Meets the following requirements: HS HY                                                           

This course uses the contemporary plight of Atlantic Salmon as point of entry into the complex history of the environments they have inhabited.  The course is part environmental history, part policy crash course, and part human ecological exploration.  The course is not limited exclusively to salmon, but attempts to look at the web of ecological relationships which emanate outwards from them.  We hope to use the recent controversy over the status of salmon in the North Atlantic to look at the complex contemporary and historical processes which have led to the species decline. We explore the legal and policy issues around the salmon's listing in the United States while looking at the Canadian and European experience.  The course also asks students to historicize today's debates and explore the history of salmon in the North Atlantic as a window into the region's complicated environmental past by exploring the impact of milling operations, timber harvesting, sea fisheries, marine mammal populations levels and many more factors on them.

Level:  Intermediate/Advanced.  Lab fee: 125.  *HS*  *HY*