Journal articles on the topic 'Espuela Land and Cattle Company'

This article will discuss the form of social exchange in broiler breeding using core-plasma partnership system. This study was a case study taken place in Blitar Regency as one of broiler cattle breeding centers in Indonesia. The result of research showed that cattle raisers followed core-plasma partnership system because it was considered as having smaller risk than independent system. The core-plasma partnership began with social exchange between cattle raisers and Partner Company. Profit-loss, mutual need, and trust consideration underlies the exchange occurring in core-plasma partnership. Cattle raisers with limited business capital could run broiler breeding with Partner Company’s help as integrator that provided day old chicken (DOC), feed, and drugs, and marketed the harvest product. Meanwhile, Partner Company with limited land and workers could also benefit from the partnership ran. The exchange was considered as fair when it generated profit for each other despite difference profit obtained by the parties. The end of partnership implied that there was no longer social exchange between the parties engaged.

Extensive grazing of beef cattle is the principal use of the northern Australia land area. While north Australian beef production has traditionally utilised a low-input, low-output system of land management, recent innovations have increased the efficiency with which beef is produced. Investment to raise efficiency of cattle production by improving herd genetics, property infrastructure, the seasonal feed-base and its utilisation, as well as promoting feedlot finishing can all be expected to reduce the number of unproductive animals and reduce age-at-slaughter. Consequently, these innovations can all be expected to contribute to a reduction in the emissions intensity of greenhouse gases (GHG; t GHG/t liveweight gain). The North Australian Pastoral Company (NAPCO) has adopted these technologies to enhance reproductive and growth efficiency of the herd and has coupled them with changes in other aspects of property operation, such as use of solar energy systems, establishment of introduced perennial pastures and minimum tillage, to achieve production and operational gains, which also reduce the emissions intensity of their pastoral properties. Investments to improve production efficiency have been consistent with both financial and, in principle, environmental objectives of NAPCO. While NAPCO supports the development and implementation of new mitigation strategies, the company requires greater knowledge on pastoral emission levels and clarity on the future position of agriculture in a carbon economy. This information would enable confirmation of current emission levels, modelling of mitigation options and evaluation of the efficacy of potential on-farm carbon sinks. This paper presents NAPCO’s perspective on GHG emissions in the context of its pastoral enterprise, including current and future research and mitigation objectives.

Becoming one of leading region among other ones, Vladimir region located in the central European part of Russia is a place with remarkable geographic and economic conditions including rapid development of communication and traffic system. The territory covers an area of 2908.4 thousand of hectares, where 757 thousand of them are cropping lands including 518.2 thousand of hectares of arable land. 265 agricultural institutions, 2 thousand of farms are involved in agricultural sector. The total gross output and food industry of this oblast reached 20.3% including agriculture 11.8%. 329.7 thousand of inhabitants live in this area, while for the most part of them, 176.3 thousand work for agriculture. The agricultural program of the region is oriented to cattle farming, including extensive milk production. L. P Bakrina is a general manager in one of the largest farming joint stock company "MECHTA" in Murom oblast, Vladimir region. Her farming company that has become renowned as leading among others was rewarded by honoured diploma and awards for high quality products that were highly commended by A.Gordeev, Minister of Agriculture of Russia.

Ukraine has gone through a difficult and over time long period of recognition of market relations, which was accompanied by the emergence of imbalances. This is also the independence of enterprises with administrative influence on their work; liberalization of prices; low purchasing power of the population, which leads to a decrease in demand; rise in energy prices, as well as unequal exchange between industry and agriculture. As a consequence of the influence of these factors, there are changes in the structure of the cattle herd, the interest of producers in increasing the volume of livestock products is lost, incl. and meat, even at the level of personal peasant farms. Assessment of the state of the beef cattle breeding industry indicates a reduction in the number of fattening cattle in all categories of farms. The main reason for this unsatisfactory trend is the loss of profitability of beef cattle breeding. Studies of its causes have confirmed the influence of indicators of the number of livestock, animal productivity, as well as the cost of production. In 2009-2019 alone, the number of cattle decreased by almost 30 percent. And the available livestock of productive livestock in the households of the population does not provide guarantees and rhythmic supplies of raw materials to processing enterprises. Intermediaries create their problematic influence on the formation of the market for beef cattle breeding. However, even under such conditions, the beef cattle industry confirms its self-sufficiency in the turnover of products. The experience of the developed countries of Europe and the world confirms that the functioning of economic systems, which are based on market conditions, confirms their feasibility, efficiency and viability. The preconditions for the approval of the Ukrainian beef cattle market were the privatization of land and property, restructuring, and in some places the cancellation of debts, the introduction of a fixed tax, and some additional payment for the sold cattle. Therefore, market relations already, and in the future, affect the development of agriculture and beef cattle breeding, which is a multifaceted system with a large number of subjects of production, processing and sale of the industry's products. This is confirmed by weighty factors of the objective need to form a commodity market for beef cattle breeding to meet the demand for food products through the formation of the necessary volumes of their supply. It is also important that the formation of a market for beef cattle breeding, the supply of products should be expressed through the exchange infrastructure: stock exchanges, wholesale markets, auctions, trading houses, company stores, retail trade, city markets. The foregoing confirms the objective need to form a market for beef cattle breeding, while adhering to the principle of competition, which can objectively reproduce the essence of market relations in determining prices, the volume of supply of products supplied to the market and their quality. The market must operate on the basis of the requirements of the laws of value, equilibrium of supply and demand, and fulfill its regulatory function. The advantages of the market system have been convincingly brought to light by many years of practical efficiency and it is recognized as the highest and perfect form of management. In the system of market relations, agriculture is an integral part of the national economic complex, the entire system of economic development. The article proposed by the author provides information on the situation on the market for beef cattle breeding, factors that affect its functioning, as well as the reasons that shape supply and demand. Separate inconsistencies in the activities of the subjects of the market of beef cattle breeding have been established, the elimination of which will provide an improvement in the actual state and improve its functioning. The author of the article guides the participants in the market of beef cattle breeding to take into account the peculiarities of its functioning in their activities, which will contribute to the formation of the necessary volumes of products to meet the existing demand on the market. Key words: market, meat cattle breeding, criteria, competitiveness, marketing, demand, supply, infrastructure.

