Lissa Wadewitz

Lissa Wadewitz, The Nature of Borders: Salmon, Boundaries, and Bandits on the Salish Sea
Lissa Wadewitz’s The Nature of Borders illuminates beautifully the variables that affected the salmon population of the transnational Pacific Northwest during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. She finds that—rather than mere urbanization or industrial innovation—it was the exploitation of the porous US-Canada boundary that imperiled the species. This careful study speaks volumes about the impact of borders on the historical actor least confined by the dictates of the nation-state: the natural world.
(awarded at AHA Annual Meeting in New York)