The 2010 edited collection, Desert Channels: The Impulse to Conserve , is a stunning example of the opportunities that environmental history offers for interdisciplinary collaboration and understanding the significance of a place. Over forty contributors from diverse fields share their insights into, and passions for, the arid Desert Channels region of south-western Queensland. This landscape is ‘shaped by the arid rivers that … form a chain of ecological, cultural and historical connections across 10° of latitude’ (p.xv), connections that include stories of climatic variability, animal migratory patterns, Aboriginal trade and exchange systems, European exploration and pastoralism, and scientific inquiry. The contributors range from local Aboriginal people and pastoralists to palaeontologists and conservationists, and their stories have been woven together by the exhaustive efforts of editors Libby Robin (historian), Chris Dickman (ecologist) and Mandy Martin (artist). What could have been a chaotic miscellany is instead a colourful and meaningful tribute to a place for which the contributors feel and share the ‘impulse to conserve’.