Common Property Resources (CPRs) accessible to collectively owned/held/managed by an identifiable community and on which no individual has exclusive property rights are called common property resources. This results that co-users of the resources are a well-defined group of persons. The proponents of this approach hold that “a resource becomes common property only when the group of people who have the right to its collective use is well defined, and the rules that govern their use of it are set out clearly and followed universally”. In general those people who are depending on Farming or doing Labour are more likely to dependent on Common Property Resources as CPR constitute major income source and generated livelihoods in the forms of fuel wood, medicinal plant, use of common grazing land for cattle and pets, getting access to fallow or barren land. Self-employed, business and Govt. employee class of people in general do not depend on CPR for their day to day livelihoods as their economy is largely not depends on it. Occupation of respondents is directly related with CPR use and access. CPR owned or held by an individual or a family or an organization like a company or corporation or co-operative institution is not being considered as CPRs. This study was carried out in 5 blocks namely Oddanchatram, Reddiyarchatrm, Dindigul, Sanarpatti and Vadamadurai. These blocks were identified based on the high level of CPR present over there. From each of the above mentioned identified block 5 village Panchayats have been selected. The required data was collected from 1000 rural Dalits households with the help of a pre-tested interview schedule prepared exclusively for this purpose. To understand the nature of the data, firstly, frequency tables were prepared, and subsequently the analysis and tabulation have been carried out using research techniques based on the requirement.

In 2010 the mega-corporation Facebook finalized an agreement to build a massive data center in Prineville, a small town in central Oregon previously known for logging, cattle ranching, and as the headquarters of the Les Schwab tire company. This was a largely unanticipated event that local leaders nonetheless prepared for several decades before when they designated a rural economic zone on the outskirts of town. However, the enterprise zone sat mostly unused, an empty and dusty piece of high desert land dotted with sagebrush and juniper trees. I describe the preparatory efforts that laid the groundwork for the data center as effecting a “half-built assemblage.” Through such anticipatory reconfigurations, local leaders recognized the limits of regional government to overcome the challenges of their peripherality. In the controversy surrounding such data center deals, critics have often cast rural leaders as naive or as pandering to voters. However, I argue that the alliance with Facebook was one of the few courses of action available to local leaders that had any chance of realizing regional economic development goals. In seeking to understand the data center deal from a local perspective, I contribute an alternative notion of temporality to materialist theorizing by looking across much longer durations of time in relation to the political economy, the natural world, and other elements as a way to temper exaggerations of anthropocentric agency and the narrow attribution of blame.

AbstractTwo antagonistic forces confronted each other on the territory of the Republic of Buryatia in 2002. One of them was YUKOS, an international petroleum company, the other the Tunka National Park, a legally protected nature reserve of national importance. The essence of the conflict was the intention of YUKOS to build a pipeline from Angarsk (a town in the Irkutsk province of Russia) to Daqing (a city in the Heilongjian province in China) directly through the territory of the national park, though the law forbade it. The mighty YUKOS, supported by the Government and President of Buryatia, faced resistance from Buryat ecologists, the administration and personnel of the national park, and the rank-and-file of Tunka district – cattle-breeders, farmers, teachers, doctors, pensioners – all of whom understood that the ecology of the park would suffer irretrievably, compromising both its natural riches and beauty, and many cultural and historical objects: archaeological sites, sacred groves, clan cemeteries, places of shamanist and Buddhist worship, etc. The practitioners of the local religions, such as shamans, Buddhist lamas and divinators of mountain spirits, united to organise special rituals and prayers around the places of worship and sacred objects, asking the local deities and spirits to defend their worshippers, their land, and their sanctuaries. Although the final collapse of YUKOS was determined politically, the experience of Tunka has demonstrated that oil magnates should not arrogantly disregard the populations and cultures of the territories they intend to utilise for their business activities.

The search for ways to reduce the supply of Chernobyl trace cesium to agricultural plants has remained relevant in Kaluga region for many decades. This problem is particularly acute for private farmlands, in which centralized agrotechnical measures for the rehabilitation of polluted soils were not carried out. In this regard, the purpose of this study was to develop measures for the safe economic use of private farm soils, natural meadows as hayfields and pastures. We used comparative analytical, instrumental and statistical methods. The studies were conducted during 1997–2016 on the basis of the agricultural production cooperative “Lesnye Polyany” of the Ulyanovsk district of Kaluga region. The experiments were conducted on the private land of three private farms and the floodplain of the Shorochka River. Local resources were used for the experiments: activated sludge from a biological pond near the village of Ulyanovo, and ground thistle from “Sorbent” Joint-Stock Company, for which there are positive sanitary and hygienic conclusions of Kaluga Sanitary and Epidemiological Surveillance Center. Based on the study of the dynamics of changes in the specific activity of grass stand and cattle milk, a half-decrease period for contamination of bioproduction was established within 7–8 years, due to increased binding strength and physical decay of radiocesium. The seasonal dynamics of reducing the content of radiocaesium in hay in a meadow ecosystem and milk of cows from April to July during the growing season has been established. The radiomeliorative capacity of activated sludge and ground tripoli has been proven in the production of private farms.

The present climate of coal seam gas (CSG) production in east coast Australia illustrates the importance of consultation and engagement with the government and stakeholders. This extends particularly to agricultural and community groups, and the impact they have on government policy decisions and in some instances, knee-jerk reactions based on emotion rather than science. Farmers are (and have been) strong environmental managers who want to ensure that the protection of prime agricultural land is safeguarded for future generations—however, so do petroleum companies and working side-by-side for a successful outcome is achievable. For instance, AGL Energy has invested in the agricultural sector from vineyards to growing cattle, allowing the company to engage in the sector directly. On the ground early engagement strategies increasingly need to be implemented with agriculture, which reassures the government and provides a win-win outcome by diffusing anti-groups and community divisions by bringing opportunities for sustainable economic benefit. One of the critical questions is how can this be done successfully without it being seen by the government and community as corporate spin. Particular reference will be made to NSW and the relationship that AGL Energy has built with agriculture organisations, such as Dairy Connect NSW and community groups such as Advance Gloucester. This extended abstract will illustrate that the opportunities for growth for CSG, agriculture and the community are only limited by narrow views of what is achievable and what is drawn from real-life experiences from AGL Energy operations in NSW.

Around 70 percent (guesstimate) of New Zealand's sheep and beef population is farmed on uncultivatable hill country. There are large areas where individual farms have less than ten percent available for cultivation. Wairere is such a property. Originally the southern end of the "seventy mile bush", the soils are poor, derived from sandstone and clay, with pHs of 4.9-5.2 and phosphorus (P) levels of 1-2. Following initial land clearing there were several rounds of reversion to Manuka until the mid 1960s when my father John embarked on a programme which included large inputs of lime, at 5 t/hectare, super at 1 t/hectare, and DAP at 100 kg/hectare, all flown on in the first 28 months. This programme took from 1965 to 1982. I personally spent nine months cutting scrub—more recently I have been a shareholder in a manuka honey company planting scrub, how things go round! This programme was accompanied by subdivision and provision of stock water by the construction of dams. There were invasions of porina and manuka beetle following development, and porina control is still required on a regular basis. Wairere has run performance recorded sheep since 1967, based on a registered Romney stud started by my grandfather in 1929. We winter around 9500 sheep and 340 cattle on 1070 effective hectares. The 5300 ewes wean 145 percent average; the 2000 ewe hoggets (all in lamb) wean around 1700 lambs. All hoggets have been mated for the past 50 years; the 1800-2000 ram hoggets are culled lightly in late winter, and taken through to private sale in November; the 300 cows (replacements bought in) calve from mid October, with most wearers sold in April.

