BACK STORY - Rethinking Invasion Ecologies from the Environmental Humanities - page 26

topography and climate of New Zealand differ greatly from those of Australia, and
so camels were never at the top of the list of targets for introduction. But
acclimatizers in both places shared the desire to convert their new homelands into
the most plausible possible simulacra of their old ones. In the initial burst of
enthusiasm, as elsewhere, animal introductions were scattershot—anything that
appealed to individual acclimatizers. But soon the focus shifted to the re-creation
half a world away of the staples of British outdoor sport: deer, game birds like
pheasants and grouse, and game fish like trout and salmon. Some of these thrived,
with a transformative effect on the local fauna, and others languished. The
ubiquitous local societies attempted to protect them by eliminating indigenous
predators. In 1906, for example, the Wellington Acclimatisation Society was taking
measures to combat 'the shag menace to trout'. 11 In the course of the twentieth
century new perspectives on this practice emerged and enthusiasm for acclimati-
zation diminished—though not everywhere. The plaque on an imposing monu-
ment to trout acclimatization reads:
This centennial plaque was presented to the Auckland Acclimatisation Society
to convey the gratitude of past, present, and future generations of trout anglers
in New Zealand for the society's successful importation of Californian
rainbow trout ova in 1883, its hatching of the eggs in the Auckland Domain
Pond and its subsequent distribution of the fish and their progeny to many
New Zealand waters. 12
In 1990, the local societies were abolished; that is to say, they were converted into
fish and game councils. 13
These examples demonstrate that utility, like many other things, is a matter of
perspective. Because frivolous (or worse) as they may seem from a contemporary
vantage point, the instigators of all these acclimatization attempts understood
themselves to be acting in the public interest, and not just for their own idio-
syncratic satisfaction.
Perhaps the most poignant demonstration of this is another well-known
American saga, that of the introduction of the starling (Figure 2.2). The starting
point was also New York City, the scene of the excessively successful sparrow
release. In 1871, the American Acclimatization Society was founded to provide
a formal institutional base for such attempts. It is widely reported, though occa-
sionally doubted, that its moving spirit, a prosperous pharmacist named Eugene
Schieffelin, wished to introduce to the United States all the birds named in
Shakespeare. One reason for doubt is simply quantitative—according to a little
topic called The Birds of Shakespeare , which was published in 1916, that tally would
include well over 50 species, not all of them native to Britain (Geikie, 1916). But
nevertheless this notion is persistent—thus a recent article on this topic in Scientific
American was headlined 'Shakespeare to Blame for Introduction of European
Starlings to U.S.'(Mirsky, 2008). Less controversially, this attempt—which also
turned out to be excessively successful—was part of what the Department of