To see accurate pricing, please choose your delivery country.
 
 
United States
£ GBP
All Shops

British Wildlife

8 issues per year 84 pages per issue Subscription only

British Wildlife is the leading natural history magazine in the UK, providing essential reading for both enthusiast and professional naturalists and wildlife conservationists. Published eight times a year, British Wildlife bridges the gap between popular writing and scientific literature through a combination of long-form articles, regular columns and reports, book reviews and letters.

Subscriptions from £33 per year

Conservation Land Management

4 issues per year 44 pages per issue Subscription only

Conservation Land Management (CLM) is a quarterly magazine that is widely regarded as essential reading for all who are involved in land management for nature conservation, across the British Isles. CLM includes long-form articles, events listings, publication reviews, new product information and updates, reports of conferences and letters.

Subscriptions from £26 per year
Academic & Professional Books  History & Other Humanities  Environmental History

The Rise of Conservation in South Africa Settlers, Livestock, and the Environment 1770-1950

By: William Beinart
425 pages, 20 B/w illus, 13 figs, 3 tabs, 3 maps
The Rise of Conservation in South Africa
Click to have a closer look
Select version
  • The Rise of Conservation in South Africa ISBN: 9780199541225 Paperback May 2008 Not in stock: Usually dispatched within 6 days
    £59.99
    #173209
  • The Rise of Conservation in South Africa ISBN: 9780199261512 Hardback Nov 2003 Not in stock: Usually dispatched within 2-3 weeks
    £225.00
    #137927
Selected version: £59.99
About this book Contents Customer reviews Related titles

About this book

&i;The Rise of Conservation in South Africa&o; is an innovative contribution to the growing comparative field of environmental history. Beinart's major theme is the history of conservationist ideas in South Africa. He focuses largely on the livestock farming districts of the semi-arid Karoo and the neighbouring eastern Cape grasslands, conquered and occupied by white settlers before the middle of the nineteenth century.

The Cape, like Australia, became a major exporter of wool. Vast numbers of sheep flooded its plains and rapidly transformed its fragile natural pastures. Cattle also remained vital for ox-wagon transport and internal markets. Concerns about environmental degradation reached a crescendo in the early decades of the twentieth century, when a Dust Bowl of kinds was predicted, and formed the basis for far-reaching state intervention aimed at conserving natural resources. Soil erosion, overstocking, and water supplies stood alongside wildlife protection as the central preoccupations of South African conservationists.

The book traces debates about environmental degradation in successive eras of South African history. It offers a reinterpretation of South Africa's economic development, and of aspects of the Cape colonial and South African states. It expands the understanding of English-speaking South Africans and their role both as farmers and as protagonists of conservationist ideas. The book is also a contribution to the history of science, exploring the way in which new scientific knowledge shaped environmental understanding and formed a significant element in settler intellectual life. It paints an evocative picture of the post-conquest Karoo, analysing the impact of self-consciously progressive farmers and officials in their attempts to secure private property, curtail transhumance and kraaling, control animal diseases, enhance water supplies, eradicate jackals, destroy alien weeds such as the prickly pear, and combat drought. It concludes by analysing conservationist interventions in the African areas, and discussing evidence for a stabilization of environmental conditions over the longer term.

Contents

Preface and Acknowledgements; Lists of Figures, Illustrations, Tables, and Maps; Introduction: Livestock Farming and Environmental Regulation at the Cape; 1. Scientific Travellers, Colonists, and Africans: Chains of Knowledge and the Cape Vernacular, 1770-1850; 2. Defining the Problems: Colonial Science and the Origins of Conservation at the Cape 1770-1860; 3. Fire, Vegetation Change, and Pastures 1860-1880; 4. Vets, Viruses, and Environmentalism in the 1870s and 1880s; 5. Water, Irrigation, and the State 1880-1930; 6. The Night of the Jackal: Sheep, Pastures, and Predators 1890-1930; 7. Drought, Conservation, and Nationalism: the Career of H. S. du Toit 1900-1940; 8. Prickly Pear in the Cape: Useful Plants and Invaders in the Livestock Economy 1890-1950; 9. 'The Farmer as a Conservationalist': Sidney Rubidge at Wellwood, Graaff-Reinet 1913-1952; 10. Debating Conservation in the African Areas of the Cape 1920-1950; 11. Postscript: Debating Degradation over the Long Term: Animals, Veld, and Conservation; Bibliographical Note; Select Bibliography of Secondary Sources; Index

Customer Reviews

By: William Beinart
425 pages, 20 B/w illus, 13 figs, 3 tabs, 3 maps
Media reviews

William Beinart's complex and wonderfully informative book has its origins in the author's long-standing interest in the ideas that 'underpinned environmental regulation in Africa districts' of the Cape Colony and, to a leseer extent , the other territorial compnents of the Union of South Africa after 1910. The English Historical Review

Current promotions
New and Forthcoming BooksNHBS Moth TrapBritish Wildlife MagazineBuyers Guides