Resumo:Este artigo deriva da tese de doutorado SENHORAS DONAS: economia, povoamento e vida material em terras maranhenses (1755-1822), desenvolvida entre 2004 a 2009 na Universidade de São Paulo, e integra a pesquisa “As Donas do poder: economia e vida material de mulheres no Maranhão colonial (1755-1822)” financiada pela Fundação de Amparo a Pesquisa do Maranhão – FAPEMA. Tem por cenário o Maranhão colonial, especificamente entre 1755-1822 e investiga a atuação das mulheres naquela dinâmica sócio-econômica como proprietárias de escravarias, joias, imóveis etc., na agricultura e pecuária, solicitando sesmarias para instalarem lavouras, criando gado e legando seus bens a herdeiros, dos quais a documentação revelou serem, em maior número, outras mulheres. Palavras chave: História do Maranhão; História das Mulheres; Economia Algodoeira; Vida Material.Resumen:Este artículo se deriva de la tesis doctoral SENHORAS DONAS: economia, povoamento e vida material em terras maranhenses (1755-1822), desarrollada desde 2004 hasta 2009 en la Universidad de São Paulo, e integra la investigación “As Donas do poder: economia e vida material de mulheres no Maranhão colonial (1755-1822)”, financiada por la Fundación Apoya a la Investigación de Maranhão- FAPEMA. Su escenario es el Maranhão colonial, concretamente entre 1755-1822, e investiga el papel de la mujer en la dinámica socio-económica como propietarias de esclavos, joyas, bienes raíces,agricultura y ganadería. Palabras clave: Historia de Maranhão, Historia de la Mujer, Economía Algodonera, Vida Material.Abstract:This article derives from a doctoral thesis SENHORAS DONAS: economia, povoamento e vida material em terras maranhenses (1755-1822), developed from 2004 to 2009 at the University of São Paulo and integrates “As Donas do poder: economia e vida material de mulheres no Maranhão colonial (1755-1822)”, research funded by the Research Foundation of Maranhão - FAPEMA. This article explores Maranhão’s Colonial period, specifically between 1755 and 1822; years that illustrate the great cotton productive and exporter age in Maranhão. There’s a specific interest of investigate the women action on social and economical field as slaveries owners, jewelries owners, properties owners, land and cattle owners and their very specific actuation at Maranhão and Grão-Pará’s Company of Trade. Key-words: Maranhão’s History; Women’s History; Cotton’s Economic; Material Life.

The article deals with the biography of the peasant Andrii Sapsai, whose life came at a time of the great turmoil in the first half of the twentieth century.On the eve of the 1917 revolution his family successfully farmed in the village Pryyut of Katerynoslav province. In the post-revolutionary years they continued to farm: they kept cattle, cultivated land. The turning point for the family was the dislocation and eviction from the village.The whole family was deported to live in the Urals at the Lisna Vovchanka station. There Andrii was sentenced under a political article. On the eve of the German-Soviet war he returned to Ukraine and settled not far from the village Pryyut.With the arrival of German troops he volunteered with the police, moved to the village Pryyut where he settled down in his house. He was responsible for sending local youth to Germany, searching the villages of those in hiding, and sending them to the collection point in the village Friesendorf, and from there escorted to the train station. Aboveall, Andrii Sapsai participated in the execution of the Jews of the village Kamyana in the Berestianabalka.In May 1942, police officers from the area were summoned to the Friesendorf meeting, for a total of 50 men arrived. The police chief Keller ordered everyone to get into two trucks and to go to the village Zlatoustovka.The policemen were brought to the Berestiana balka, which was located near the village, where a hole up to 20 m long, 2 m wide and 2 m deep had already been dug.They were informed that the Jews were going to be brought now and they would have to be shot. Those who would refuse to participate in the shooting would face severe punishment. Following the police the chief of the Friesendorf Gendarmerie, who had organized the whole process, arrived. In 1934 he left the territory of Ukraine together with some German troops, reaching Romania and leaving them there. In the summer of 1944 local authorities gathered those who had retreated with the Germans at the camp and they worked to rebuild the airfield and then they were transferred to the Soviet command. Then Andrii was called to the ranks of the Red Army by the field enlistment office. To the 4th platoon of the 1st military company, 375 special assault battalion 41 rifle regiment of the 2nd Ukrainian Front.He participated in the battles for the liberation of Hungary, in January 1944 became a German prisoner, and in May 1945 in the territory of Austria he was liberated by Soviet troops and again drafted into the army, where he served until 1946.

The article deals with the entrepreneurial activity of Sangushki in Volyn, first of all, their contribution to the industrial development of the region, the application of advanced technologies in their estates, and the peculiarities of the management of the family’s representatives and their enterprises. The branch affiliation of the factories of their Slavutsky ordination and methods of increasing the efficiency of work on them is considered. The place of enterprises of the Sangushki family in the structure of industry of Volyn province, the contribution of the princes in stimulating expansion of the network of financial and credit institutions in the region is described. The place of Sangushki at the time of the financial-industrial circles of the Ukrainian provinces of the Russian Empire in the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries was highlighted. The activity of the Sangushko princes is considered in order to reorganize the landowner's latifundias for their transformation into modern agrarian enterprises. The influence of political events in Ukrainian provinces on the economic development of enterprises owned by representatives of this kin is highlighted. The main sources of income of Slavuta ordination in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries are described. The author made a wide coverage of economic development in the vicinity of the princes Sangushko during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It was noted that the main sources of income at the beginning of the nineteenth century were agricultural products (grain, fruits, vegetables, cattle, and forest), then, due to the use of modern technologies, mechanization of production using steam engines, processing of own products, obtained here at the end of the XIX century, Sangushkos managed to create an economically strong company with diversified sources of profit, since a significant part of the products was processed by local factories (paper, candle, soap, sugar, cloth, beer pitch, lumber, porcelain, refined) and distilleries, mills. The main resource base for the success of the princes as entrepreneurs served large land masses that they owned. Significant role in the achievement of economic success of Sangushkos played the application of modern technologies and methods of production, withdrawal from the traditional system of using serf labor, attracting foreign specialists. Sangushkos also created enterprises that produced the products needed to service their enterprises and the local population, among such iron ore, vinegar and paint plants. In addition, in order to stimulate the development of trade and business in the native land, Sangushkos established a system of credit pay offices, which provided loans to local residents, with preferential treatment for those who traded and serviced the needs of the population (for shoemakers, bakers, barkeepers). In addition, Sangushkos were involved in the creation of the Slavuta Commercial Bank, which served the needs of not only local residents, but even foreigners. Sangushkos also managed to open businesses that did not directly engage in the production of goods and served the needs of the population, among such the author mentioned medical institutions. For the sale of products Sangushkos actively participated in local fairs, signed contracts for the supply of products to the markets of cities of the central provinces of the Russian Empire and abroad. The author reviews the historiography devoted to the issues of entrepreneurship development in the 19th century on the territory of the Right-Bank Ukraine and in particular among representatives of the Polish-Lithuanian nobility, including representatives of the Sangushkos family. Also, the researcher used in the study the archival materials and the results of local lore explorations devoted to studying the history of the Sangushko family in Volyn. The Polish revolts of 1830-1831 and 1863-1864, economic crises in the Russian empire at the end and the beginning of the 20th century, as well as fires, which caused significant damage to the city and the buildings of enterprises, influenced negatively the economic development of the enterprises of the Sangushkos. In general, a direct active participation in the economic life of the princes of Sangsushko turned their estates and town of Slavuta into one of the main industrial centers of Volyn at the beginning of the 20th century.

