Bombs Away: Militarization, Conservation, and Ecological Restoration
David G. Havlick
Abstract
In recent decades, hundreds of millions of acres of militarized landscapes around the world have transitioned to new purposes of wildlife conservation. These land use changes offer valuable opportunities for new approaches to environmental protection, but also carry cautionary lessons about military impacts, historical erasure, and how to guide ecological restoration in landscapes with complex cultural and natural histories. This book examines a number of these sites, ranging from relatively unknown wildlife refuges in the United States to internationally-renowned areas such as the Iron Curtai ... More
In recent decades, hundreds of millions of acres of militarized landscapes around the world have transitioned to new purposes of wildlife conservation. These land use changes offer valuable opportunities for new approaches to environmental protection, but also carry cautionary lessons about military impacts, historical erasure, and how to guide ecological restoration in landscapes with complex cultural and natural histories. This book examines a number of these sites, ranging from relatively unknown wildlife refuges in the United States to internationally-renowned areas such as the Iron Curtain borderlands of Europe and the Demilitarized Zone of the Korean Peninsula. These emerging sites of conservation must accomplish seemingly antithetical aims: rebuilding and protecting ecosystems, or restoring life, while also commemorating the historical and cultural legacies of warfare and militarization. The book examines how military activities, conservation goals, and ecological restoration efforts come together - at times disconcertingly - to create new kinds of places and foster new kinds of relationships between humans and the environment.
Keywords:
militarization,
conservation,
ecological restoration,
Iron Curtain,
wildlife refuges,
demilitarized zone,
militarized landscapes,
historical erasure,
environmental protection
Bibliographic Information
Print publication date: 2018 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780226547541 |
Published to Chicago Scholarship Online: September 2018 |
DOI:10.7208/chicago/9780226547688.001.0001 |