Castorcene Films
1928: Beaver People. Canada. https://www.nfb.ca/film/beaver_people/embed/player/ 1930: Beaver Family (16min). Canada. A short silent film portraying Grey Owl, the famous conservationist, and a family of beavers who would come when he called and take food from his hand without the slightest fear. The film is set in Riding Mountain National Park, Manitoba. https://www.nfb.ca/film/beaver_family/embed/player/ 1942: Fur Country.... Continue Reading →
White Animals: Racializing Sheep and Beavers in Tierra del Fuego
Mara Dicenta (2021) White animals: racializing sheep and beavers in the Argentinian Tierra del Fuego, Latin American and Caribbean Ethnic Studies, DOI: 10.1080/17442222.2021.2015140 Download Article here:
Worlding the end
Mara Dicenta & Gonzalo Correa (2021) Worlding the end: A story of colonial and scientific anxieties over beavers' vitalities in the Castorcene, Tapuya: Latin American Science, Technology and Society, DOI: 10.1080/25729861.2021.1973290 This article examines a technoscientific project for eradicating theNorth American beaver in Tierra del Fuego (TDF), an austral region known as“The End of the World.”Introduced from Canada into TDF... Continue Reading →
Bio-Social Invasions in southern Patagonia
Archibald, J.L., Anderson, C.B., Dicenta, M. et al. The relevance of social imaginaries to understand and manage biological invasions in southern Patagonia. Biol Invasions 22, 3307-3323 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10530-020-02325-2 Here, we studied how terrestrial and freshwater vertebrate species assemblages in Tierra del Fuego (TDF) have been co-constructed between humans and nature. To analyze how socio-historical processes interact with biological invasions,... Continue Reading →
Indigenous Fire Stewardship in the American West
by Percy Zimering In recent years, the frequency and intensity of wildfires in the Western United States of America has been increasing at an alarming rate. Changes to the most acceptable forms of fire and forest management are one factor that has led to larger and more destructive wildfires, which can be a danger to... Continue Reading →
Coral Reef Conservation: Differing Perspectives and the Way Forward
By: Cate Jones Globally, coral reefs are experiencing high levels of bleaching and biodiversity loss. For example, the Great Barrier Reef experienced a massive bleaching event between 2015 and 2017 that left half of the corals dead (Braverman, 2019). According to many scientists, coral reefs are threatened by the Anthropocene, a proposed geological epoch that... Continue Reading →
Hostile HOAs: Exploring discrimination & wildness through private communities
By: Emma Henry Introduction: Homeowners Associations (HOAs) are a byproduct of the evolution of gated communities throughout global history. HOA neighborhoods are typically private, suburban neighborhoods that help maintain property values, ensure various standards are met, and provide various services such as landscaping, building maintenance, and operation of shared spaces. Edward Blakely and Mary Gail... Continue Reading →
The Hidden Markets
By Kieran Loftis Expectations vs what reality? i When we go to farmers markets, what do we expect? We expect local products – we want the food from farmers markets to be grown/produced nearby, as it makes us feel as if we are being more sustainable by purchasing produce and other goods that take much... Continue Reading →
Following Brick Roads: An Observation of Desire Paths on the William & Mary Campus
By: Evelyn Hall Dorothea and her friends take an infamous journey to The Emerald City in the classic story of "The Wizard of Oz". They have a whole musical number about following brick roads and they face negative externalities when the statement gets ignored. I never knew just how important this motto was until I... Continue Reading →
The False Promise of Trash Cans
By: Nhu-Lan Pho Image of Overflowing Trash Can at the Sunken Garden. Photo by Author. Sitting outside on one of the many benches that lined the Sunken Garden, the main quad at The College of William and Mary, I saw many people taking advantage of the abnormally warm November afternoon. I saw students taking a... Continue Reading →
Trash or Pollution? Interactions Between People and Trash Cans at William & Mary
By: Katherine Kivimaki Imagine you are walking through a building at lunchtime, your food in one hand and beverage in another. You’ve just unwrapped your straw, the wrapper now perilously balanced between your middle and ring finger for lack of a third hand. You walk outside and come across two trash cans: the left one... Continue Reading →
In Living Memory: A Study of the Memorial to the Enslaved at William & Mary
By Tara Vasanth ©Prakash Patel. All rights reserved. I am studying student activity near and at the university’s newly-erected Hearth: Memorial to the Enslaved. Monuments are powerful symbols that, at first glance, seem frozen in time. Still, they can elicit varying emotions from people and their meanings can evolve as their surroundings change—proving that they... Continue Reading →
A Bridge of Trees: Conflict Between Barred and Spotted Owls
By: Alexander Ferentinos https://youtu.be/xgKE4Knihrc The Northern Spotted Owl is an iconically famous, or perhaps infamous, endangered species that ranges from California to British Columbia. The first controversy involving this species was originally back in the 1990s, when its protection caused the logging industry to claim that it would be severely impacted (Satchell, M. (June 25,... Continue Reading →