A tale of two trails: Lessons from a comparative account of the Trans Canada Trail and the Sendero de Chile

A new generation of greenways has emerged in recent years, the most ambitious of which are nationwide, interconnected networks of multi-use, multi-purpose greenways and trails, clustered under a single national vision. However, because these initiatives have been the focus of so few research studies, opportunities to glean lessons from their planning and implementation have been limited. This paper contributes to addressing this knowledge gap by presenting a comparative account of two networks, the Trans Canada Trail in Canada and Sendero de Chile in Chile. Using document analysis and interviews with officials closely involved in their development, the evolution of both networks is documented over time, emphasizing similarities and differences related to their planning and implementation. Both initiatives have faced significant challenges in reaching their connection goals and have availed themselves of a diverse range of opportunities and strategies to advance their agendas. A simple model of a virtuous cycle is proposed to highlight the positive feedback—between political and public support, sustained funding, partnership development, accessibility for urban residents, and connectivity of the network—generated by sustained network expansion over time. It is hoped that the insights offered from this analysis may offer guidance to inform the development of similar scale projects elsewhere.     

The Rainbow Serpent in the Aboriginal Pantheon: A Review Article

The Rainbow Serpent: a chromatic piece. By I. Buchler and K. Maddock (eds). The Hague — Paris, Mouton, 1978. x + 227 pp.     

Large freshwater plesiosaurian from the Cretaceous (Aptian) of Australia

Benson, R.B.J., Fitzgerald, E.M.G., Rich, T.H. & Vickers-Rich, P., 2013. Large freshwater plesiosaurian from the Cretaceous (Aptian) of Australia. Alcheringa 37, 1–6. ISSN 0311-5518

We report a large plesiosaurian tooth from the freshwater early–middle Aptian (Early Cretaceous) Eumeralla Formation of Victoria, Australia. This, combined with records of smaller plesiosaurian teeth with an alternative morphology, provides evidence for a multitaxic freshwater plesiosaurian assemblage. Dental and body size differences suggest ecological partitioning of sympatric freshwater plesiosaurians analogous to that in modern freshwater odontocete cetaceans. The evolutionarily plastic body plan of Plesiosauria may have facilitated niche differentiation and helped them to exclude ichthyosaurs from freshwater environments during the Mesozoic. However, confirmation of this hypothesis requires the discovery of more complete remains.

Roger B.J. Benson [roger.benson@earth.ox.ac.uk], Department of Earth Sciences, University of Oxford, South Parks Road, Oxford OX1 3AN, UK; Erich M.G. Fitzgerald [efitzgerald@museum.vic.gov.au], Thomas H. Rich [trich@museum.vic.gov.au], Museum Victoria, GPO Box 666, Melbourne, Victoria 3001, Australia; Thomas H. Rich and Patricia Vickers-Rich [pat.rich@monash.edu], School of Geosciences, Monash University, Clayton, Victoria 3800, Australia. Received 30.10.2012; revised 27.1.2013; accepted 31.1.2013.     

AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINAL TOTEMIC SYSTEMS: STRUCTURES OF POWER

Aboriginal totemic systems - sections, subsections and to some extent moieties are not only intricate systems of ordering the universe, but also magical devices designed to harness cosmic power, as similar systems in other cultures were evidently meant to do. Comparisons with East Asia and European magico-philosophical systems (especially the hermetic traditions, alchemy etc.) reveal striking similarities in the manner in which the universe is ordered by such systems. A major code of ordering is provided by the doctrine of affinities (sympathies and correspondences to which are attached notions of causality. Such similarities in structure and form allow the inference that totemic systems, too, are informed by universal maxims of ‘power through order’ and ‘like affects like‘.     

Transnational Corporations and Third World Agriculture

I prefer to use the term ‘transnational’ because it indicates the tendency of the corporations to cross national frontiers with a minimum of difficulty, whereas the connotation ‘multinational’ may suggest a kind of common ownership which actually does not exist. This article has been published in Rapport, the periodical of the Swedish International Development Authority (no. 2, 1975).