Extinction and Its Interventions in the Americas

This forum argues that environmental historians ought to pay more attention to animal extinction—the disappearance of a lineage of life—than they have to date. Examining the pre-and post-extinction contexts of charismatic terrestrial vertebrates in the Americas certainly underscores the power humans have had over other animals and their habitats. Yet, the contingencies and unexpected results of conservation efforts merit no less attention. Indeed, by uncovering important nuances in the extension of human power, they provide insights into the conditions critical to avoid extinction. As environmental history has long shown, abstracting the human from the nonhuman world distorts the history of both. Thus, leaving extinction to other disciplines misrepresents what historians can offer and how societies can address ongoing crises of extinction. In this forum, historians partner with scientists in collaboratively composed essays, negotiated across stylistic conventions and subject orientations, to highlight the latent promise of such partnerships. In doing so, they engage spatial and temporal scales that clearly illustrate the significance of deep history and historicize extinction by calling attention to the power, production, and scales of species decline.