Wildlife and world views: Australian attitudes toward wildlife

Research in a number of western and non‐western cultures suggests there are only a limited number of basic orientations toward other species. In the broadest sense, these can be related to fundamental cultural assumptions about what the world is like ‐ world views, world metaphors or cosmologies — and how other species are represented as a result of these assumptions. In this paper we explore our topic in relation to two cultural traditions ‐those of Aboriginal Australians and Anglo‐Australians. We discuss how the differing world views represented in these cultures relate to wildlife attitudes. Aboriginal society before British setdement of Australia shared a substantial consensus about what other animals were like and what was acceptable or unacceptable behavior toward animals. This is reflected in the Aboriginal concept of ‘country’, Aboriginal totemic systems, and the responsibilities Aboriginal people have by virtue of ‘belonging to country’. By contrast, Anglo‐Australian society, with its roots in a ...