Food security means that all people must have access to adequate, healthy, reliable and nutritious food both physically and economically in order to meet the nutritional needs and food priorities that are necessary for an active and healthy life at all times. Dairy farming in today’s world is an essential system of agriculture to meet out the growing nutritional needs of the country. India is the largest milk producer and the second largest milk products producer in the world. This paper deals with the case study of a dairy farmer Mr. Perumal who had experience of thirty years in dairy farming and hence runs a dairy farm successfully which is located at the Alagiyanallur village of Virudhunagar district. Case study method of research was adopted. The data was collected through the semi-structured personal interview schedule and the results were documented. He owned about 1.5 acres of land in which the Cumbu Napier Co 4 for feeding the livestock were grown. His dairy firm comprises of 20 milch animals, 10 goats and 50 chickens. He runs his firm in terms of low investment since the seeds were distributed to him at free of cost as he was a member of SEEDS company which is located at Mallaginar village and the chickens were fed with the ration rice. It was found that the success factors of his firm were the selection of HF breed which is the high milk yielding breed followed by the proper maintenance of the livestock from diseases and the feeding of Krishi Bypass cattle feed. He initially had five animals left over by his father and later he developed his firm by availing loan from the bank. He mainly concentrates on the dairy farming. The expenses and the returns of the firm were recorded and documented. He had helped his villagers for the start up of the dairy farming as he came to know the importance of dairy production and he also provided the advices on the management practices of the livestock.He had further planned to develop his success path by starting up a dairy enterprise. SWOC analysis was conducted and the findings were documented. The factors that contributed for his success include Selection of HF breed, Maintenance of the livestock from diseases, Feeding provided along with the Krishi Bypass cattle feed.

