Wetlands in a Dry Land

In the name of agriculture, urban growth, and disease control, humans have drained, filled, or otherwise destroyed nearly 87 percent of the world’s wetlands over the past three centuries. Unintended consequences include biodiversity loss, poor water quality, and the erosion of cultural sites, and only in the past few decades have wetlands been widely recognized as worth preserving. Emily O’Gorman asks, What has counted as a wetland, for whom, and with what consequences?Using the Murray-Darling Basin—a massive river system in eastern Australia that includes over 30,000 wetland areas—as a case study and drawing on archival research and original interviews, O’Gorman examines how people and animals have shaped wetlands from the late nineteenth century to today. She illuminates deeper dynamics by relating how Aboriginal peoples acted then and now as custodians of the landscape, despite the policies of the Australian government; how the movements of water birds affected farmers; and how mosquitoes have defied efforts to fully understand, let alone control, them. Situating the region’s history within global environmental humanities conversations, O’Gorman argues that we need to understand wetlands as socioecological landscapes in order to create new kinds of relationships with and futures for these places.

By focusing in on those key wetlands as case studies, O’Gorman plots a rather more open-ended story-map that draws out the Basin’s water-management, from Deep Time to the present day. It enlarges the scale of its history to include the more-than-human world; it registers the aspirations as well as the inconsistencies of ‘progress’ and ‘sustainability’ and it gives rich, place-based readings that help us understand how we got here., While focused on a single region, this globallyrelevant work makes a good contribution to the literature concerning wetland ecosystems., [T]his book mounts a new kind of multi-directional critique of modern conservation science that expands our understandings of ecological agency and colonial biopolitics. It depicts a world of nature and culture in relationship, offering a sensitive environmental history of the Murray-Darling Basin and of the diverse socioecological relationships grounded therein., Engangingly written and ambitious in its scope, Wetlands in a Dry Land adds complexity and nuance to our understanding of wetlands., [A] phenomenal study from a master river historian that can help redefine the historiography of rivers.

Emily O’Gorman is senior lecturer at Macquarie University.