Thèse numérisée par la Direction des bibliothèques de l'Université de Montréal.

The aim of this thesis was to analyze the legal regulation of the creation and protection of the Natura 2000 network from the perspective of international environmental law, the EU law and the Czech law. The thesis is divided into five major chapters. The first chapter explains the concept of Natura 2000 and what are the purposes pursued by the system. The second chapter covers the area of legal regulation in the area of nature protection from the perspective of international law and its relationship to Natura 2000. Next chapter deals with the regulation of the Natura 2000 from the perspective of EU law. The fourth chapter focuses on mapping the decision- making of the Court of Justice of the European Union concerning the Natura 2000 network. The fifth part describes legal regulation of Natura 2000 network from the perspective of the Czech legal order.

Relation of human nature and community A principal theme of this diploma thesis is the community thought of about as an entity managing the law and justice with the respect to human nature followed in the work of three selected authors: Aristotle, David Hume and Friedrich A. Hayek. According to each of them, community is not unnatural but develops through either a natural or spontaneous process. All three are also critics of social contract theories. This work is successively focused on each of the mentioned philosopher, somewhere resulting in comparison. The description of creation and development of society, concept of nature and human nature and government and law function is carefully interpreted. The explanation is subsequently adjusted to the author specific justification through which is the Aristotle's teleology, Hume's moral sense theory and Hayek's emphasis on irrationality and spontaneity being reflected. Despite the divergences, the introduction of these three distinctive approaches provides a relatively uniform and authentic perspective on the relationship between human nature and the community.

I explore nature in order to understand something that is becoming increasingly unfamiliar. I wonder about accelerated human transactions with nature: the control of animals, land, and resources for pleasure, consumption or survival; and how these actions manifest themselves visually in the modern world. Through images, I create new ideas about my surroundings. My questions about nature are documented through my work employing subtlety to narrate stories of contemporary environments.

A research report submitted to the Faculty of Science, University of the Witwatersrand, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science (Environmental Sciences) Johannesburg, South Africa 7 February 2013 / In 2004 Molemane Eye Nature Reserve was stocked with 46 disease-free buffalo with the intention of generating sustainable revenues for the Reserve. However, the buffalo’s poor population growth rate and poor body condition during the dry seasons led to management reducing the buffalo population to 21 animals in 2010. The buffalo’s poor performance has drawn the attention to the potential nutritional limitations of the forage available during the dry season and to the importance of key resource areas. I examined the nutritional content of the buffalo forage using faecal analyses as proxy for nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P), expecting a nutritional stress towards the latter part of the dry season. Data from the GPS/GSM collar on one of the buffalo cows was used to determine the dry season vegetation type selection and to identify key resource areas. A comparison of veld conditions was also done on the lowland vegetation types on Molemane Eye Nature Reserve and an adjacent property (Eye Area), which was earmarked for incorporation, to determine whether veld restoration work was required prior incorporation. It was established that the extended period of poor forage quality during the 2010 dry season was an important limiting factor for the buffalo as the forage quality dropped below the buffalo minimum nutritional requirements (Nf < 1.52 %, Pf < 2 %). A faecal sampling during early 2011 indicated that the nutritional stress period may last as long as 5 months (April to August). The buffalo did not select the vegetation types in proportional to their availability and narrowed their selection as the dry season progressed, preferring those containing woody elements. Of the 8 vegetation types indentified as key resource areas for buffalo during the dry season, the Eye Area holds 4 and contributes less than 5% to the key resource area already available on Molemane Eye Nature Reserve. The overall veld condition of the two areas was similar and no veld restoration work was deemed necessary. Although the incorporation of the Eye Area will shorten the distance between water and forage areas and have some nutritional benefits for buffalo in the dry season, mineral supplementation will be necessary for these valuable animals to become more productive and contribute to the economic objectives of Molemane Eye Nature Reserve.

