Peter Holland’s recently published Home in the Howling Wilderness is a valuable addition to the repository of literature and knowledge relating to New Zealand’s environmental history.
Holland, Professor Emeritus of Geography at the University of Otago, focuses on the first half century of organised settlement (1840 to 1890) of the lower South Island of New Zealand.
He has meticulously researched the ways in which early settlers learned about, and responded to the challenges of this unfamiliar environment, drawing on farmers’ dairies, letter books, ledgers, newspaper articles and other available sources. (more…)
May 11, 2013
The effect of personal memory on environmental consciousness
Posted by envirohistorynz under commentary | Tags: afforestation, Cyclone Bola, deforestation, Environmental History, erosion, farming, floods, hill-country, New Zealand, storm |[2] Comments
One of many scenes of devastation in the aftermath of Cyclone Bola.
I have often wondered why I am so interested in the link between deforestation, flooding and erosion. I put it down to my love of forested environments, and therefore my interest in the history of these environments. But it has occurred to me that it is perhaps more than this – that it relates also to personal memory, of an event in the environmental history of my lifetime.
That event was Cyclone Bola, which hit the east coast of the North Island in March 1988, when I was a teenager. (more…)
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