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Falling into Place

by Catherine Reid

Quietly powerful essays, weaving keenly observed insights into the mysteries of nature with those of family and community "It's not easy," Catherine Reid writes, "to love a person and a place in equal measure." Love she does, however, as described in these intimate, lyric essays about the land and people around her. With the inside perspective of a native daughter combined with her outsider status as a lesbian, Reid explores such paradoxes as those that arise from harnessing wild rivers or legalizing same-sex marriage. Her fascination with natural phenomena--whether bird hibernation, the arrival of fishers in suburbia, or the explosion of amphibious life in the wet weeks of spring--is captured in writing that pays as much attention to the sounds of a sentence as to the rhythms of the landscapes she wanders. Ultimately, however, Reid finds herself having to choose between her lover and her home place. Solace comes from companions as varied as a praying mantis, an otter, and her hundred-year-old grandmother, while resilience shows up in the stories of streams recovering from toxic spills and in communities weathering floods and town meetings. In essays both sensuous and provocative, Reid faces the beauty and challenges of our changing world head-on.

The Lost Explorer

by David Roberts Conrad Anker

This is the adventure story of the year -- how Conrad Anker found the body of George Mallory on Mount Everest, casting an entirely new light on the mystery of the explorer who may have conquered Everest seventy-five years ago. On June 8, 1924, George Leigh Mallory and Andrew "Sandy" Irvine were last seen climbing toward the summit of Mount Everest. Clouds soon closed around them, and they vanished into history. Ever since, mountaineers have wondered whether they reached the summit twenty-nine years before Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay. On May 1, 1999, Conrad Anker, one of the world's strongest mountaineers, discovered Mallory's body lying facedown, frozen into the scree and naturally mummified at 27,000 feet on Everest's north face. The condition of the body, as well as the artifacts found with Mallory, including goggles, an altimeter, and a carefully wrapped bundle of personal letters, are important clues in determining his fate. Seventeen days later, Anker free-climbed the Second Step, a 90-foot sheer cliff that is the single hardest obstacle on the north ridge. The first expedition known to have conquered the Second Step, a Chinese team in 1975, had tied a ladder to the cliff, leaving unanswered the question of whether Mallory could have climbed it in 1924. Anker's climb was the first test since Mallory's of the cliff's true difficulty. In treacherous conditions, Anker led teammate Dave Hahn from the Second Step to the summit. Reflecting on the climb, Anker explains why he thinks Mallory and Irvine failed to make the summit, but at the same time, he expresses his awe at Mallory's achievement with the primitive equipment of the time. Stunningly handsome and charismatic, Mallory charmed everyone who met him during his lifetime and continues to fascinate mountaineers today. He was an able writer, a favorite of the Bloomsbury circle, and a climber of legendary gracefulness. The Lost Exploreris the remarkable story of this extraordinarily talented man and of the equally talented modern climber who spearheaded a discovery that may ultimately help solve the mystery of Mallory's disappearance.

The Black Swan

by Anne Batterson

Set against a spontaneous cross-country road trip following the migrating birds, this passionate, lyrical memoir is one woman's reflections on midlife, her important personal relationships, her kaleidoscopic past, and her uncertain future. To fifty-six-year-old Anne Batterson, a woman whose life has been filled with adventure -- as a commercial pilot, an international skydiving champion, a trekking guide in Nepal -- her husband's decision to retire felt like a death sentence. Yearning for some way to reconcile herself to the future that was rapidly unfolding before her, she packed up her VW camper and hit the road with maps, bird guides, and little else except the desire to follow the fall migration and the bone-deep hunch that birds had something important to teach her. In this beautifully written narrative of that extraordinary trip, Batterson writes movingly not only about her experiences with the birds but also about the people she loves, has lost, and connects with along the way. Events from the present trigger vivid stories from the past. In the chapter "The Journey Within the Journey," a long, lonely night in a deserted campground in Virginia conjures up the ghosts of a desperate solo road trip she made when she was twenty-one. A towering cumulus cloud in Illinois brings back a breathtaking free fall into a similar cloud in "My Time as a Bird. " An encounter with a great blue heron summons a compelling account of her mother's last afternoon in the world. "Bears in the Woods" describes a run-in with twoDeliverance-type men in West Virginia, which brings back the murder of a dear friend in the woods of Connecticut. By the end of the journey, the ghosts of the past, like the author herself, have become part of a more fluid, more spiritual reality -- wild and spare and elegant and timeless -- one that is always out there, "quickening on the far side of reality. "A unique mix of memoir and nature writing,The Black Swanis a charming story of a woman's odyssey.

