Exercise #3: Connecting Past and Present
Instructions
For Exercise #3, you will make connections between what you have learned in the course about the past and what is happening today through contemporary media.
- Find two recent media items thematically connected in some way to two of the three topics covered in Unit 3: conservation, parks, and urbanization. For each of these, post a paragraph of three to five sentences, connecting the media story to what you learned, or were challenged to consider, from the resources in Unit 3. Provide the web link to the article in each post.
- These postings may be informal but should be grammatically correct. You should be respectful of other students’ opinions, but that does not mean you must agree with their ideas.
- Post your response by clicking ‘Add Submission’ below.
- Then post two separate comments responding to any other student’s posts.
- Please note, you should write and edit your submission in a separate file then copy and paste it into the submission box. Once submitted to the HIST 3991 trubox site, you will not be able to edit your post.
Are you a student of HIST 3991? Click here to add a submission to this assignment.
Submissions
Environmental History and the News
August 8, 2022 By: Mathew Semograd
History 3991 News Articles https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/abundant-canada-geese-populations-threat-ecosystems-1.6507555 National symbol or national pest? Abundant Canada geese populations a threat to ecosystems, research finds Social Sharing The Canadian Goose is a national symbol but now due to increased industrialization and urbanization, the number of geese are exploding and causing problems in marsh lands along the Fraser river but also in many areas across North American due to the birds ability to eat large amounts of grass and plants and the waste they leave behind. “According to research out of the University of British Columbia, non-native Canada geese are overpopulating the banks of the Fraser…
Connecting past and present
July 19, 2022 By: Sarah Greene
“Log supply in BC forests slowly dwindling, think tank warns” https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/canadian-centre-for-policy-alternatives-bc-logs-1.6419399 This article discusses a calculation made by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives that indicates that the amount of harvested wood expected over the coming years will be about half the amount that was logged 15 years ago. Due to government policies that allowed large amounts of forests to be harvested, in large part due to the pine beetle disaster, the amount of trees available has severely declined. Unit 3 Topic 1 identifies the early lumber industry during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries which depleted the forests…
Exercise #3 Submission
July 13, 2022 By: Zoë
Media item #1: Fairy Creek Blockades. Link: https://thenarwhal.ca/topics/fairy-creek-blockade/ On Vancouver Island, located in Western British Columbia, thousands of people have joined together to protest Teal-Jones plans to cut Fairy Creeks old-growth forests. Through the public and Indigenous nations objection’s, logging in this area has been halted for a couple of years. Sustainable forestry conservation has been an ongoing fight for over one hundred years. Some forestry conservation has been for the wrong reasons, as noted in our Steinberg textbook, “what was being conserved was not so much the natural world, but a socioecological order that produced monumental material…
Connecting Past and Present
June 29, 2022 By: YANLEZI
Article: Climate change drives new proposed rule for experimental population https://wildlife.org/climate-change-drives-new-proposed-rule-for-experimental-populations/ In Unit 3, we learn that some people advocate the conservation movements, which are of great significance for the harmonious development of man and nature. The article shows that we consider the conversation of Californians being successful, with a new Endangered Species Act rule proposed by the U.S. Department of the Interior to speed up the experimental population before adverse effects from climate change and invasive species. Article: Urbanization and Water Quality https://www.usgs.gov/special-topics/water-science-school/science/urbanization-and-water-quality Urbanization is also a hot topic of ongoing concern, which affects land use and water systems. There are more roads, houses, and commercial and industrial buildings, so some wells may run dry,…
Connecting Past and Present
June 26, 2022 By: Tina Ihas
Steinberg’s chapter Conservation Reconsidered suggested capitalism is often at play within the conservation movement. For example, Yellowstone National Park’s wolves were exterminated so elk populations would thrive through lack of predation. This was desirable as a significant tourist population (including big-game hunters) came to the park to experience the elk. Unfortunately, things did not go as planned, and once the wolves were gone, the park’s ecosystem changed dramatically, becoming unbalanced and unable to sustain the now large elk population. I have long been a big fan of the 1995 project undertaken by the scientists to return wolves to Yellowstone and…