The latest iteration of the Dune universe, the 2021 and 2024’s films directed by Denis Villeneuve, has kept people coming back to Veronika Kratz’s piece on the role of soil science and conservation in Frank Herbert’s writing. Published as part of series showcasing papers from the canceled ASEH that year (remember that? the start of the pandemic? nearly five years ago?), Kratz’s piece has been cited and linked in some high profile articles and threads.

The oldest post on our most-read list, this 2011 post from Mark McLaughlin, was part of an old series of “Scholars Profiles,” which are a fun jaunt down memory lane in their own right. McLaughlin definitely won the popularity contest among new scholars from that era though because it is consistently at the top of our monthly and weekly most-read lists. The “Big Tree” in Victoria County, New Brunswick, that McLaughlin is writing about, is a 500-year-old eastern white pine, spared due to its irregular shape, symbolizing the province’s poorly managed forests. Once threatened by highway expansion, it sparked protests, highlighting ecological and historical values over economic priorities, and ultimately influenced the highway’s rerouting. And, apparently, continues to spark the curiosity of readers to this day.

Four out of ten of our most-read posts are from 2020, which is not insignificant. That was the year that readership really took off for The Otter. At first we weren’t sure if it was a pandemic fluke, but five years later it seems that it was just the beginning of a period of an upward trajectory for us. Our most-read article that year was “Settler Forgetting in Saulnierville: The Sipekne’katik Mi’kmaw Fishery as Reminder” by Mercedes Peters. Peters wrote this post in October 2020, a period of time notable for a new round of settler violence aimed at Indigenous fishers in Mi’kma’ki. “We as Mi’kmaq have rights that predate the existence of Canada. And as settlers began to move into our territory centuries ago, we made treaties with them—not to create rights, but to remind settlers that we had them, to protect our rights,” Peters wrote. This piece continues to be assigned in courses and is read regularly.

We launched Papers in Canadian History and Environment (PiCHE) in February 2018. PiCHE represented a new effort to publish long-form, peer-reviewed research papers on the intersections of environment and history in Canada. Our third PiCHE paper was “There is a Monster Under the Ground: Commemorating the History of Arsenic Contamination at Giant Mine” by John Sandlos, Arn Keeling, Caitlynn Beckett, and Rosanna Nicol. As one of our most-read posts of all time, this PiCHE paper is a symbol of how open-access can truly help academic research reach new audiences. We’re always accepting submissions. Give it a go!

PoW history is VERY popular in some sectors of the public, as can be witnessed by the overwhelming popularity of anything that Michael O’Hagan has published on the topic on our website. His most-read piece is “Prisoners in the Park: German PoWs in Riding Mountain National Park,” which he published in 2013. O’Hagan writes about the Whitewater Lake PoW Camp in Riding Mountain National Park, which housed 440 German PoWs (1943–1945) for woodcutting labor. PoWs worked and socialized in, and occasionally escaped, these camps, leaving lasting historical and environmental legacies.

My first Succession: Queering the Environment series came out in June 2020. Sparked by a conversation with Tina Adcock about the lack of queer scholarship on The Otter, Succession aimed to correct this oversight. Two of our top ten posts are from this first series, showing how much our readers were craving this kind of topic. Asmae Ourkiya’s “Queering Ecofeminism: Towards an Anti-Far-Right Environmentalism” continues to serve as a rich introduction for folks wishing to learn about queer ecofeminism. Succession is now a biannual series (Succession II [2022]; Succession III [2024]).

Every St. Patrick’s Day since 1962 the Chicago River is dyed green, and every St. Patrick’s Day people flock to Google to find out the how, what, and why of it. This is the point at which many readers find their way to Isaac Green’s post on the topic. The city has used a vegetable-based, EPA-approved dye after environmental concerns ended the use of fluorescein. However, as Green notes, while the dye is deemed supposedly non-toxic, critics argue the practice perpetuates harmful ecological narratives, justifying river manipulation and neglecting natural stewardship. Despite it all, as our Google referrals show, the tradition remains iconic and institutionalized.

Similarly to O’Hagan’s PoW research, Robynne Mellor’s research on Elliot Lake, Ontario and its nuclear legacy has consistently intrigued general readers for nearly nine years now, sometimes spurring strong commentary from locals. Elliot Lake, once a uranium mining hub and now aspiring ecotourism destination, embodies a paradox of nature and nuclear legacy, Mellor argues. Despite remediation efforts, radioactive pollution lingers, affecting Indigenous lands and ecosystems. Mellor contends that Canada’s acceptance of this dual identity reflects its peaceful nuclear narrative, obscuring the environmental and historical impact of uranium exploitation.

Aiman Khan’s “Africville: A Story of Environmental Racism” is the only cross-post on our top ten list. The article was originally published at The Journal: Saint Mary’s University’s Independent Student Publication. This piece is also notable because Khan was an undergraduate at the time that she wrote it. Khan provides a thorough, but concise, overview of the history of Africville and why the treatment of this community’s Black population is an example of environmental racism.

And here we are. At our most-read piece. Our crown jewel. Also part of the initial Succession: Queering the Environment series in 2020, Meg Perret’s piece is our most-read by far. By tens of thousands of views. And I wish I had a better story to tell about its success. But the truth is that people find it because hundreds of people a month are googling “gay frogs” (and related search terms, see the embedded insta reel below), a far-right conspiracy originally hyped by Alex Jones. We’re just glad that we provide a thoughtful and critical assessment of the conspiracy, and maybe, just maybe, a few folks walk away from Perret’s work with a more nuanced understanding of the topic.