Death, Taxes, and Leaky Waders

by John Gierach

Death, Taxes, and Leaky Waders collects forty of John Gierach's finest essays on fishing from six of his books. Like all his writing, these essays are seasoned by a keen sense of observation and a deep knowledge and love of fishing lore, leavened by a wonderfully wry sense of humor. This is the first anthology of Gierach's work, a collection that is sure to delight both die-hard fans and new readers alike.

The Ravaging Tide: Strange Weather, Future Katrinas, and the Coming Death of America's Coastal Cities

by Mike Tidwell

If, like many Americans, you believe the ongoing tragedy of Hurricane Katrina was a once-in-a-lifetime fluke, you need to read this book. In the coming years and decades, the safety of your region, your town, your home may depend on the warnings you'll encounter on these pages. That's because the exact same conditions that created the Katrina catastrophe and destroyed New Orleans are being replicated right now along virtually every inch of U. S. coastline. In The Ravaging Tide, Mike Tidwell, a renowned advocate for the environment and an award-winning journalist, issues a call to arms and confronts us with some unsettling facts. Consider: In the next seventy-five years, much of the Florida peninsula could lie under ocean water. So could much of Lower Manhattan, including all of the hallowed ground zero area. Major hurricanes like Katrina, scientists say, are becoming much more frequent and more powerful. Glacier National Park in Montana will have to change its name, as it is rapidly losing all of its thirty-five remaining glaciers. The snows atop Mt. Kilimanjaro in Africa, so memorably evoked in the Hemingway story, have already disappeared. The fault, Tidwell argues, lies mostly with the U. S. government and the energy choices it has encouraged Americans to make over the decades. Those policies are now actively bringing rising seas and gigantic hurricanes -- the lethal forces that killed the Big Easy -- crashing into every coastal city in the country and indeed the world. The Bush administration's own reports and studies (some of which it has tried to suppress) explicitly predict more intense storms and up to three feet of sea-level rise by 2100 due to planetary warming. The danger is clear: Whether the land sinks three feet per century (as in New Orleans over the past 100 years) or sea levels rise three feet per century (as in the rest of the world over the next 100 years), the resulting calamity is the same. Although Mike Tidwell sounds the clarion in The Ravaging Tide, this is ultimately an optimistic book, one that offers a clear path to a healthier and safer world for us and our descendants. He writes of trend-setting U. S. states like New York and California that are actively cutting greenhouse gases. And he heeds his own words: In one delightful personal chapter, he takes us on a tour of his suburban Washington, D.C., home and demonstrates how he and many of his neighbors have weaned themselves from the fossil-fuel lifestyle. Even when the government is slow to change, there are steps we as families can take to, yes, change the world.

Between a Rock and a Hard Place

by Aron Ralston

One of the most extraordinary survival stories ever told -- Aron Ralston's searing account of his six days trapped in one of the most remote spots in America, and how one inspired act of bravery brought him home. It started out as a simple hike in the Utah canyonlands on a warm Saturday afternoon. For Aron Ralston, a twenty-seven-year-old mountaineer and outdoorsman, a walk into the remote Blue John Canyon was a chance to get a break from a winter of solo climbing Colorado's highest and toughest peaks. He'd earned this weekend vacation, and though he met two charming women along the way, by early afternoon he finally found himself in his element: alone, with just the beauty of the natural world all around him. It was 2:41 P.M. Eight miles from his truck, in a deep and narrow slot canyon, Aron was climbing down off a wedged boulder when the rock suddenly, and terrifyingly, came loose. Before he could get out of the way, the falling stone pinned his right hand and wrist against the canyon wall. And so began six days of hell for Aron Ralston. With scant water and little food, no jacket for the painfully cold nights, and the terrible knowledge that he'd told no one where he was headed, he found himself facing a lingering death -- trapped by an 800-pound boulder 100 feet down in the bottom of a canyon. As he eliminated his escape options one by one through the days, Aron faced the full horror of his predicament: By the time any possible search and rescue effort would begin, he'd most probably have died of dehydration, if a flash flood didn't drown him before that. What does one do in the face of almost certain death? Using the video camera from his pack, Aron began recording his grateful good-byes to his family and friends all over the country, thinking back over a life filled with adventure, and documenting a last will and testament with the hope that someone would find it. (For their part, his family and friends had instigated a major search for Aron, the amazing details of which are also documented here for the first time.) The knowledge of their love kept Aron Ralston alive, until a divine inspiration on Thursday morning solved the riddle of the boulder. Aron then committed the most extreme act imaginable to save himself. Between a Rock and a Hard Place -- a brilliantly written, funny, honest, inspiring, and downright astonishing report from the line where death meets life -- will surely take its place in the annals of classic adventure stories.