The following article is in response to a research project that took the form of a road trip from Perth to Lombadina re-enacting the journey undertaken by the characters in the play Bran Nue Dae by playwright Jimmy Chi and Broome band Kuckles. This project was facilitated by the assistance of a Creative and Research Publication Grant from the Faculty of Communications and Creative Industries, Edith Cowan University, Western Australia. The project was carried out by researchers Kara Jacob and Margaret Hair. One thing is plainly clear. Aboriginal art expresses the possibility of human intimacy with landscapes. This is the key to its power: it makes available a rich tradition of human ethics and relationships with place and other species to a worldwide audience. For the settler Australian audience, caught ambiguously between old and new lands, their appreciation of this art embodies at least a striving for the kind of citizenship that republicans wanted: to belong to this place rather than to another (Marcia Langton in Watson 191). Marcia Langton is talking here about painting. My question is whether this “kind of citizenship” can also be accessed through appreciation of indigenous theatre, and specifically through the play Bran Nue Dae, by playwright Jimmy Chi and Broome band Kuckles, a play closely linked to the Western Australian landscape through its appropriation of the road trip genre. The physical journey taken by the characters metaphorically takes them also through the contact history of black and white Australians in Western Australia. Significantly, the non-indigenous characters experience the redemptive power of “human intimacy with landscapes” through travelling to the traditional country of their road trip companions. The road trip genre typically places its characters on a quest for knowledge. American poet Gary Snyder says that the two sources of human knowledge are symbols and sense-impressions (vii). Bran Nue Dae abounds with symbols, from the priest’s cassock and mitre to Roebourne prison; however, the sense impressions, which are so strong in the performance of the play, are missing from the written text, apart from ironic comments on the weather. In my efforts to understand Bran Nue Dae, I undertook the road trip from Perth to the Kimberley myself in order to discover those missing sense-impressions, as they form part of the “back story” of the play. In the play there is a void between the time the characters leave Perth and reach first Roebourne, where they are locked up, and then Roebuck Plains, not far from Broome, yet in the “real world” they would have travelled more than two thousand kilometres. What would they have seen and experienced on this journey? I took note of Krim Benterrak, Paddy Roe and Stephen Muecke’s Reading the Country, a cross-cultural and cross-textual study on Roebuck Plains, near Broome. Muecke talks about “stories being contingent upon place … Aboriginal storytellers have a similar policy. If one is not prepared to take the trouble to go to the place, then its story can only be given as a short version” (72). In preparing for the trip, I collected tourist brochures and maps. The use of maps, seemingly essential on any road trip as guides to “having a look at” country (Muecke ibid.), was instantly problematic in itself, in that maps represent country as colonised space. In Saltwater People, Nonie Sharp discusses the “distinction between mapping and personal journeying”: Maps and mapping describe space in a way that depersonalises it. Mapping removes the footprints of named creatures – animal, human, ancestral – who belong to this place or that place. A map can be anywhere. ‘Itineraries’, however, are actions and movements within a named and footprinted land (Sharp 199-200). The country journeyed through in Bran Nue Dae, which privileges indigenous experience, could be designated as the potentially dangerous liminal space between the “map” and the “itinerary”. This “space between” resonates with untold stories, with invisibilities. One of the most telling discoveries on the research trip was the thoroughness with which indigenous people have been made to disappear from the “mapped” zones through various colonial policies. It was very evident that indigenous people are still relegated to the fringes of town, as in Onslow and Port Hedland, in housing situations closely resembling the old missions and reserves. Although my travelling companion and I made an effort in every place we visited to pay our respects by at least finding out the language group of the traditional owners, it became clear that a major challenge in travelling through post-colonial space is in avoiding becoming complicit in the disappearance of indigenous people. We wanted our focus to be “on the people whose bodies, territories, beliefs and values have been travelled though” (Tuhiwai Smith 78) but our experience was that finding even written guides into the “footprinted land” is not easy when few tourist pamphlets acknowledge the traditional owners of the country. Even when “local Aboriginal” words are quoted, as in the CALM brochure for Nambung National Park (i.e., the Pinnacles), the actual language or language group is not mentioned. In many interpretive brochures and facilities, traditional owners are represented as absent, as victims or as prisoners. The fate of the “original inhabitants of the Greenough Flats”, the Yabbaroo people, is alluded to in the Greenough River Nature Walk Trail Guide, under the title, “A short history of Greenough River from the Rivermouth to Westbank Road”: The Gregory brothers, exploring for pastoral land in 1848, peacefully met with a large group of Aborigines camped beside a freshwater spring in a dense Melaleuca thicket. They named the spring Bootenal, from the Nyungar word Boolungal, meaning pelican. Gregory’s glowing reports of good grazing prompted pastoralists to move their flocks to Greenough, and by 1852 William Criddle was watering cattle for the Cattle Company at the Bootenal Spring. The Aborigines soon resented this intrusion and in 1854, large numbers with many from surrounding tribes, gathered in the relative safety of the Bootenal thicket. Making forays at night, they killed cattle and sheep and attacked homesteads. The pastoralists retaliated by forming a posse at Glengarry under the command of the Resident Magistrate. On the night of the 4th/5th July they rode to Bootenal and drove the Aborigines from the thicket. No arrests were made and no official report given of casualties. Aboriginal resistance in the area was finished. The fact that the extract actually describes a massacre while purporting to be a “history of Greenough River” subverts the notion that the land can ever really be “depersonalised”. At the very heart of the difference lie different ways of being human: in Aboriginal classical tradition the person dwells within a personified landscape which is alive, named, inscribed by spiritual and human agents. It is a ‘Thou’ not an ‘It’, and I and Thou belong together (Sharp 199-200). Peter Read’s book Belonging: Australians, Place and Aboriginal Ownership contains a section titled “The Past Embedded in the Landscape” in which Read discusses whether the land holds the memory of events enacted upon it, so forming a tangible link between the dispossessed and the possessors. While discussing Judith Wright’s poem Bora Ring, Read states: “The unlaid violence of dispossession lingers at the sites of evil or old magic”, bringing to mind Wright’s notion of Australia as “a haunted country” (14). It is not surprising that the “unlaid violence of dispossession lingers” at the sites of old prisons and lock-ups, since it is built into the very architecture. The visitor pamphlet states that the 1890s design by George Temple Poole of the third Roebourne gaol, further up the great Northern Highway from Greenough and beautifully constructed from stone, “represents a way in which the state ideology of control of a remote and potentially dangerous population could be expressed in buildings”. The current Roebourne prison, still holding a majority of Aboriginal inmates, does away with any pretence of architectural elegance but expresses the same state ideology with its fence topped with razor wire. Without a guide like Bran Nue Dae’s Uncle Tadpole to keep us “off the track”, non-indigenous visitors to these old gaols, now largely museums, may be quickly led by the interpretation into the “mapped zone” – the narrative of imperialist expansion. However, we can follow Paul Carter’s injunction to “deepen grooves” and start with John Pat’s story at the Roebourne police lock-up, or the story of any indigenous inmate of the present Roebuck prison, spiralling back a century to the first Roebuck prison in settler John Withnell’s woolshed (Weightman 4). Then we gain a sense of the contact experience of the local indigenous peoples. John Withnell and his wife Emma are represented as particularly resourceful by the interpretation at the old Roebourne gaol (now Roebourne Visitors Centre and Museum). The museum has a replica of a whalebone armchair that John Withnell built for his wife with vertebrae as the seat and other bones as the back and armrests. The family also invented the canvas waterbag. The interpretation fails to mention that the same John Withnell beat an Aboriginal woman named Talarong so severely for refusing to care for sheep at Withnell’s Hillside Station that “she retreated into the bush and died of her injuries two days later”. No charges were brought against Withnell because, according to the Acting Government Resident, of the “great provocation” by Talarong in the incident (Hunt 99-100). Such omissions and silences in the official record force indigenous people into a parallel “invisible country” and leave us stranded on the highways of the “mapped zone”, bereft of our rights and responsibilities to connect either to the country or to its traditional owners. Roebourne, and its coastal port Cossack, stand on the hauntingly beautiful country of the Ngarluma and seaside Yapurarra peoples. Settlers first arrived in the 1860s and Aboriginal people began to be officially imprisoned soon after, primarily as a result of their resistance to being “blackbirded” and exploited as labour for the pearling and pastoral industries. Prisoners were chained by the neck, day and night, and forced to build roads and tramlines, ostensibly a “civilising” practice. As the history pamphlet for The Old Roebourne Gaol reads: “It was widely believed that the Roebourne Gaol was where the ‘benefit’ of white civilisation could be shown to the ‘savage’ Aboriginal” (Weightman 2). The “back story” I discovered on this research trip was one of disappearance – indigenous people being made to disappear from their countries, from non-indigenous view and from the written record. The symbols I surprisingly most engaged with and which most affected me were the gaols and prisons which the imperialists used as tools of their trade in disappearance. The sense impressions I experienced – extreme beauty, isolation, heat and sandflies – reinforced the complexity of Western Australian contact history. I began to see the central achievement of Bran Nue Dae as being the return of indigenous people to country and to story. This return, so beautifully realised in when the characters finally reach Lombadina and a state of acceptance, is critical to healing the country and to the attainment of an equitable “kind of citizenship” that denotes belonging for all. References Aboriginal Tourism Australia. Welcome to Country: Respecting Indigenous Culture for Travellers in Australia. 2004. Benterrak, Krim, Stephen Muecke, and Paddy Roe. Reading the Country. Perth: Fremantle Arts Centre Press, 1984. Carter, Paul. The Lie of the Land. London: Faber & Faber, 1996. Dalton, Peter. “Broome: A Multiracial Community. A Study of Social and Cultural Relationships in a Town in the West Kimberleys, Western Australia”. Thesis for Master of Arts in Anthropology. Perth: University of Western Australia, 1964. Hunt, Susan Jane. Spinifex and Hessian: Women’s Lives in North-Western Australia 1860–1900. Nedlands, WA: U of Western Australia P, 1986. Read, Peter. Belonging: Australians, Place and Aboriginal Ownership. UK: Cambridge UP, 2000. Reynolds, Henry. North of Capricorn: The Untold History of Australia’s North. Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 2003. Reynolds, Henry. Why Weren’t We Told? Ringwood, Victoria: Penguin Books Australia, 1999. Sharp, Nonie. Saltwater People: The Waves of Memory. Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 2002. Shire of Greenough. Greenough River Nature Walk Trail Guide. 2005. Tuhiwai Smith, Linda. Decolonizing Methodologies. Dunedin, New Zealand: U of Otago P, 1999. Watson, Christine. Piercing the Ground. Perth: Fremantle Arts Centre P, 2003. Weightman, Llyrus. The Old Roebourne Gaol: A History. Pilbara Classies & Printing Service. Wright, Judith. The Cry for the Dead. 1981. 277-80. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Hair, Margaret. "Invisible Country." M/C Journal 8.6 (2005). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0512/09-hair.php>. APA Style Hair, M. (Dec. 2005) "Invisible Country," M/C Journal, 8(6). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0512/09-hair.php>.

