Paper short abstract:

Ancient environments are rapidly changing amid land use change and bushfires in southeast Australia. Looking at deep time, colonial-extractivist and climate changed histories of East Gippsland´s forests from a relational perspective, I explore how meaning over the environment is negotiated.

Paper long abstract:

The devastating 2019-20 bushfires in southeast Australia have unsettled the ways both humans and nonhumans relate to each other and with their environments. Haunted not only by the short-term losses of human assets, local biodiversity and landscape change but also by the accelerating threats of extinction and eco-system collapse, local residents, land managers and conservationists make meaning together with gliders, owls and trees amidst Australia´s climate catastrophe. In this paper, I focus on the forests of the Errinundra plateau in far-east Gippsland which harbors some of Australia´s most spectacular old growth and Victoria´s largest remaining stands of cool-temperate rainforest, providing a refuge for threatened species and exceptional biodiversity in a rapidly changing world. However, with a history of land use strongly informed by colonialism and extractivism, these unique ecological communities are in peril: Can they persist in a fundamentally altered environment? How can humans and nonhumans live well together in ancient environments in a rapidly changing world? What ideas, values and materialities inform negotiations over their management amidst these challenges? To better understand how meaning over the environment and environmental change is negotiated in light of the Australian climate catastrophe, I look at human-nature relations in the aftermath of the 2019-20 bushfires. By conceptualising human-nature relations as relationships of care from an interdisciplinary perspective, involving anthropological, sociological and ethical considerations, I seek to unravel the deep time, colonial-extractivist, and climate changed histories of the environment of the Errinundra forests.