Does Anything Eat Wasps?

by New Scientist

How fat do you have to be to become bulletproof? Why do people have eyebrows? Why do pineapples have spines? How much does a head weigh? What affects the color of earwax? How quickly could I turn into a fossil?Have you ever thought up a question so completely off-the-wall, so seemingly ridiculous, that you couldn't even find the courage to ask it? Maybe at the sports bar you were transported by the beauty of your beer to wonder, "How long could I live on beer alone?" Or, cycling through the park, you mused, "Did nature invent any wheels?" Or looking up at the night sky, you had a moment of angst, "What would happen if the moon suddenly disappeared-- if it were vaporized or stolen by aliens?" Full of fun factlets,Does Anything Eat Wasps? is a runaway bestseller around the world. It celebrates the weird and wacky questions -- some trivial, some baffling, all unique -- and their multiple answers culled from "The Last Word," a long-running column in the internationally popular science magazine, New Scientist. Tackling the imponderables of everyday life, sparkling with humor, and bursting with delightful erudition, Does Anything Eat Wasps?i s irresistibly entertaining and utterly engrossing. So, go on. Put away your lab coat and your pencil -- science is fun again.

One Good Horse

by Tom Groneberg

Since moving west over a decade ago, Tom Groneberg has worked with horses as a trail guide, as a ranch hand, and as the manager of his own ranch in Montana, but he has never owned a really good horse. Until, on an autumn night, in a warm barn under a blanket of snow, Blue is born. Soon, he will belong to Tom Groneberg. "If I had a good horse," writes Tom, "I could give it my life. I could ride it for years. We could grow old together. " So begins this unique American love story about a man and his horse. In straightforward, poetic prose, Tom Groneberg chronicles the early successes and failures of trying to train Blue, earning the animal's trust, and saddling him for the first time. The experience is challenging, but ultimately rewarding for Tom. Through his relationship with the animal, he develops a deeper understanding of the land and his community, and of himself -- as a man, and as a husband and father. In a world in which horses are fast becoming nothing more than warm-blooded lawn ornaments, Tom still believes these animals are important in human lives. At its heart,One Good Horseis about the power of hope, the simple story of a horse and the way people connect with nature and with each other across the generations.

Breaking Trail

by Arlene Blum

Arlene Blum is a legendary trailblazer by any measure. Defying the climbing establishment of the 1970s, she led the first teams of women on successful ascents of Mt. McKinley and Annapurna, and was the first American woman to attempt Mt. Everest. In her long, adventurous career, she has played a leading role in more than twenty expeditions and forged a place for women in the perilous arena of high-altitude mountaineering. Breaking Trail is the story of Blum's journey from her overprotected youth in Chicago to the tops of some of the highest peaks on Earth. Chronicling a life of extraordinary personal and professional achievement, Blum's intimate and inspiring memoir explores how her childhood fueled her need to climb -- and how, in turn, her climbing liberated her from her childhood. Each chapter in Breaking Trail begins with a poignant vignette from Blum's early life. Using these as starting points, she traces her evolution as a climber, from a hilariously incompetent beginner to an aspiring mountaineer to a successful, confident, and world-renowned expedition leader. Along the way, she takes us to some of the most extreme and exquisite places on the planet, sharing the exhilaration, toil, and danger of climbing high. Blum also relates the story of her scientific career, which, like her mountaineering, challenged gender stereotypes and was filled with singular accomplishments, including the banning of two cancer-causing chemicals and the initiation of an important area of biophysical research. Writing with remarkable candor and introspection, Blum recounts her triumphs and tragedies, and provides a probing look at what drove her to endure extreme physical discomfort -- and even to risk her life -- attempting high, remote summits around the world. In her story, she shares intimate insights into how and why climbers persevere under the harshest circumstances, cope with the deaths of their comrades, and balance their desire for adventure with their personal lives. Complemented with breathtaking personal photos and detailed maps, Breaking Trail is a deeply moving account of how one woman overcame adversity to become one of the world's most famous climbers, and a testament to the power of taking risks and pursuing dreams.

