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Biodiversity Commons

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Full-Text Articles in Biodiversity

Conversations With Gunanurang, Lawrence Smith Feb 2016

Conversations With Gunanurang, Lawrence Smith

Landscapes: the Journal of the International Centre for Landscape and Language

Gunanurang (the Ord River) nurtured some of the original Australians productively for millennia. In less than 150 years, their relationship with the river valley and surrounding land was almost destroyed by the effects of the east Kimberley cattle industry commenced in the 1880s. The biological and archaeological surveys before and during the filling of the Lake Argyle dam were a belated attempt to understand what was being lost in the way of ecosystems and aboriginal sites. This short essay encapsulates the impact of the pastoral industry in the Ord valley.


Persons As Plants: Ecopsychology And The Return To The Dream Of Nature, Monica Gagliano Mar 2013

Persons As Plants: Ecopsychology And The Return To The Dream Of Nature, Monica Gagliano

Landscapes: the Journal of the International Centre for Landscape and Language

Abstract. In this article, I examine human-plant perceptions and interactions in terms of developing a new perspective on the perception and the actions of people towards plants. By combining my scientific understanding of the biological world and my own experiences working with plant shamans, storytellers and mystics from around the world, I engage with the idea that the hierarchical structure by which Western science defines the variety of life forms as ‘primitive’ or ‘more evolved’ is at the root of the current environmental crisis and I argue that the solution to it rests in a change of this very perspective.