Imbricated Geographies of Conservation and Consumption in the Stikine Plateau. (1st November 2011)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Peyton, Jonathan
• Is Part Of: Environment and history. Volume 17:Number 4(2011:Oct.)
• Page Start: 555
• Page End: 581
• Publication Date: 2011-11-01
• Subjects: hunting -- conservation -- consumption -- animals -- place-making -- Stikine Plateau; Human ecology -- History -- Periodicals; Nature -- Effect of human beings on -- Periodicals; Human beings -- Effect of environment on -- Periodicals; 304.209
• DOI: 10.3197/096734011X13150366551571
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0967-3407

Abstract

Abstract : This paper interrogates the role of animals and hunting, conservation and consumption in the making of the Stikine, a vast though nebulously defined plateau that covers much of the northwest corner of British Columbia. In 1905, Arthur Bryan Williams, the newly appointed Provincial Game Warden enacted a new regime of control over landscape, animals and ecology. New laws on closed seasons, kill limits, an enforcement network and a careful system of accounting re-scripted what animals meant in the province and fundamentally changed the interactions between people, nature and the state. I show how hunting, conservation and the changes to consumption worked to shift understandings of nature in the Stikine. The geographies of conservation and consumption, operating across multiple scales, were a fundamental component of place-making in the Stikine in the first decades of the twentieth century.