trace the complexities of lived reintroduction processes, both contemporary and historical. I show that practices of recovering European bison have (slowly) shifted away from a controlling approach to reintroductions inspired by livestock breeding, and towards a hands-off rewilding approach. Yet, entangled human–wildlife histories, in which management has been paramount, challenge contemporary non-intervention rewilding paradigms that advocate for the autonomy and agency of wildlife. Reintroduction managers walk a fine line between intervention and relinquishment, care and containment, permanently recalibrating human–animal relationships.","PeriodicalId":45574,"journal":{"name":"Environment and History","volume":"11 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135944421","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"ESEH Notepad: Reflections on Legacies, Failures, and Successes","authors":"M. Armiero","doi":"10.3197/096734023x16869924234796","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3197/096734023x16869924234796","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":45574,"journal":{"name":"Environment and History","volume":"35 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2023-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"85511501","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Sean Nixon, Passions for Birds: Science, Sentiment and Sport","authors":"A. I. Queiroz","doi":"10.3197/096734023x16869924234660","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3197/096734023x16869924234660","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":45574,"journal":{"name":"Environment and History","volume":"17 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2023-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"81643285","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Victor Seow, <i>Carbon Technocracy: Energy Regimes in Modern East Asia</i>","authors":"Clarence Hatton-Proulx","doi":"10.3197/096734023x16869924234778","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3197/096734023x16869924234778","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":45574,"journal":{"name":"Environment and History","volume":"66 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135718237","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Fei Cheng, Modern Chinese Migration and the Socio-Ecological Transformations in Australia and New Zealand","authors":"Shaoming Duan","doi":"10.3197/096734023x16869924234769","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3197/096734023x16869924234769","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":45574,"journal":{"name":"Environment and History","volume":"17 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2023-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"78468157","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Raf de Bont, Nature's Diplomats: Science, Internationalism, and Preservation, 1920-1960","authors":"Caleb Pennington","doi":"10.3197/096734023x16788762163641","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3197/096734023x16788762163641","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":45574,"journal":{"name":"Environment and History","volume":"118 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2023-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"80152248","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}