Wandering the aisles of my local Woolworths in April this year, I noticed a large number of chocolate bilbies replacing chocolate rabbits. In these harsh economic times it seems that even the Easter bunny is in danger of losing his Easter job. While the changing shape of Easter chocolate may seem to be a harmless affair, the expulsion of the rabbit from Easter celebrations has a darker side. In this paper I look at the campaign to replace the Easter bunny with the Easter bilby, and the implications this mediated conservation move has for living rabbits in the Australian ecosystem. Essential to this discussion is the premise that studies of ecology must take into account the impact of media and culture on environmental issues. Of particular interest is the role of narrative, and the way the stories we tell about rabbits determine how they are treated in real life. While I recognise that the Australian bilby’s struggle for survival is a tale which should be told, I also argue that the vilification of the European-Australian rabbit is part of the native/invasive dualism which has ceased to be helpful, and has instead become a motivator of unproductive violence. In place of this simplified dichotomous narrative, I propose an ethic of "ecological remembrance" to combat the totalising eradication of the European rabbit from the Australian environment and culture. The Bilby vs the Bunny: A Case Study in "Media Selection" Easter Bunny says, ‘Bilby, I want you to have my job.You know about sharing and taking care.I think Australia should have an Easter Bilby.We rabbits have become too greedy and careless.Rabbits must learn from bilbies and other bush creatures’. The lines above are taken from Ali Garnett and Kaye Kessing’s children’s story, Easter Bilby, co-published by the Australian Anti-Rabbit Research Foundation as part of the campaign to replace the Easter bunny with the eco-politically correct Easter bilby. The first chocolate bilbies were made in 1982, but the concept really took off when major chocolate retailer Darrell Lea became involved in 2002. Since this time Haigh’s chocolate, Cadbury, and Pink Lady have also released delicious cocoa natives for consumption, and both Darrell Lea and Haigh’s use their profits to support bilby assistance programs, creating the “pleasant Easter sensation” that “eating a chocolate bilby is helping save the real thing” (Phillips). The Easter bilby campaign is a highly mediated approach to conservation which demonstrates the new biological principle Phil Bagust has recognised as “media selection.” Bagust observes that in our “hybridised global society” it is impossible to separate “the world of genetic selection from the world of human symbolic and material diversity as if they exist in different universes” (8). The Australian rabbit thrives in “natural selection,” having adapted to the Australian environment so successfully it threatens native species and the economic productivity of farmers. But the rabbit loses out in “cultural selection” where it is vilified in the media for its role in environmental degradation. The campaign to conserve the bilby depends, in a large part, on the rabbit’s failures in “media selection”. On Good Friday 2012 Sky News Australia quoted Mike Drinkwater of Wild Life Sydney’s support of the Easter bilby campaign: Look, the reason that we want to highlight the bilby as an iconic Easter animal is, number one, rabbits are a pest in Australia. Secondly, the bilby has these lovely endearing rabbit-like qualities. And thirdly, the bilby is a beautiful, iconic, native animal that is struggling. It is endangered so it’s important that we do all we can to support that. Drinkwater’s appeal to the bilby’s “endearing rabbit-like qualities” demonstrates that it is not the Australian rabbit’s individual embodiment which detracts from its charisma in Australian society. In this paper I will argue that the stories we tell about the European-Australian rabbit’s alienation from Indigenous country diminish the species cultural appeal. These stories are told with passionate conviction to save and protect native flora and fauna, but, too often, this promotion of the native relies on the devaluation of non-native life, to the point where individual rabbits are no longer morally considerable. Such a hierarchical approach to conservation is not only ethically problematic, but can also be ineffective because the native/invasive approach to ecology is overly simplistic. A History of Rabbit Stories In the Easter Bilby children’s book the illustrated rabbit offers to make itself disappear from the “Easter job.” The reason for this act of self-destruction is a despairing recognition of its “greedy and careless” nature, and at the same time, its selfless offer to be replaced by the ecologically conscious Bilby. In this sacrificial gesture is the implicit offering of all rabbit life for the salvation of native ecosystems and animal life. This plot line slots into a much larger series of stories we have been telling about the Australian environment. Libby Robin has observed that settler Australians have always had a love-hate relationship with the native flora and fauna of the continent (6), either devaluing native plants, animals, and ecosystems, or launching into an “overcompensating patriotic strut about the Australian biota” (Robin 9). The colonising dynamic of early Australian society was built on the devaluation of animals such as the bilby. This was reflected in the introduction of feral animals by “acclimatisation societies” and the privileging of “pets” such as cats and dogs over native animals (Plumwood). Alfred Crosby has made the persuasive argument that the invasion of Australia, and other “neo-European” countries, was, necessarily, more-than-human. In his work, Ecological Imperialism, Crosby charts the historical partnership between human European colonisers in Indigenous lands and the “grunting, lowing, neighing, crowing, chirping, snarling, buzzing, self-replicating and world-altering avalanche” (194) of introduced life that they brought with them. In response to this “guilt by association” Australians have reversed the values in the dichotomous colonial dynamic to devalue the introduced and so “empower” the colonised native. In this new “anti-colonial” story, rabbits signify a wound of colonisation which has spread across and infected indigenous country. J. M. Arthur’s (130) analysis of language in relation to colonisation highlights some of the important lexical characteristics in the rabbit stories we now tell. He observes that the rabbits’ impact on the county is described using a vocabulary of contamination: “It is a ‘menace’, a ‘problem’, an ‘infestation’, a ‘nuisance’, a ‘plague’” (170). This narrative of disease encourages a redemptive violence against living rabbits to “cure” the rabbit problem in order to atone for human mistakes in a colonial past. Redemptive Violence in Action Rabbits in Australia have been subject to a wide range of eradication measures over the past century including shooting, the destruction of burrows, poisoning, ferreting, trapping, and the well-known rabbit proof fence in Western Australia. Particularly noteworthy in this slaughter has been the introduction of biological control measures with the release of the savage and painful disease Myxomatosis in late December 1950, followed by the release of the Calicivirus (Rabbit Haemorrhage Disease, or RHD) in 1996. As recently as March 2012 the New South Wales Department of Primary Industries announced a 1.5 million dollar program called “RHD Boost” which is attempting to develop a more effective biological control agent for rabbits who have become immune to the Calicivirus. In this perverse narrative, disease becomes a cure for the rabbit’s contamination of Australian environments. Calicivirus is highly infectious, spreads rapidly, and kills rabbits en masse. Following the release of Calicivirus in 1995 it killed 10 million rabbits in eight weeks (Ponsonby Veterinary Centre). While Calicivirus appears to be more humane than the