Resettling the Range

Download or read book Resettling the Range written by John Thistle and published by UBC Press. This book was released on 2015-02-25 with total page 245 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The ranchers who resettled BC’s interior in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries depended on grassland for their cattle, but in this they faced some unlikely competition from grasshoppers and wild horses. With the help of the government, settlers resolved to rid the range of both. Resettling the Range explores the ecology and history of the grassland and the people who lived there by looking closely at these eradication efforts. In the claims of “range improvement” and “rational land use,” author John Thistle uncovers more complicated stories of marginalization: the destruction of wild horses worked to dispossess aboriginal people, while the campaign to exterminate grasshoppers exposed class conflicts and competing versions of resettlement among immigrant ranchers. This unconventional history examines the lasting effects of range improvement, revealing a fascinating – and troubling – chapter of BC history.