<p>The Louisiana fur trade existed in colonial times; however, the state?s role as a major source of fur did not emerge until the twentieth century. The early market focused largely on muskrats along the coastal regions of the state. Muskrats are prone to swings in population. Capitalists, such as E.A. McIlhenny, introduced nutria to Louisiana under the guise that they would supplement the native fur industry despite warnings from the Bureau of Biological Survey. Once these entrepreneurs found it difficult to make a profit from nutria, they set many of their animals free. Soon after their introduction to the wild in the 1940s, the nutria population exploded. Further, individual and government actors, along with natural events such as hurricanes, spread nutria to almost the entire coastal region of the state. The nutria damaged crops, such as sugarcane and rice, and farmers labeled them an invasive species or a species that damages the existing environment. Through innovative marketing approaches put into place by government agencies such as the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries (LDWF), nutria became valuable in the 1960s and 1970s and prompted a golden age of nutria trapping. This entailed a resurgence of trapping efforts and preserved culture practices built around trapping. However, new technologies augmented these cultural practices. Soon larger cultural and climatic changes led to the decline of the entire fur industry and in turn nutria overpopulation. Conversations between state agents and politicians led to the current control program, the Coastwide Nutria Control Program. Passed in 2002, this program is successful at controlling the nutria population which in turn preserves the wetlands. This bounty program subsequently provides supplemental income to the descendants of trappers and preserves a labor and cultural practice of trapping in Louisiana. This practice entails a day to day relationship with the marsh.

<p> Mammoth Cave in Kentucky is the longest known cave in the world. This dissertation examines the history of how scientists and non-scientists alike contributed to a growing body of knowledge about Mammoth Cave and how that knowledge in turn affected land use decisions in the surrounding neighborhood. During the nineteenth century visitors traveled through Mammoth Cave along with their guides, gaining knowledge of the cave by using their senses and spreading that knowledge through travel narratives. After the Civil War, cave guides, now free men who chose to stay in the neighborhood, used the cave as a way to build and support their community. New technologies and new visitors reconstructed the Mammoth Cave experience. Competing knowledge of locals and science-minded individuals, new technologies to spread the cave experience, and a growing tourism industry in America spurred the Kentucky Cave Wars during the late-nineteenth century. In the twentieth century, cutthroat competition between caves crystallized support for a national park at Mammoth Cave. Park promoters met resistance. Cave owners&rsquo; knowledge of what they owned underground helped them resist condemnation. Those affected by the coming of the national park made their protests known on the landscape, in newspapers, and in courtrooms. The introduction of New Deal workers, primarily the Civilian Conservation Corps, at Mammoth Cave and a skeleton staff of National Park Service officials faced antagonism from the local community. Important discoveries inside Mammoth Cave hastened the park&rsquo;s creation, but not without lingering bitterness that would affect later preservation efforts. The inability of the park promoters to acquire two caves around Mammoth Cave was a failure for the national park campaign but a boon for exploration. The postwar period saw returning veterans and their families swarming national parks. While the parking lots at Mammoth Cave grew crowded and the Park Service attempted to balance preservation and development for the enjoyment of the visiting public, underground explorers were pushing the cave&rsquo;s known extent to new lengths. This new knowledge inspired a new generation of environmentalists and preservationists to use the Wilderness Act to advocate for a cave wilderness designation at Mammoth Cave National Park.</p><p>