Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book focuses on areas that have been marginal, and marginalised, in wilderness scholarship to date, particularly given the predominance of wildlife in the popular imagination, itself with an overwhelming preference for the consideration of large mammals, and wilderness in the Global North, especially the United States. It traces the roots of the illusion earlier, to settlement and agriculture, arguing that efforts to control wilderness have been just another misguided attempt to domesticate nature. The book deals with case studies of the fight for the iconic old-growth New South Wales forests, undertaken from the 1970s to the 1990s, and the more recent 2013 Bentley campaign against coal seam gas extraction. It explores the potential of the Machinacene: the impending age of artificial intelligence.