Ryan Jones lectures in Juneau (6/12) and Anchorage (6/16)

Folks in Juneau and Anchorage won’t want to miss upcoming lectures by one of the best historians working in the field of Alaska-Russia-North Pacific studies today. Ryan Tucker Jones of the University of Queensland will present, “Empire of Extinction: Russians and the North Pacific’s Strange Beasts of the Sea, 1741-1867."

JUNEAU:
Thursday, June 12

12:00 p.m.

Alaska State Library Historical Collections

8th floor Atrium, State Office Building

ANCHORAGE:
Monday, June 16
7:00 p.m.
Anchorage Museum

Based on his new book of the same title, Jones’s lecture will explore how the extinction of the sea cow and the near extinction of sea otters and fur seals provoked natural historians to claim, for the first time in European history, that animals could disappear entirely from the face of the earth. In an attempt to reverse ecological destruction, Russians began long-term management of marine mammals and instituted some of the colonial world’s most forward-thinking conservationist policies.