perceptions of the environment

Dividing the landscape: production vs scenery

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Nowhere tells more starkly of the duality in our relationship towards the natural environment than Taranaki: the dichotomy of the “productive” and “scenic” landscape.

Taranaki is known throughout the world for the almost perfectly conical mountain which rises up through what are otherwise the flattest of plains. This mountain and the region was made famous by its being used as the backdrop for the film, “The Last Samurai”. Indeed, New Zealand was chosen to shoot the movie due to the mountain’s remarkable resemblance to Japan’s Mount Fuji – also a perfectly conical mountain that stands alone on the plains of central Japan. Continue reading →

Forest clearance in 1880s New Zealand – the views of Mrs Robert Wilson

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In 1962, A.G.S. Bradfield published “The Precious Years”, a sequel to his earlier book “Forgotten Days”; both books recounting stories of the “pioneering days of Palmerston North and Districts in the Manawatu”. These are charming little books, in which Bradfield draws on first-hand memories of older Manawatu residents, giving it an authenticity and poignancy that would not be achievable today, nearly half a century on. Continue reading →

Mountains, bears and conservation in Japan and New Zealand

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Mountains, bears and conservation in New Zealand and Japan are topics featured in an interview with envirohistory NZ founder, Catherine Knight on the latest episode of Exploring Environmental History.

From Exploring Environmental History: “On the podcast Cath briefly talks about the origins and topics of the blog before exploring her work on Japanese environmental history. Continue reading →

From “swamps” to “wetlands”

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Through time, not only has our environment been transformed, but also the way we perceive it and the words we use to describe it. No example illustrates this better than the “swamp” to “wetland” transformation. When European settlement of New Zealand began in earnest about 150 years ago, about 670,000 hectares of freshwater wetlands existed. By the 20th century, this had been reduced to 100,000 hectares. Continue reading →