#EnvHist Worth Reading: August 2025

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Every month I carefully track the most popular and significant environmental history articles, videos, audio, and other items making their way through the online environmental history (#envhist) community. You can read all of our past #EnvHist Worth Reading lists right here. Here are my choices for items most worth reading from August 2025.

1) Shrinking Cod: How Humans Are Impacting the Evolution of Species

In this historical ecology article about human-induced evolution for Yale 360, Jim Robbins writes about declining cod populations in the Baltic Sea. This population has collapsed since the 1990s due to overfishing. What is particularly interesting about this collapse is that it has led to significant genetic changes amongst the cod. The species has become slower-growing and smaller. “If the largest animals are preferentially caught over the years, this gives the smaller, faster-maturing individuals an evolutionary advantage,” states Thorsten Reusch, head of GEOMAR’s marine ecology research department, in the article.

2) Weeding and Writing History

In this piece for Perspectives, Cecilia Slane reflects on her transition from rural Illinois to city life, finding solace and inspiration in community gardening. Weeding became both a stress reliever and a method for thinking through her graduate research on energy, agriculture, and extraction. Her work now focuses on peatlands, their history of drainage, fuel use, and ecological change. Gardening provides a tangible connection to the land, informing her methodology and shaping her dissertation. Through gardening’s physicality and metaphors, she navigates the tension between urban living and rural roots while cultivating both plants and ideas.

3) What’s going on in Wasaga Beach? Profit, piping plovers and an Ontario town’s complicated future

In this article for The Narwhal, Fatima Syed looks at the current political and conservation controversies circling Ontario’s Wasaga Beach Provincial Park. As Ontario’s most-visited provincial park, it also serves as key habitat for endangered piping plovers. Premier Doug Ford’s government is proposing to hand 60 hectares of the beach over to municipal control. Conservationists fear that this move will lead to a loss of provincial safeguards after Bill 5 weakened endangered species laws, and residents are protesting the lack of a clear plan and potential overdevelopment. The debate highlights tensions between ecological preservation, economic revitalization, and local autonomy on the world’s longest freshwater beach. As your favourite Ontario provincial park historian, I particularly appreciated Syed’s look into the history of the beach and the measures that led to it becoming a provincial park.

4) “Race Against Time”: 20 Years After Hurricane Katrina, Docuseries Reckons with Aftermath

August marked the twentieth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. Given the current political situation in the United States and cuts being made to NOAA and FEMA, reflections on the mishandling of this disaster seem particularly poignant. Democracy Now! has published a number of videos on this anniversary, focusing especially on the racial dimensions of the disaster response and aid in the months (and years) following. In this video, they interview the director of the new documentary series, Hurricane Katrina: Race Against Time, Traci A. Curry.

5) David Suzuki’s final episode of The Nature of Things after 44 years

Initially aired in 2023, this episode of CBC’s The Nature of Things, which marked the departure of long-time host, David Suzuki, just hit YouTube in August 2025. Most Canadians are familiar with Suzuki and can point to him as a recognizable figure in popular environmentalism. Suzuki reflects on this contribution to environmental awareness, the impact of the show in general, and what is next for both himself and the planet.

Feature Image: “Kitesurfing Allenwood/Wasaga Beach, Ontario, Canada” by Medicine 2.0 is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0.

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Jessica DeWitt

NiCHE Editor-in-Chief, Social Media Editor at Jessica M. DeWitt: Editing and Consulting
is an environmental historian of Canada and the United States, editor, project manager, consultant, and digital communications strategist. She earned her PhD in History from the University of Saskatchewan in 2019. She is an executive member, editor-in-chief, and social media editor for the Network in Canadian History and Environment (NiCHE). She is the Managing Editor for the Chacruna Institute for Psychedelic Plant Medicines and Associate Editor for Environmental Humanities. Closer to home, she is the President of the Saskatchewan History and Folklore Society, a Coordinating Team member of Showing Up for Racial Justice Saskatoon-Treaty Six, and a Conservation Advisory Committee member for the Meewasin Valley Authority. She focuses on developing digital techniques and communications that bridge the divide between academia and the general public in order to democratize knowledge access. You can find out more about her and her freelance services at jessicamdewitt.com.

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