Thesis advisor: Richard Kearney / This dissertation presents a systematic reading of the four discourses Kierkegaard wrote on Matthew 6:24-34, which I am calling the Lily Discourses (“What We Learn from the Lily in the Field and the Bird of the Air” (1847); “The Cares of the Pagans” (1848); “The Lily in the Field and the Bird of the Air” (1849); “Christ as Archi-Image” (1851)). Matthew instructs the reader to “consider the lilies,” and in reading this passage Kierkegaard presents the lilies as authoritative, rather than merely “figural” or “metaphoric”. The aim of this dissertation is to describe what Kierkegaard means by the authority of the lily and the bird. Since Kierkegaard engages with and in “figural” language in his pseudonymous as well as his signed texts, what he says about the lily and the bird in these four Discourses is significant for all of Kierkegaard’s work. In the first and the third Discourses Kierkegaard writes lyrically of the beauty of nature, but concludes with a brutal picture of nature’s death and decay. It is not nature, this dissertation argues, but the trace nature leaves in language, that Kierkegaard is investigating. Kierkegaard ends the first Discourse by invoking the positing power of language: he says, “Let the lily wither”. As if in response to the death at the end of the first Discourse, the second is written in praise “on the day all goes black.” If the first two Discourses describe the authority of the lily and the bird in terms of the performative – of positing and praise – the third Discourse describes this authority in terms of receptivity. The lily and the bird are obedient, Kierkegaard says there. He develops an account of obedience that is, on the one hand, required for reading the lily and the bird (for granting authority), and on the other, is the lesson taught by the lily and the bird. In the fourth Discourse Kierkegaard presents the archi-image (Forbillede, previously translated in English as “pattern” or “prototype”) and what corresponds to it: “imitation.” Only when we imitate, rather than ape mimetically or endlessly interpret, can the image (Billede) that we are responding to be the archi-image (Forbillede). The lily and the bird, the dissertation argues, have the authority of the archi-image only if we can read them in a certain way, that is, if our reading is non-mimetic imitation. For Kierkegaard imitation is an act, made by an individual person at a concrete time and place in history; it therefore commits the reader, in her full responsibility (including “social” or “political”) in the risk of reading. The dissertation has four chapters, each devoted to one of Kierkegaard’s Lily Discourses. Accordingly, Chapter One describes Kierkegaard’s account of the authority of the lily and the bird as positing, Chapter Two as praise, Chapter Three as obedience and Chapter Four as imitation. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2015. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Philosophy.

This thesis analyzes the relationship between German fairy tales and Ecocriticism by examining the similarities and differences in depictions of nature in the tales published by the Brothers Grimm in 1857 and tales written by political activists during Germany's Weimar Republic. "Frau Holle" and "Die drei Schlangenblätter" by the Brothers Grimm present nature as a means to support their bourgeois utopian ideals. On the other hand, the Weimar writers Carl Ewald and Edwin Hörnle's tales "Ein Märchen von Gott und den Königen" and "Der kleine König und die Sonne" (respectively) employ the traditional form of the fairy tale to espouse free-thinking and criticize the weaknesses of the Grimms' utopian ideal. My ecocritical analysis is based on a synthesis of environmental sciences and sociocultural influences.

This thesis is the result of my work with the Military Nature-Centered community. The first thing is does it examine some of the distinctive features of the population, such as its history, sense of community, magical consciousness. It then presents the military Nature-Centered community as an emergent tradition.

Thesis advisor: Andrew Sofer / Poetry is hidden underneath metaphors and similes, just waiting to be uncovered by the blank pages of journals and a poet's imagination. When poetry appears like a lost pen in a coat pocket, the words become fire and can only be cooled by the breath of waves. My poems are an experience of finding my way through two different worlds. The first world is one of inauthenticity. I walk through the falseness of empty jugs and confining places, yet I am not stuck in these confines because I can escape to nature. When I leave the cities and roads, I feel the cold air invigorating me to find my origins. These poems travel with me through emotions, laughter, satire, anger, and then finally they reach a space of spirituality and peace. I want to continue walking with the beachcomber and pick up the pieces of poetry under the seaweed and driftwood. / Thesis (BA) — Boston College, 2004. / Submitted to: Boston College. College of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: English. / Discipline: College Honors Program.

Thesis advisor: Dominic F. Doyle / Thesis advisor: Reinhard Hutter / Thesis (STL) — Boston College, 2017. / Submitted to: Boston College. School of Theology and Ministry. / Discipline: Sacred Theology.