earlier biological control, Myxomatosis, there are indications that it causes rabbits pain and stress. Victims are described as becoming very quiet, refusing to eat, straining for breath, losing coordination, becoming feverish, and excreting bloody nasal discharge (Heishman, 2011). Post-mortem dissection generally reveals a “pale and mottled liver, many small streaks or blotches on the lungs and an enlarged spleen... small thrombi or blood clots” (Coman 173). Public criticism of the cruel methods involved in killing rabbits is often assuaged with appeals to the greater good of the ecosystem. The Anti-Rabbit research foundation state on their Website, Rabbit-Free Australia, that: though killing rabbits may sound inhumane, wild rabbits are affecting the survival of native Australian plants and animals. It is our responsibility to control them. We brought the European rabbit here in the first place — they are an invasive pest. This assumption of personal and communal responsibility for the rabbit “problem” has a fundamental blind-spot. Arthur (130) observes that the progress of rabbits across the continent is often described as though they form a coordinated army: The rabbit extends its ‘dominion’, ‘dispossesses’ the indigenous bilby, causes sheep runs to be ‘abandoned’ and country ‘forfeited’, leaving the land in ‘ecological tatters’. While this language of battle pervades rabbit stories, humans rarely refer to themselves as invaders into Aboriginal lands. Arthur notes that, by taking responsibility for the rabbit’s introduction and eradication, the coloniser assumes an indigenous status as they defend the country against the exotic invader (134). The apprehension of moral responsibility can, in this sense, be understood as the assumption of settler indigeneity. This does not negate the fact that assuming human responsibility for the native environment can be an act of genuine care. In a country scarred by a history of ecocide, movements like the Easter Bilby campaign seek to rectify the negligent mistakes of the past. The problem is that reactive responses to the colonial devaluation of native life can be unproductive because they preserve the basic structure of the native/invasive dichotomy by simplistically reversing its values, and fail to respond to more complex ecological contexts and requirements (Plumwood). This is also socially problematic because the native/invasive divide of nonhuman life overlays more complex human politics of colonisation in Australia. The Native/Invasive Dualism The bilby is currently listed as an “endangered” species in Queensland and as “vulnerable” nationally. Bilbies once inhabited 70% of the Australian landscape, but now inhabit less than 15% of the country (Save the Bilby Fund). This dramatic reduction in bilby numbers has multiple causes, but the European rabbit has played a significant role in threatening the bilby species by competing for burrows and food. Other threats come from the predation of introduced species, such as feral cats and foxes, and the impact of farmed introduced species, such as sheep and cattle, which also destroy bilby habitats. Because the rabbit directly competes with the bilby for food and shelter in the Australian environment, the bilby can be classed as the underdog native, appealing to that larger Australian story about “the fair go”. It seems that the Easter bilby campaign is intended to level out the threat posed by the highly successful and adaptive rabbit through promoting the bilby in the “cultural selection” stakes. This involves encouraging bilby-love, while actively discouraging love and care for the introduced rabbits which threaten the bilby’s survival. On the Rabbit Free Australia Website, the campaign rationale to replace the Easter bunny with the Easter bilby claims that: Very young children are indoctrinated with the concept that bunnies are nice soft fluffy creatures whereas in reality they are Australia’s greatest environmental feral pest and cause enormous damage to the arid zone. In this statement the lived corporeal presence of individual rabbits is denied as the “soft, fluffy” body disappears behind the environmentally problematic species’ behaviour. The assertion that children are “indoctrinated” to find rabbits love-able, and that this conflicts with the “reality” of the rabbit as environmentally destructive, denies the complexity of the living animal and the multiple possible responses to it. That children find rabbits “fluffy” is not the result of pro-rabbit propaganda, but because rabbits are fluffy! That Rabbit Free Australia could construe this to be some kind of elaborate falsehood demonstrates the disappearance of the individual rabbit in the native/invasive tale of colonisation. Rabbit-Free Australia seeks to eradicate the animal not only from Australian ecosystems, but from the hearts and minds of children who are told to replace the rabbit with the more fitting native bilby. There is no acceptance here of the rabbit as a complex animal that evokes ambivalent responses, being both worthy of moral consideration, care and love, and also an introduced and environmentally destructive species. The native/invasive dualism is a subject of sustained critique in environmental philosophy because it depends on a disjunctive temporal division drawn at the point of European settlement—1788. Environmental philosopher Thom van Dooren points out that the divide between animals who belong and animals who should be eradicated is “fundamentally premised on the reification of a specific historical moment that ignores the changing and dynamic nature of ecologies” (11). Mark Davis et al. explain that the practical value of the native/invasive dichotomy in conservation programs is seriously diminished and in some cases is becoming counterproductive (153). They note that “classifying biota according to their adherence to cultural standards of belonging, citizenship, fair play and morality does not advance our understanding of ecology” (153). Instead, they promote a more inclusive approach to conservation which accepts non-native species as part of Australia’s “new nature” (Low). Recent research into wildlife conservation indicates a striking lack of evidence for the case that pest control protects native diversity (see Bergstromn et al., Davis et al., Ewel & Putz, Reddiex & Forsyth). The problematic justification of “killing for conservation” becomes untenable when conservation outcomes are fundamentally uncertain. The mass slaughter which rabbits have been subjected to in Australia has been enacted with the goal of fostering life. This pursuit of creation through destruction, of re-birth through violent death, enacts a disturbing twist where death comes to signal the presence of life. This means, perversely, that a rabbit’s dead body becomes a valuable sign of environmental health. Conservation researchers Ben Reddiex and David M. Forsyth observe that this leads to a situation where environmental managers are “more interested in estimating how many pests they killed rather than the status of biodiversity they claimed to be able to protect” (715). What Other Stories Can We Tell about the Rabbit? With an ecological narrative that is failing, producing damage and death instead of fostering love and life, we are left with the question—what other stories can we tell about the place of the European rabbit in the Australian environment? How can the meaning ecologies of media and culture work in harmony with an ecological consciousness that promotes compassion for nonhuman life? Ignoring the native/invasive distinction entirely is deeply problematic because it registers the ecological history of Australia as continuity, and fails to acknowledge the colonising impact of European settlement on the environment. At the same time, continually reinforcing that divide through pro-invasive or pro-native stories drastically simplifies complex and interconnected ecological systems. Instead of the unproductive native/invasive dualism, ecologists and philosophers alike are suggesting “reconciliatory” approaches to the inhabitants of our shared environments which emphasise ecology as relational rather than classificatory. Evolutionary ecologist Scott P. Carroll uses the term “conciliation biology” as an alternative to invasion biology which focuses on the eradication of invasive species. “Conciliation biology recognises that many non-native species are permanent, that outcomes of native-nonnative interactions will vary depending on the scale of assessment and the values assigned to the biotic system, and that many non-native species will perform positive functions in one or more contexts” (186). This hospitable approach aligns with what Michael Rosensweig has termed “reconciliation ecology”—the modification and diversification of anthropogenic habitats to harbour a wider variety of species (201). Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Mark Bekoff encourages a “compassionate conservation” which avoids the “numbers game” of species thinking where certain taxonomies are valued above others and promotes approaches which “respect all life; treat individuals with respect and dignity; and tread lightly when stepping into the lives of animals”(24). In a similar vein environmental philosopher Deborah Bird Rose offers the term “Eco-reconciliation”, to describe a mode of “living generously with others, singing up relationships so that we all flourish” (Wild Dog 59). It may be that the rabbit cannot live in harmony with the bilby, and in this situation I am unsure of what a conciliation approach to ecology might look like in terms of managing both of these competing species. But I am sure what it should not look like if we are to promote approaches to ecology and conservation which avoid the simplistic dualism of native/invasive. The devaluation of rabbit life to the point of moral inconsiderability is fundamentally unethical. By classifying certain lives as “inappropriate,” and therefore expendable, the process of rabbit slaughter is simply too easy. The idea that the rabbit should disappear is disturbing in its abstract approach to these living, sentient creatures who share with us both place and history. A dynamic understanding of ecology dissipates the notion of a whole or static “nature.” This means that there can be no simple or comprehensive directives for how humans should interact with their environments. One of the most insidious aspects of the native/invasive divide is the way it makes violent death appear inevitable, as though rabbits must be culled. This obscures the many complex and contingent choices which determine the fate of nonhuman life. Understanding the dynamism of ecology requires an acceptance that nature does not provide simple prescriptive responses to problems, and instead “people are forced to choose the kind of environment they want” (189) and then take actions to engender it. This involves difficult decisions, one of which is culling to maintain rabbit numbers and facilitate environmental resilience. Living within a world of “discordant harmonies”, as Daniel Botkin evocatively describes it, environmental decisions are necessarily complex. The entanglement of ecological systems demands that we reject simplistic dualisms which offer illusory absolution from the consequences of the difficult choices humans make about life, ecologies, and how to manage them. Ecological Remembrance The vision of a rabbit-free Australia is unrealistic. As organisation like the Anti-Rabbit Research Foundation pursue this future ideal, they eradicate rabbits from the present, and seek to remove them from the past by replacing them culturally with the more suitable bilby. Culled rabbits lie rotting en masse in fields, food for no one, and even their cultural impact in human society is sought to be annihilated and replaced with more appropriate native creatures. The rabbits’ deaths do not turn back to life in transformative and regenerative processes that are ecological and cultural, but rather that death becomes “an event with no future” (Rose, Wild Dog 25). This is true oblivion, as the rabbit is entirely removed from the world. In this paper I have made a case for the importance of stories in ecology. I have argued that the kinds of stories we tell about rabbits determines how we treat them, and so have positioned stories as an essential part of an ecological system which takes “cultural selection” seriously. In keeping with this emphasis on story I offer to the conciliation push in ecological thinking the term “ecological remembrance” to capture an ethic of sharing time while sharing space. This spatio-temporal hospitality is focused on maintaining heterogeneous memories and histories of all beings who have impacted on the environment. In Deborah Bird Rose’s terms this is a “recuperative work” which commits to direct dialogical engagement with the past that is embedded in the present (Wild Country 23). In this sense it is a form of recuperation that promotes temporal and ecological continuity. Eco-remembrance aligns with dynamic understandings of ecology because it is counter-linear. Instead of approaching the past as a static idyll, preserved and archived, ecological remembrance celebrates the past as an ongoing, affective presence which is lived and performed. Ecological remembrance, applied to the European rabbit in Australia, would involve rejecting attempts to extricate the rabbit from Australian environments and cultures. It would seek acceptance of the rabbit as part of Australia’s “new nature” (Low), and aim for recognition of the rabbit’s impact on human society as part of dynamic multi-species ecologies. In this sense ecological remembrance of the rabbit directly opposes the goal of the Foundation for Rabbit Free Australia to eradicate the European rabbit from Australian environment and culture. On the Rabbit Free Australia website, the section on biological controls states that “the point is not how many rabbits are killed, but how many are left behind”. The implication is that the millions upon millions of rabbit lives extinguished have vanished from the earth, and need not be remembered or considered. However, as Deborah Rose argues, “all deaths matter” (Wild Dog 21) and “no death is a mere death” (Wild Dog 22). Every single rabbit is an individual being with its own unique life. To deny this is tantamount to claiming that each rabbit that dies from shooting or poisoning is the same rabbit dying again and again. Rose has written that “death makes claims upon all of us” (Wild Dog 19). These are claims of ethics and compassion, a claim that “we look into the eyes of the dying and not flinch, that we reach out to hold and to help” (Wild Dog 20). This claim is a duty of remembrance, a duty to “bear witness” (Wiesel 160) to life and death. The Nobel Peace Prize winning author, Elie Wiesel, argued that memory is a reconciliatory force that creates bonds as mass annihilation seeks to destroy them. Memory ensures that no life becomes truly life-less as it wrests the victims of mass slaughter from “oblivion” and allows the dead to “vanquish death” (21). In a continent inhabited by dead rabbits—a community of the dead—remembering these lost individuals and their lost lives is an important task for making sure that no death is a mere death. An ethic of ecological remembrance follows this recuperative aim. References Arthur, Jay M. The Default Country: A Lexical Cartography of Twentieth-Century Australia. Sydney: UNSW Press, 2003. Bagust, Phil. “Cuddly Koalas, Beautiful Brumbies, Exotic Olives: Fighting for Media Selection in the Attention Economy.” “Imaging Natures”: University of Tasmania Conference Proceedings (2004). 25 April 2012 ‹www.utas.edu.au/arts/imaging/bagust.pdf› Bekoff, Marc. “First Do No Harm.” New Scientist (28 August 2010): 24 – 25. Bergstrom, Dana M., Arko Lucieer, Kate Kiefer, Jane Wasley, Lee Belbin, Tore K. Pederson, and Steven L. Chown. “Indirect Effects of Invasive Species Removal Devastate World Heritage Island.” Journal of Applied Ecology 46 (2009): 73– 81. Botkin, Daniel. B. 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