Survive!

by Peter Deleo

When Peter DeLeo set out one Sunday morning on a sightseeing and photography trip over the central Sierra Nevada mountains in California, he had no idea that he would soon be fighting for his life with the odds stacked very much against him. DeLeo's single-engine plane encountered turbulence, and he and his two passengers crashed in the mountains. All three survived the accident but sustained multiple injuries. DeLeo had broken ribs, a shattered ankle, and a badly damaged shoulder. After assessing their situation, they decided that the passengers should remain with the plane while DeLeo would hike out to bring back help. It was already winter; he left the limited emergency supplies with the plane's passengers; and he was hampered by his injuries, but DeLeo was determined to get help. He found or improvised shelter at night, carefully warmed himself during the daytime, drank from small pools of melted snow and ice, and slowly but steadily made his way toward civilization. Suffering from exhaustion and on the verge of collapse, he found a hot spring that provided him with temporary warmth and insects to eat. Injuries, dehydration, malnutrition, and a two-day blizzard slowed him, and a rockslide nearly killed him just as he glimpsed the valley and highway that he so desperately sought, but DeLeo's courage saw him through. Meanwhile, Civil Air Patrol planes searched fruitlessly for the lost plane and for survivors; twice, DeLeo frantically tried to signal the search planes, but to no avail. When DeLeo finally reached a highway, he found it almost impossible to convince the authorities that he was the lost pilot who had been all but given up for dead. His astonishing survival, one of the most remarkable feats of endurance on record, made national and even international news. Now, for the first time, Peter DeLeo tells his remarkable story in gripping detail. His amazing saga is destined to become a classic.

Chasing Spring: An American Journey Through a Changing Season

by Bruce Stutz

In the tradition of Blue Highways and Silent Spring, Chasing Spring follows nature's season of renewal even as it shows how the delicate mechanisms of spring are increasingly endangered by climate change. Seeking to revive his body and soul following heart surgery, acclaimed nature writer Bruce Stutz set out on a three-month journey through the unfolding of an American spring. Driving across the country in a twenty-year-old Chevy sedan, Stutz shows readers that spring is not so much a progression as an arousal; each added minute of the lengthening days and lingering sun brings yet another transformation in the greening landscape as well as in the human spirit. Beginning with the season's southernmost stirrings along the Gulf of Mexico, Stutz sees the first blooms and partakes in the season's festivals -- celebrations with ancient origins that still speak to our wonder at nature's annual rebirth. He follows the migrations of birds northward, the return of life to the forests, and the quickening of snowmelt in the Rockies. He moves across the southern desert, encountering the explosion of cacti and wildflowers and the violence of tornadoes on the drought-stricken Great Plains. He then travels north through the national parks of the West, finally celebrating his journey's end by basking at the solstice amid the beauty of the Alaskan Arctic's twenty-four hours of daylight. Along the way, he accompanies scientists into the field to study the season's changes and meets farmers, Arctic natives, and even migrant mushroom pickers whose livelihoods depend on the coming of spring. In each location, as he observes the sensitive interplay of light and warmth that draws animals, plants, water, and even the soil itself into the biological ballet that makes for the profound stirring we call spring, he also finds that climate change now threatens the basic processes of nature. A moving and thought-provoking record of the year¹s most invigorating season, Chasing Spring is a timely reminder that as trees bud and flowers bloom, the human spirit reawakens as well. Anyone who has ever marveled at spring¹s wondrous transformations?from a first garden blossom to a world in full flower?will find in Chasing Spring a journey to savor.

Post-Kyoto International Climate Policy: Implementing Architectures for Agreement

by Joseph E. Aldy Robert N. Stavins

The Harvard Project on International Climate Agreements is a global, multi-disciplinary effort intended to help identify the key design elements of a scientifically sound, economically rational, and politically pragmatic post-2012 international policy architecture for addressing the threat of climate change. It has commissioned leading scholars to examine a uniquely wide range of core issues that must be addressed if the world is to reach an effective agreement on a successor regime to the Kyoto Protocol. The purpose of the project is not to become an advocate for any single policy but to present the best possible information and analysis on the full range of options concerning mitigation, adaptation, technology, and finance. The detailed findings of the Harvard Project are reported in this volume, which contains twenty-seven specially commissioned chapters. A companion volume summarizing the main findings of this research is published separately as Post-Kyoto International Climate Policy: Summary for Policymakers.

