In a climate change epoch, in which each year harrowingly turns out to be "the hottest on record"-marked by more and more habitat destruction, species decline, unrestrained urbanization, and other serious ecological problems-environmental heroes reassert hope, empowerment, transformation, and possibility against prevailing despair. From all corners of the globe and of all ages, ethnicities, and backgrounds, eco-heroes devote themselves to "other-regarding choices over self-interested ones" for the betterment of humankind and more-than-humans. Since 1990, the Goldman Environmental Prize has honored "grassroots environmental heroes" and has acknowledged "individuals for sustained and significant efforts to protect and enhance the natural environment, often at great personal risk." Recent Australian recipient, octogenarian Wendy Bowman, for instance, successfully defended her family farm in Camberwell, Hunter Valley, New South Wales, against the incursions of a multinational mining company. In 1990, moreover, Bob Brown received the inaugural award. Brown founded the Tasmanian Wilderness Society and galvanized a successful nationwide campaign in the 1980s to block the construction of the Franklin River dam. Indeed, environmental heroes, such as Brown and Bowman in contemporary Australia and Thoreau before them in the nineteenth-century United States-as well as other contemporary wetlands heroes discussed later in this chapter-are moral exemplars who highlight that "each life, no matter how long or short, can have great significance if lived well."

Among the most productive ecosystems on earth, wetlands are also some of the most vulnerable. Australian Wetland Cultures argues for the cultural value of wetlands. Through a focus on swamps and their conservation, the volume makes a unique contribution to the growing interdisciplinary field of the environmental humanities.
The authors investigate the crucial role of swamps in Australian society through the idea of wetland cultures. The broad historical and cultural range of the book spans pre-settlement indigenous Australian cultures, nineteenth-century European colonization, and contemporary Australian engagements with wetland habitats.
The contributors situate the Australian emphasis in international cultural and ecological contexts. Case studies from Perth, Western Australia, provide practical examples of the conservation of wetlands as sites of interlinked natural and cultural heritage. The volume will appeal to readers with interests in anthropology, Australian studies, cultural studies, ecological science, environmental studies, and heritage protection.

Among the most fertile and biodiverse ecosystems on the planet, "comparable to rain forests and coral reefs," wetlands are integral to sustaining human and more-than-human lives. As a catchall designator for swamps, marshes, sloughs, bogs, billabongs, and other highly mutable water bodies, a wetland is "a place that has been wet enough for a long enough time to develop specially adapted vegetation and other organisms." The indispensable functions performed by wetlands include filtering debris and pollutants from water, protecting human settlements from storm surges, and providing habitat for birds, animals, plants, and other organisms. Often likened to "biological supermarkets" in popular science writing, some wetlands generate ten times the biomass of an average wheat field. Indeed, the largest wetlands complex in the world, the Pantanal of Mato Grosso in Brazil, comprises 200,000 square kilometers (or 77,000 square miles), comparable in area to the entire United Kingdom (see chapter 9 of this volume). Acting as a "natural switch-board" between the La Plata and Amazon River basins, the Pantanal has a remarkable range of faunal, floral, and fungal species.

In October 2017, the Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development of Western Australia (WA) promulgated a new regulation on recreational abalone harvesting. A notable change was that, from 2017 on, the annual fishing season in the West Coast Zone was reduced to four days, from every December on Saturdays only. During the last decade, WA's abalone fishing regulations have been overhauled frequently because of depleting local stocks. Worldwide, the marine heatwave resulting from climate change and illegal overfishing are considered the two principal reasons for abalone's decline. Today, the highly lucrative abalone market has attracted more participants in recreational fishing in Perth, WA. Based on Asian natural heritage traditions and employing a multispecies sensory ethnographic methodology, this article provides an in-depth case study of the interaction between the local Chinese diaspora and the environment as represented in abalone harvesting practices. Between 2014 and 2016, the authors conducted one-on-one and focus group interviews with Chinese immigrants to Perth, WA, and also participated in abalone harvesting. The analysis reveals a suite of environmental influences on local Chinese diasporic life through heterogeneous forms of interaction between abalone and Perth-area Chinese immigrants.

Starting on December 8, recreational abalone fishing will be allowed in Perth. Fishing will be limited to one hour on four Saturday mornings between December and February. The maximum catch is still 15 per person per day. A complete ban on abalone fishing between Geraldton and the Northern Territory border will remain in place.