• 1800: In California, tens of thousands of Chinook Salmon migrated up the Sacramento River to the Shasta River to spawn in their ancient grounds.
• 1940: Only 80,000 recorded during fall run.
• Today: Only 300-1000.
• Columbia River system: Only 909,000 Chinook return to Columbia River and Snake River.

• Disputes between ranchers, farmers, and environmentalists:
• Ranchers: "Stay off my property and leave me alone."
• Farmers: "People were getting heartburn about agencies buying land and converting it to habitat."
• Environmentalists: agricultural diversions from dams and silt disrupt spawning gravel and raise stream temperature.
• Resolution attempts: Fencing off cattle; restoring vegetation; releases of cold water.

• About salmon?
• About society?

• How should we write the environmental history of the Chinook salmon?
• What concepts should we use?
• How did change occur?
• Does history matter in future choices and decisions? If so, how?

• Donald Worster
• Jared Diamond
• William Cronon
• Carolyn Merchant

 
• Three levels
• Guns, Germs, and Steel
• Stories and constructs
• Ecological revolutions

• University of Kansas, Lawrence.
• Author of Nature's Economy (1977); Dust Bowl (1979); Rivers of Empire (1985); A River Running West (2001).
• In Major Problems: "Cowboy Ecology" (Ch 9); "Organic, Economic, and Chaotic Ecology" (Ch 13).

• To do environmental history, we must "get out of doors . . . and ramble into fields, woods, and the open air. It is time we bought a good set of walking shoes, and we cannot avoid getting some mud on them."

• Natural Environments of the Past:
• Life cycle of salmon.
• Evolution of river and ocean ecology.
• Human Modes of Production:
• Pastoral mode of production: ranching.
• Hydraulic mode of production: capitalism.
• Perception, Ideology, and Value:
• Capitalist maximization of profit.
• Instrumental use of nature.

• University of California, Los Angeles, Geography Department.
• Author of Guns, Germs, and Steel:The Fates of Human Societies (1997).

• In Major Problems: "Predicting Environmental History."
• Material, scientific, deterministic explanation of environmental history.

• "Why did human development proceed at such different rates on different continents for the past 13,000 years?"
• "The answer . . . has nothing to do with differences among peoples themselves, but instead lies in differences among the biological and geographical environments in which peoples found themselves."

13. Diamond: "Guns, Germs, and Steel"

• "A shorthand for those proximate factors which enabled modern Europeans to conquer peoples of other continents."
• Proximate Factors:
• Military technology based on guns, steel swords, and horses.
• European maritime technology.
• Infectious diseases endemic in Eurasia. 
• European centralized political organization. 
• Writing.

15. Marine Technology: Ocean-going Ships

• King Ferdinand looks out across the Atlantic Ocean as Columbus lands in the West Indies.

16. Epidemic Diseases: Smallpox Strikes the Indians of Mexico

17. Diamond: Ultimate Factors

• Sedentary societies
• Domesticated animals and plants.
• Number of candidate species for domestication.
• East-West axis of Eurasia versus North-South Axis of Americas.
• Food surpluses give European sedentary societies ultimate advantage over New World gatherer-hunter-fishers.

• Eurasian origins. All are now world-wide.
• Sheep. 8000 B.C.E. Southwest Asia.
• Goat. 8000 B.C.E. Southwest Asia
• Cow (cattle, oxen). 6000 B.C.E. Southwest Asia, India, North Africa.
• Pig. 8000 B.C.E. China, Southwest Asia.
• Horse. 4000 B.C.E. Ukraine.
• Introduced into the Americas by explorers and colonists after 1492.

• Measles
• Tuberculosis
• Smallpox
• Influensia
• Pertussis 
• Malaria

• cattle (rinderpest)
• cattle
• cattle (cowpox)
• pigs and ducks
• pigs, dogs
• birds (chickens and ducks)

• Wheat (Fertile Crescent)
• Corn (Mesoamerica)
• Rice (China, India, West Africa)
• Barley (India)
• Sorghum (West Africa)

21. New World Crops (Americas)

• Cereals: Corn.
• Pulses: Common bean, tepary bean, scarlet runner bean, lima bean, peanut.
• Melons: Squash, pumpkin.
• Fibers: Cotton, hemp.
• "Most areas where indigenous food production arose late or not at all offered exceptionally poor rather than rich resources to hunter-gatherers."

• "In most areas of the globe suitable for food production, hunter-gatherers met one of two fates: either they were displaced by . . . food producers, or else they survived only by adopting food production themselves." 
• "Much of human history has consisted of unequal conflicts between the haves and the have-nots: between peoples with farmer power and those without it, or between those who acquired it at different times."

24. Diamond's Approach to the Chinook Salmon Example

• "Guns, Germs, and Steel" gave European settlers a "proximate advantage."
• California Indians were gatherer-hunter-fishers who succumbed to European diseases.
• European settlers had domesticated animals and crops that gave Europeans an "ultimate advantage."
• Europeans easily colonized land and rivers.

• University of Wisconsin, Madison.
• Author of Changes in the Land (1983); Nature’s Metropolis (1992); editor of Uncommon Ground (1995).
• In Major Problems: "Telling Stories About Ecology" (Ch. 9); "The Trouble with Wilderness" (Ch. 11).

• "Is telling parables about nature and the human past a useful thing to do?" Yes.
• "The answers we environmental historians give to the question 'What's the story?' have the great virtue that they remind people of the immense human power to alter and find meaning in the natural world--and the even more immense power of nature to respond."

• Blaming capitalism is too deterministic; implies a prophecy of environmental decline.
• Why not a "salmon-fishing mode of production"?
• Salmon as a food is a cultural construct.
• Food is good to think.
• Native Californians choose to eat salmon in relation to myths and rituals of world renewal and worship.
• European Americans choose to eat salmon in relation to myths and rituals of cholesterol reduction.

• University of California, Berkeley.
• Author of The Death of Nature (1980); Ecological Revolutions (1989); Radical Ecology (1992); Earthcare (1996); Reinventing Eden (2003).

• "Over the past several decades, environmental historians . . . have become increasingly conscious of the place of race, gender, and class in the interpretation of history."
• "Race, gender, and class are lenses through which to view history and interpret human interactions with the environment."

31. Merchant's Approach to the Chinook Salmon Example

• Ecology: Change in ocean currents owing to El Nino effects; unpredictability of salmon.
• Production: Change from Native American fishing ecology to capitalist ranching.
• Reproduction: Rise in California population; reproduction of U.S. laws and institutions.
• Consciousness: Change from Indian ecocentric to American egocentric, laissez-faire ethic.
• Social Construction: Race, Gender, and Class.

• What questions, comments, or problems do you have concerning these approaches?
• Does knowing the environmental history of an environmental problem help us to make better choices in the future?