Mind-Altering and Poisonous Plants of the World

by Michael Wink Ben-Erik van Wyk

The book is meant for gardeners, pharmacists, doctors or members of Poison Centres to identify and learn about more than 1200 poisonous and mind-altering plants and to be able to help in case of poisoning and intoxication.

Quaternary Sea-Level Changes

by Colin V. Murray-Wallace Colin D. Woodroffe

There have been significant changes in sea level over the past two million years, and a complete understanding of natural cycles of change as well as anthropogenic effects is imperative for future global development. This book reviews the history of research into these sea-level changes and summarises the methods and analytical approaches used to interpret evidence for sea-level changes. It provides an overview of changing climates during the Quaternary, examines processes responsible for global variability of sea-level records, and presents detailed reviews of sea-level changes for the Pleistocene and Holocene. The book concludes by discussing current trends in sea levels and likely future sea-level changes. This is an important and authoritative resource for academic researchers and graduate and advanced undergraduate students working in tectonics, stratigraphy, geomorphology, physical geography, environmental science and other aspects of Quaternary studies.

Wilderness and the American Mind

by Roderick Frazier Nash Char Miller

Roderick Nash's classic study of changing attitudes toward wilderness during American history, as well as the origins of the environmental and conservation movements, has received wide acclaim since its initial publication in 1967. The Los Angeles Times listed it among the one hundred most influential books published in the last quarter century, Outside Magazine included it in a survey of "books that changed our world," and it has been called the "Book of Genesis for environmentalists." For the fifth edition, Nash has written a new preface and epilogue that brings Wilderness and the American Mind into dialogue with contemporary debates about wilderness. Char Miller's foreword provides a twenty-first-century perspective on how the environmental movement has changed, including the ways in which contemporary scholars are reimagining the dynamic relationship between the natural world and the built environment.

Crimes against Nature: Squatters, Poachers, Thieves and the Hidden History of American Conservation

by Karl Jacoby

Crimes against Nature reveals the hidden history behind three of the nation's first parklands: the Adirondacks, Yellowstone, and the Grand Canyon. Focusing on conservation's impact on local inhabitants, Karl Jacoby traces the effect of criminalizing such traditional practices as hunting, fishing, foraging, and timber cutting in the newly created parks. Jacoby reassesses the nature of these "crimes" and provides a rich portrait of rural people and their relationship with the natural world in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

The Inquisition of Climate Science

by James Lawrence Powell

Science is under the greatest and most successful attack in modern history. An industry of denial, abetted by media more interested in selling controversy than presenting facts, has duped half the American public into rejecting the facts of climate science--facts showing that human-caused emissions are warming the Earth. The industry of climate science denial is succeeding: public acceptance has declined even as the scientific evidence for global warming has increased. It is vital that the public understand how anti-science ideologues, pseudoscientists, and non-scientists have bamboozled them. We cannot afford to get global warming wrong, yet thanks to deniers and their methods, we are.Jim Powell's The Inquisition of Climate Science is the first book to take on comprehensively the climate science denial movement and the deniers themselves, exposing their lack of credentials, industry funding, and absence of any alternative theory to explain the observed evidence of warming. In this book, readers meet the most prominent deniers and participate in a dissection of their credentials, arguments, and lack of objectivity. James Lawrence Powell shows that the deniers use a wide variety of deceptive rhetorical techniques, many of them going back to the Greeks. While written for the general reader and non-scientist, this book is carefully researched and fully referenced. Readers with an open mind will learn that the evidence of global warming is real and see that an industry of denial has deceived the American public, putting them and their grandchildren at risk.

The Sibley Guide to Bird Life and Behavior

by David Allen Sibley

Designed to enhance the birding experience and to enrich the popular study of North American birds, this landmark book includes authoritative texts by 48 expert birders and biologists.

