- Title
- "Cunning, intractable, destructive animals": pigs as co colonisers in the Hunter Valley of New South Wales, 1840 - 1860
- Creator
- Cushing, Nancy
- Relation
- Animals Count: How Population Size Matters in Animal-Human Relations p. 113-125
- Relation
- Routledge Environmental Humanities
- Relation
- https://www.routledge.com/Animals-Count-How-Population-Size-Matters-in-Animal-Human-Relations-1st/Cushing-Frawley/p/book/9780815381365
- Publisher
- Routledge
- Resource Type
- book chapter
- Date
- 2018
- Description
- The colonial transformations of the Australian landscape were primarily engineered by and for non-human animals raised for meat and wool. The most important of these - numerically, economically and on the plate - were sheep and cattle, but other introduced species were also part of this process. Leasing them was the pig. After arriving with the First Fleet in 1788, pig populations rose to a point considered desirable amongst the settle-colonists, consistent with their supplementary rather than central role in the British-derived diet and the economy. This sense of sufficient but not excessive numbers did not prevent pigs from being seen as troublesome animals. As self-directed omnivores, they drew public censure, governmental regulation and direct punishment. Although these measures endured that pigs were largely held in equilibrium in the streets, houses, gardens and cultivators' plots, regulation of their exploits outside the fences was negligible, with the effect that pigs become unintended but effective settler-colonial allies in disrupting existing ecologies to the detriment of native species and Indigenous peoples. The number of pigs which was acceptable to settler-colonists was excessive by other measures.
- Subject
- environment; sustainability; biodiversity; wildlife conservation; ecology; population size; animal populations; humans; pigs; farm animals
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1404962
- Identifier
- uon:35421
- Identifier
- ISBN:9780815381365
- Language
- eng
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