ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY, GOLI OTOK- HUMAN AGENCY AND FAUNA
ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY, GOLI OTOK- HUMAN AGENCY AND FAUNA

Summary/Abstract: Human past of Goli Otok (Barren Island) and its political prison years have been touched on by historians, albeit being largely underrepresented. The rich ecosystems and the biodiversity of Dinaric karst, as well as the geology and geomorphology of Croatian Kvarner Bay region, including Goli Otok as its part, have been explored by geologists, ecologists and biologists. Former political prisons, battlefields, military training grounds and concentration camps, the sites of human incarceration and adverse living conditions worldwide have been studied by historians from many perspectives, including that of environmental history. Between these notions emerges the space to explore the rich and dynamic environmental past of Goli Otok. Despite the physiognomy of the dry, barren, weathered karst to which Goli Otok owes its name, the island’s biodiversity is impressive. Additionally, the prison years, particularly the political prison era, (1949-56) had brought about dramatic environmental changes to the island: it became inhabited by humans who had built the prison complex; it had been partially afforested, quarried in search of marble and bauxite and introduced to domestic animals. Combining various scholarly accounts with the written and oral testimonies of former political prisoners, this article focuses on the animal life on Goli Otok through its environmental transition towards the present, human abandoned but animal inhabited state. The main objective of this article is to contribute to the more complete picture of the prisoners’ everyday experience on Barren Island through exploring which animals, in which order and way came to sight and the mind of these particular people, at this particular time, in this particular place.

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