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Take four emblematic American scenes: the Hall of Biodiversity at the American Museum of Natural History in New York; Disney's Animal Kingdom theme park in Orlando; an ecotour of Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks; the film An Inconvenient Truth. Other than expressing a common interest in the environment, they seem quite dissimilar. And yet, as this book makes clear, these sites are all manifestations of green governmentality, each seeking to define and regulate our understanding, experience, and treatment of nature. This book shows how the museum presents a scientized assessment of global nature under threat; the Animal Kingdom demonstrates that a corporation can successfully organize a biopolitical project; the ecotour, operating as a school for a natural aesthetic sensibility, provides a visual grammar of pristine national nature; and the film offers a toehold on a moral way of encountering nature. But one very powerful force unites the disparate “truths” of nature produced through these sites, and that, the book tells us, is their debt to nature's commodification. This book's analysis reveals how each site integrates nature, power, and profit to make the buying and selling of nature critical to our understanding and rescuing of it. The combination, it argues, renders other ways of encountering nature—particularly more radically environmental ways—unthinkable.

Trash Animals, a collection of essays by a wide range of environmental writers, examines relationships between humans and wildlife deemed filthy, feral, unwanted, problematic, invasive or worthless. These essays examine a growing trend of equating wildlife with trash. They question why birders call some birds “garbage” and why fisherman discard “trash” fish. As trash is a category that only exists in human culture, equating animals with trash reveals more about human expectations, fears, prejudices and frustrations with the natural world. Each essay presents a unique thesis about a species—seagulls, coyotes, carp, cockroaches, and others—North Americans deem filthy, dangerous, unwanted, problematic or worthless. By examining the biology and behavior of animals in contrast to its natural and cultural history the authors challenge common notions and assumptions about problematic wildlife, the nature/culture divide and the limits of human agency. Many of the essays provide new perspectives on human-animal relationships and challenge readers to re-imagine our ethics of engagement with wildlife.