ABSTRACT
This chapter bridges a series of past and recent dune accounts in weaving together various social and environmental local histories with different timelines and agendas from the beginning of large-scale afforestation schemes until the twentieth-first century. Although major signifiers of national pride, these forests were also a source of counter narratives and social protest, as they served as tools for changing traditional ways of life and became symbols of subjugation. In several cases, afforestation schemes justified the dispossession of land and rights. Meanwhile, the introduction of new species—marram, pine, and casuarina—often had unexpected results, transforming ecosystems and landscapes. Like the social impacts of dune afforestation, these environmental changes were not linear and singular processes of degradation or improvement and cannot be seen as categorically good or bad. Reality, as this chapter shows, is so much more complex than this.
