EHN Anniversary Week
by EHN Team

EHN’s 6th Anniversary Retrospective

A Note from the Editors

To wrap up this year’s anniversary week, the executive team decided to create a retrospective of some of the essays published in the past year and an archive of essays and Ecotones Now podcasts. We would like to showcase three pieces featuring the life world of plants, animals, and water. First, Nicole Hodgson’s essay on plants, anti-colonialism, and the methodological possibilities of ecobiography. Second, Yolima Vargas Garzón’s exciting vignette on the lives of animals—namely, runaway hippos—in Colombia and the tensions between conservation and control. Finally, Lucile Truffy’s historical account of a river pollution case in France and conflicting reports about the alleged polluters. Scroll to read, and click to read more.

1. THRIVING IN A WORLD OF PLANTS: THE POSSIBILITIES OF ECOBIOGRAPHY

By Nicole Hodgson
Originally published on May 23, 2024

Scrub brush in front of mountain and blue sky with clouds. The granite mound of Mt Baring on the kwongkan sandplain, with Banksia speciosa (Showy banksia) and Xanthorrhoea (Grass tree) in the foreground.
Image by author.
[Image Description: The granite mound of Mt Baring on the kwongkan sandplain, with Banksia speciosa (Showy banksia) and Xanthorrhoea (Grass tree) in the foreground.]

Take a map of Australia and turn your attention to the western half. Draw a diagonal line from Shark Bay in the north-west to Israelite Bay on the south-east coast. That large triangular wedge goes by a few names—always was, always will be the land of the Noongar people. This is also the Southwest Australian Floristic Region (SWAFR), one of just thirty-six global biodiversity hotspots. This alignment between cultural and ecological boundaries confirms the intimate connection between the Noongar people and their Country stretching back for at least sixty thousand years. Keep reading.

2. WE ARE RUNNING OUT OF TIME TO CONTROL ESCOBAR’S HIPPOS

By Yolima Vargas Garzón
Originally published on December 20, 2023

A group of three hippos in a river.
Public domain.
[ Image description: A group of three hippos in a river.]

In 1981, four hippos from the United States arrived in Colombia, with another 1,200 animals, as part of a new, extravagant 2,000-hectare zoo in the Hacienda Nápoles.[1] This reserve, owned by the famous drug baron Pablo Escobar, was enormous; it stood nearly ten times the size of Toronto Zoo in Canada, one of the largest zoos in the world, which covers 287 hectares.

In 2008, long after Escobar’s death in 1993, the state of abandonment of the large Hacienda Nápoles raised alarm among the Colombian scientific community.[2] Escobar’s hippos had escaped, and scientists had identified, by then, that these animals were a latent biological threat. They were reproducing out of control and were soon to become an invasive species that would be difficult and expensive to manage. Keep reading.

3. DEATH ON THE AUDE: RIVER POLLUTION, THE FRENCH FORMICA COMPANY, AND LOCAL FISHERS IN 1983

By Lucile Truffy
Originally published on June 27, 2024

A clipping from a historic newspaper article. Beneath the headline are two photographs. On the left lies a dead trout, “fallen victim to human stupidity” as the caption states (“Une truite splendide victime de la bêtise des hommes”). On the right, there are the inhabitants of Quillan perched on the city’s old bridge, gazing out over the river. The caption reads: “A destruction that rallied all the Quillan residents” (“Une destruction qui a mobilisé tous les habitants de Quillan”).
An excerpt from a press article entitled “Ecological disaster in the upper valley. The Aude river polluted by a violent poison” (“Catastrophe écologique en Haute-Vallée. L’Aude polluée par un poison violent [sic]”), published by the regional newspaper L’Indépendant on 18 September 1983, the day after the pollution. Image used with permission from the Aude departmental archives.
[Image description: A clipping from a historic newspaper article. Beneath the headline are two photographs. On the left lies a dead trout, “fallen victim to human stupidity” as the caption states. On the right, there are the inhabitants of Quillan perched on the city’s old bridge, gazing out over the river. The caption reads: “A destruction that rallied all the Quillan residents.”]

Quillan, September 17, 1983, 9 a.m. Louis Fernandez, an active member of the upper Aude valley fishing society as well as an employee of the French company Formica, sounded the alarm. He reported to the police the complete destruction of the fish stock. Local authorities rushed to the spill site to observe the damage to the aquatic fauna. Residents flocked to the banks and bridges as well, witnessing the “distressing sight of hundreds of belly-up trout.”[1] The regional daily press echoed the growing concern: “The toxic river is moving slowly, spreading psychosis and anxiety as it goes,” as La Dépêche du Midi headlined the following day.[2] What was the murder weapon? Who committed such a crime? All eyes promptly turned to the Formica company. Keep reading.

EHN Archive

Essays & Podcasts
(Sept. 2023-Sept. 2024)

An arrangement of pressed brown, green, orange, and yellow flower petals and leaves on a white background, depicting a forest of trees, plants, and flowers, with a large bird-like figure peering into a flower.
Xunmi, pressed flowers, by Deng Yingyu, Wikipedia Commons. CC-BY-SA-3.0-migrated.
[Image description: An arrangement of pressed brown, green, orange, and yellow flower petals and leaves on a white background, depicting a forest of trees, plants, and flowers, with a large bird-like figure peering into a flower.]

September 2023

October 2023

November 2023

December 2023

January 2024

February 2024

March 2024

April 2024

May 2024

June 2024

July 2024

August 2024

September 2024: Anniversary Week Essays

Cover image: The three panels are taken from the cover image of the three selected essays for this year’s retrospective.

[*Cover image description: The left panel features an image taken by Nicole Hodgson, of a granite mount of Mt. Baring in Western Australia. The central panel is taken from an image of hippos from public domain. The right panel is an image of from a press article entitled “Ecological disaster in the upper valley, published by the regional newspaper L’Indépendant on 18 September 1983.]