#EnvHist Worth Reading: September 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 September 2025.

1) The surprising recovery of once-rare birds

I think we are all in search of good news stories right now. This desire is what attracted me to this Conversation piece by Tom Langen, who opens with a personal reflection on his own observations as a birdwatcher over the past five decades. Though bird populations are declining globally, “half a century after I started birding, I am starting to see a few long-missing species reappear as I ride my bike from my home through the village and surrounding farmland in rural New York,” Langen writes. He then goes into short vignettes about the decline and recovery of three bird species, arguing that these cases offer models for further bird species recovery going forward.

2) What does it mean for a river to be ‘alive’? – CBC Ideas

This episode of CBC Ideas focuses primarily on popular natural history writer, Robert Macfarlane and his quest to understand whether or not rivers are living beings and to better understand the movement to legally recognize the personhood of rivers. The episode also feature Jennifer Bonnell, who speaks to the history of the Don River in Toronto, which was the topic of her dissertation and book, Reclaiming the Don.

3) The Loophole You Can Drive A Truck Through – The Climate Denier’s Playbook

This episode of The Climate Denier’s Playbook examines the impact of the 1964 chicken tax, which was a 25 percent tariff on light trucks and other goods that was enacted in response to European tariffs on American chicken exports, that ultimately shaped the American auto industry in the years and decades after and is a major driver in the American obsession with large SUVs and trucks. They also talk about the 1970s oil crisis, instances of small vehicles trying and sometimes succeeding in American markets, and the politics and marketing behind all of this.

4) Did Scientists Just Figure Out Why People Die A DECADE Earlier in the Southeast US?

This episode of PBS Terra is a really interesting look into the intersections of histories of weather, disaster, and health in the Southeast United States. People living in this region have a lifespan that is on average ten years less than other areas in the US, and the cause of this has stumped researchers for a long time. The episode ultimately finds that the indirect health impacts of natural disasters and extreme weather, of which there are a lot in the Southeast US, are not tracked adequately. Scientists now think that tropical cyclones are causing 7,000 to 11,000 indirect deaths, compared to the average twenty-four direct deaths. I do agree with commenters that other factors, like poverty, need to be understood in relation to this data, but it could be an interesting avenue for historians of environment and health to explore.

5) The human niche and the rise of capitalism, Adam Izdebski

In this fascinating presentation, Adam Izdebski examines the historical social-ecological systems that enabled the rise of capitalism. I actually ended up watching all twenty of the presentations from this playlist from the SOURCES: Integrating historical sources for long-term ecological knowledge and biodiversity conservation conference, which exhibits a wide array of interdisciplinary potential between environmental historians and historical ecologists.

Feature Image: The Don River. Circa 1880. Credit: Library and Archives Canada, Acc. No. R9266-311R Peter Winkworth Collection of Canadiana.

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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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