ABSTRACT
Wars affect the environment, and the environment shapes war. An expansive yet disparate body of research has developed in very recent years on the histories of war, landscape, militarisation, and the environment in response to increasing public interest in the environmental legacies of contemporary wars. This chapter focuses on the environmental histories of militarised landscapes on the Australian homefront, including in particular the land and sea military training areas that form part of the Department of Defence’s three-million hectare estate.
Drawing in the important case of the Puckapunyal military Training Area in central Victoria, it investigates the evolution of military environmentalist discourses and sustainable land management regimes in the post-war era and the role of emerging conservation practices in shaping outcomes for a variety of animal populations that share habitats with defence forces. This chapter argues that the way in which defence forces approach issues of habitat and wildlife conservation has moved in concert with broader public concerns with ecological and biological diversity and shows that the question of animal populations has emerged as a significant feature of wider considerations of how an equilibrium might be established by the sometimes competing, sometimes complementary demands of militarism and environmentalism.
