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A highly readable review of some 700 years of avian exploitation.
An illustrated narrative that interweaves the shifting seasons of the Northwest Coast with the experiences of a conservation biologist surveying thousands of kilometres of open ocean in order to uncover the complex relationships between humans, marine birds and the realities of contemporary biodiversity. At Sea with the Marine Birds of the Raincoast combines the natural and human histories of Pacific Northwest marine birds with Caroline Fox's personal story of her life as a conservation scientist. Accompanied by vivid images, drawings and both archival and modern photography, the narrative follows the author as she sails the coast, documenting marine bird diversity and seasonal shifts in com...
This book applies an economic and environmental perspective to the history of landscape and the rural economy, highlighting their inter-connections through specific case studies. After explaining how the author made his discoveries and when they started, it analyses relations between documentary and landscape evidence. It is based on exceptional first-hand observation of a dozen sites and close consideration of topics in the ecological and economic history of southern England. They range from reclaiming chalk down-land, occupying low-lying heaths and reconstructing parkland, to wool-stapling and the manufacture of gunstocks for the African slave trade. Additional themes include the tension b...
Places are today subject to contrary tendencies. They lose some functions, which may scale up to fewer more centralized places, or down to numerous more dispersed places, and they gain other functions, which are scaling up and down from other places. This prompts premature prophecies of the abolition of space and the obsolescence of place. At the same time, a growing literature testifies to the persistence of place as an incorrigible aspect of human experience, identity, and morality. Place is a common ground for thought and action, a community of experienced particulars that avoids solipsism and universalism. It draws us into the philosophy of the ordinary, into familiarity as a form of knowledge, into the wisdom of proximity. Each of these essays offers a philosophy of place, and reminds us that such philosophies ultimately decide how we make, use, and understand places, whether as accidents, instruments, or fields of care.
This attractively illustrated book reviews the effects of agricultural development on bird populations in Britain. Examining modern farmland as a bird habitat, it explains the changes, both in habitat structure and in available resources, that have occurred as a result of mechanisation and use of agrochemicals. Farmland bird communities are described, and their composition related to farm structure and land use. Based extensively on empirical data extracted from the British Trust for Ornithology's Common Bird Census and from nest histories recorded in the BTO'S Nest Record Scheme, the book presents an important analysis of the position of agricultural bird populations under modern farming systems. Particular examination has been made of the impact of changing methods, rotations and crops, which have been underestimated in the past. Resulting from the co-operation between a professional ornithologist and a working cereal farmer, this book provides an objective and informed view of the impact of British agriculture on bird populations.
Table of contents
This volume brings together the best of T. C. Smout's recent articles and contributions to books and journals on the topic of environmental history.
At the outset of the twentieth century, the management of the British countryside was the preserve of powerful aristocratic estates, the ground worked by labourers toiling in time-honoured tradition. Scattering Plenty tells of the birth of modern farming through wartime, post-war reconstruction and four decades embroiled in European countryside policies. It follows the stories of key figures driving change; as the face of the countryside evolves, it charts their fight for nature and natural beauty, and traces the gradual control that the state and democratic agents had on the land. Their stories evoke the landscape of Britain, and take the reader inside the corridors of power in Whitehall and Brussels, where farmers and environmentalists jostled for influence. Who were the people scattering plenty across our land, and who made the modern countryside? In Scattering Plenty, you'll gain a deeper appreciation for the profound legacy of agriculture in shaping Britain's past, present and future, as Jim Dixon delves into the lives of those who shaped the modern countryside and made space for the deeply rooted bucolic haven that millions enjoy today.
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The nature of rural life and food production is changing dramatically but remains overlooked by the major media. The Invisible Farm provies the first substantial accounting of this problem, addressing issues such as habitat destruction, loss of biodiversity, pollution, and soil degradation. Pawlick supplies readers with frightening examples of events taking place worldwide without public awareness. As these environmental problems get worse, farm reporters are disappearing from newspapers and television. Rural news and environmental issues are increasingly neglected. Pawlick argues that this lack of interest is partly due to less agricultural journalism training at universities. As a result, massive changes in farming, distribution, and production continue unabated while the consuming public is left uninformed. A Burnham Publishers book