Over The Edge: Death In Grand Canyon

by Michael P. Ghiglieri Thomas M. Myers

Gripping accounts of all known fatal mishaps in the most famous of the World's Seven Natural Wonders. Two veterans of decades of adventuring in Grand Canyon chronicle the first complete and comprehensive history of Canyon misadventures. These episodes span the entire era of visitation from the time of the first river exploration by John Wesley Powell and his crew of 1869 to that of tourists falling off its rims in Y2K. These accounts of the 550 people who have met untimely deaths in the Canyon set a new high water mark for offering the most astounding array of adventures, misadventures, and life saving lessons published between any two covers. Over the Edge promises to be the most intense yet informative book on Grand Canyon ever written.

The History of Global Climate Governance

by Joyeeta Gupta

What has happened globally on the climate change issue? How have countries' positions differed over time, and why? How are problems and politics developing on an increasingly globalised planet, and can we find a solution? This book explores these questions and more, explaining the key underlying issues of the conflicts between international blocs. The negotiation history is systematically presented in five phases, demonstrating the evolution of decision-making. The book discusses the coalitions, actors and potential role of the judiciary, as well as human rights issues in addressing the climate change problem. It argues for a methodical solution through global law and constitutionalism, which could provide the quantum jump needed in addressing the problem of climate governance. This fascinating and accessible account will be a key resource for policymakers and NGOs, and also for researchers and graduate students in climate policy, geopolitics, climate change, environmental policy and law, and international relations.

Perennials for the Pacific Northwest

by Marty Wingate

This is the A-List of flowering plants recommended for Pacific Northwest gardens--updated to include the current crop of available perennials--in a lavishly photographed and definitive guide, which will aide in selecting the best perennials to build a successful garden. These are the plants that can winter over and return with showy brilliance the following year, and in the gentle climate of the northwest, there are so many to choose from. But which is the best white flower to plant next to a pink rhodie in a partial-shade setting? And can a garden have pretty perennials without a lot of watering? Figuring out what works well together is such a puzzle! Perennials for the Pacific Northwest explains all of that, plus how best to take care of your plants. It features full descriptions of 500 plants, each of the fully described plants includes a color photograph; selected plants from the lists are pictured.

Nicky Fifth Explores New Jersey: New Jersey's Great Outdoors

by Lisa Funari Willever

There is great need to understand the threats that behold our natural resources. The book encourages students to visit New Jersey's great outdoors and learn what needs to be protected and how.

Dolphin Tale

by Gabrielle Reyes

An inspirational true story of friendship between Winter, an injured dolphin with her tail lost in a crab trap and a small boy Sawyer, who goes the extra mile to help Winter fight all odds and swim again with acustom made prosthetic tail.

Curiosity Guides: Global Climate Change

by Ernest Zebrowski

"Climate change? Global warming?"... We've probably all heard these words over and over again, from media reporters, from elected officials, and even from friends and co-workers. Scientists argue about what they mean for our future.What is the truth? How can we decipher exactly what really are the effects of environmental damage? Where can we go to get dependable, clearly-written information so we can join in the conversation and take the right action?THE CURIOSITY GUIDE TO GLOBAL WARMING fills that need, with a scientifically accurate introduction to perhaps the most important issue of our time. It unravels the mysteries of nature and settles any issue of "reasonable doubt" about the reality of global climate change.Dr. Ernest Zebrowski, a prominent scientist and educator examines everything from melting glaciers and disappearing snow covers to increased levels of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere; patterns of climate change through the centuries, and the potentially disastrous effects (including rising seas, more violent storms, and alterations in agricultural productivity) of environmental damage.If you need to understand what's in the news, in print and on line about this subject, this is the one book to read.

The Destruction of the Bison: An Environmental History, 1750-1920

by Andrew C. Isenberg

The Destruction of the Bison explains the decline of the North American bison population from an estimated 30 million in 1800 to fewer than 1000 a century later. In this wide-ranging, interdisciplinary study, Andrew C. Isenberg argues that the cultural and ecological encounter between Native Americans and Euroamericans in the Great Plains was the central cause of the near extinction of the bison. Drought and the incursion of domestic livestock and exotic species such as horses into the Great Plains all threatened the Western ecosystem, which was further destabilized as interactions between Native Americans and Euroamericans created new types of hunters in both cultures: mounted Indian nomads and white commercial hide hunters. In the early twentieth century, nostalgia about the very cultural strife that first threatened the bison became, ironically, an important impetus to its preservation.

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