David Horton – författare

''Aborigines did not cause the extinction of the megafauna . . . and it is unlikely that they have caused the extinction of any element of the fauna and flora.''''If you want to practise control burning in order to protect houses or farms, then do it in the same way as you would use a bulldozer to clear a firebreak, but don''t pretend that you are doing anything but damage to the environment.''''If you commercialise an environmental resource you do so to make money. Don''t pretend that it also benefits the environment.''Spanning fifty thousand years and an entire continent, The Pure State of Nature presents a passionate account of the Australian environment. The myths that abound in popular and scientific writing, the ''theories'' and fancies about the place of humans in the ecology of this vast landmass, are subjected to scrutiny. In particular, the author demolishes the widely accepted orthodoxy about the use of fire by Aborigines and their supposed part in the extinction of the Australian megafauna.From the ruins of those myths The Pure State of Nature offers lessons for the new millennium. In turns provocative, humorous, impassioned and gentle, this is a bold book of ideas about the past and present, a book about how we can shape the future.To The Pure State of Nature Dr David Horton brings many years'' experience as scientist, farmer and archaeologist. Among his publications are Recovering the Tracks and The Encyclopaedia of Aboriginal Australia. He now writes and consults from his stud sheep farm in New South Wales.

''Aborigines did not cause the extinction of the megafauna . . . and it is unlikely that they have caused the extinction of any element of the fauna and flora.''''If you want to practise control burning in order to protect houses or farms, then do it in the same way as you would use a bulldozer to clear a firebreak, but don''t pretend that you are doing anything but damage to the environment.''''If you commercialise an environmental resource you do so to make money. Don''t pretend that it also benefits the environment.''Spanning fifty thousand years and an entire continent, The Pure State of Nature presents a passionate account of the Australian environment. The myths that abound in popular and scientific writing, the ''theories'' and fancies about the place of humans in the ecology of this vast landmass, are subjected to scrutiny. In particular, the author demolishes the widely accepted orthodoxy about the use of fire by Aborigines and their supposed part in the extinction of the Australian megafauna.From the ruins of those myths The Pure State of Nature offers lessons for the new millennium. In turns provocative, humorous, impassioned and gentle, this is a bold book of ideas about the past and present, a book about how we can shape the future.To The Pure State of Nature Dr David Horton brings many years'' experience as scientist, farmer and archaeologist. Among his publications are Recovering the Tracks and The Encyclopaedia of Aboriginal Australia. He now writes and consults from his stud sheep farm in New South Wales.

David Horton was born in 1945 and grew up in Perth, WA. He graduated from UWA with Zoology Honours in 1965, aged twenty, then had a disastrous year at University of Melbourne, six good years at University of New England, an unhappy year in York, England, and then twenty-four very mixed years at the Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies (first as an archaeologist, then as a not insignificant figure in Australian publishing, then as the creator of the Encyclopaedia of Aboriginal Australia). His research involved scincid lizards and biogeography (1966-1974); archaeozoology (sites from Cape York to SW Tasmania), Pleistocene occupation of Australia, Pleistocene extinctions, the role of fire in Australian ecosystems (1974 to 1984). He then ran Aboriginal Studies Press from 1984 to 1998. His major works include Recovering the Tracks (1991), The Encyclopaedia of Aboriginal Australia (both print and electronic,1994), and Aboriginal Australia (map, 1996). He gained a BA, MSc and two doctorates along the way plus major awards (most notably the prestigious NSW Premier''s Literary Award 1995 Book of the Year 1994). After being forced to leave the institute, he published a book (The Pure State of Nature, 2000) on prehistory and ecology in Australia (notably considering the role of fire). He had also become a leading stud sheep breeder, and ran for federal parliament in the 2007 election. The following year saw the start of a run of bad health - a heart attack, then lymphoma developed in 2011 resulting in years of treatment, then a stroke in December 2020, then open heart surgery in February 2023. All of which he has survived. Married for fifty-four years ,with two daughters and three grandchildren, he lives in retirement on his farm in the southern tablelands of NSW, where he writes and builds his stamp collection and records frog calls.