Sarah R. Hamilton. Cultivating Nature: The Conservation of a Valencian Working Landscape.

Abstract

Just to the south of Valencia, Spain, lies a narrow, thirty-kilometer-long stretch of land and water. At its heart is the Albufera, a shallow freshwater lake harboring an array of terrestrial and aquatic species and hosting multitudes of migratory birds that appear annually at this stop along the western Mediterranean flyway between Africa and Europe. A scant kilometer to the east is the Mediterranean Sea, and in between these bodies of water lie old, degraded pine forests, dune slacks, and dunes—collectively known as the Devesa—that complete this complex ecosystem. To call this area “profoundly modified” is an unremarkable statement about any European landscape, but Sarah R. Hamilton has teased out not only those modifications, both ancient and modern, but also the web of cultural traits and political contests that have fashioned a rich set of meanings shaping the Devesa and Albufera. Products of conflict and compromise, these meanings reveal important truths about contemporary Spain and environmental politics more generally.