- Table View
- List View
Wild Hope: On the Front Lines of Conservation Success
by Andrew BalmfordTropical deforestation. The collapse of fisheries. Unprecedented levels of species extinction. Faced with the plethora of gloom-and-doom headlines about the natural world, we might think that environmental disaster is inevitable. But is there any good news about the environment? Yes, there is, answers Andrew Balmford in Wild Hope, and he offers several powerful stories of successful conservation to prove it. This tragedy is still avoidable, and there are many reasons for hope if we find inspiration in stories of effective environmental recovery. Wild Hope is organized geographically, with each chapter taking readers to extraordinary places to meet conservation’s heroes and foot soldiers—and to discover the new ideas they are generating about how to make conservation work on our hungry and crowded planet. The journey starts in the floodplains of Assam, where dedicated rangers and exceptionally tolerant villagers have together helped bring Indian rhinos back from the brink of extinction. In the pine forests of the Carolinas, we learn why plantation owners came to resent rare woodpeckers—and what persuaded them to change their minds. In South Africa, Balmford investigates how invading alien plants have been drinking the country dry, and how the Southern Hemisphere’s biggest conservation program is now simultaneously restoring the rivers, saving species, and creating tens of thousands of jobs. The conservation problems Balmford encounters are as diverse as the people and their actions, but together they offer common themes and specific lessons on how to win the battle of conservation—and the one essential ingredient, Balmford shows, is most definitely hope. Wild Hope, though optimistic, is a clear-eyed view of the difficulties and challenges of conservation. Balmford is fully aware of failed conservation efforts and systematic flaws that make conservation difficult, but he offers here innovative solutions and powerful stories of citizens, governments, and corporations coming together to implement them. A global tour of people and programs working for the planet, Wild Hope is an emboldening green journey.
Wild Horses: Running Free (Orca Wild #11)
by Linda L. RichardsKey Selling Points This book is controversial in that it challenges the accepted theory that wild horses were introduced to North America by Spanish explorers, when in fact, new research shows they may have been in North America all along. Wild horses, and mustangs in particular, are an iconic symbol of the American West. Young people have played a major role in protecting wild horses all over the world and Wild Horses highlights their important work. Wild horses are under threat as their protections have been stripped away by the US government in recent years. This is a story of conservation and ecology and features examples of how wild horses are being protected all over the world. The author is a self-proclaimed horsewoman who, as a child, thought she had tamed her own mustang. She took most of the photos in this book herself.
A Wild Idea: How the Environmental Movement Tamed the Adirondacks
by Brad EdmondsonA Wild Idea shares the complete story of the difficult birth of the Adirondack Park Agency (APA). The Adirondack region of New York's rural North Country forms the nation's largest State Park, with a territory as large as Vermont. Planning experts view the APA as a triumph of sustainability that balances human activity with the preservation of wild ecosystems. The truth isn't as pretty. The story of the APA, told here for the first time, is a complex, troubled tale of political dueling and communities pushed to the brink of violence. The North Country's environmental movement started among a small group of hunters and hikers, rose on a huge wave of public concern about pollution that crested in the early 1970s, and overcame multiple obstacles to "save" the Adirondacks. Edmondson shows how the movement's leaders persuaded a powerful Governor to recruit planners, naturalists, and advisors and assign a task that had never been attempted before. The team and the politicians who supported them worked around the clock to draft two visionary land-use plans and turn them into law. But they also made mistakes, and their strict regulations were met with determined opposition from local landowners who insisted that private property is private.A Wild Idea is based on in-depth interviews with five dozen insiders who are central to the story. Their observations contain many surprising and shocking revelations. This is a rich, exciting narrative about state power and how it was imposed on rural residents. It shows how the Adirondacks were "saved," and also why that campaign sparked a passionate rebellion.
A Wild Idea
by Jonathan FranklinWHY WOULD A SAN FRANCISCO ENTREPRENEUR SELL HIS COMPANY, FLY TO THE ENDS OF THE EARTH, INVEST MILLIONS RESTORING PARADISE, THEN FIGHT LIKE HELL TO GIVE IT ALL AWAY? In 1991, Doug Tompkins left his luxury life in San Francisco and flew 6,500 miles south to a shack in Patagonia that his friends nicknamed Hobbit House. Mounted on wooden skids that allowed oxen to drag it through the cow fields, Hobbit House had for refrigerator a metal box chilled from the icy cold winds off the glacier. Rainwater dripped from a rooftop barrel into the rustic kitchen. Earlier tenants include a sheepherder with little more than his dogs and a rifle. Instead of the Golden Gate Bridge, Tompkins now stared at Volcano Michinmahuida, blanketed in snow and prowled by mountain lions the size of small tigers. Shielded by wilderness, waterfalls and tucked into a remote forest with three times the rainfall of Seattle, Tompkins plotted his counterattack against corporate capitalism. As founder of Esprit and The North Face he had “made things nobody needed.” Now he declared it was time to “pay my rent for living on this planet.” Could he undo the environmental damage produced by his prodigious clothes manufacturing? Could he launch a new brand, one that promoted environmental conservation, preservation and restoration? In Patagonia, Tompkins adored his pioneer existence. All his belongings fit in a single duffel bag. When hungry, he fished from his front yard and harvested vegetables from a greenhouse. Tompkins kayaked along the rivers, ice-climbed glaciers, and waited until the ocean storms reached a frothy peak to pilot his wood-hulled crab boat into the raging waves of the Pacific. Within a hundred miles there were virtually no roads and his old farm was accessible to the occasional fishing boat and a battered airstrip. Flying his small plane for hundreds of hours, he explored. The average plot of land is 10,000 acres and the price per acre is as little as US$25. It was all for sale and about to be destroyed by clearcut logging. Zooming over treetops and around mountain peaks, Tompkins flew inside tight canyons and gaped at the singular beauty: active volcanoes, gliding condors, forests never logged, rivers never dammed—all so undisturbed, so exquisitely designed, without a single flaw. Could he protect this wild beauty? Place a frame around this perfect creation? For the ensuing quarter century that dream, that obsession became his life. Only in death did it become his legacy.
Wild Idea: Buffalo and Family in a Difficult Land
by Dan O'BrienFor more than forty years the prairies of South Dakota have been Dan O’Brien’s home. Working as a writer and an endangered-species biologist, he became convinced that returning grass-fed, free-roaming buffalo to the grasslands of the northern plains would return natural balance to the region and reestablish the undulating prairie lost through poor land management and overzealous farming. In 1998 he bought his first buffalo and began the task of converting a little cattle ranch into an ethically run buffalo ranch. Wild Idea is a book about how good food choices can influence federal policies and the integrity of our food system, and about the dignity and strength of a legendary American animal. It is also a book about people: the daughter coming to womanhood in a hard landscape, the friend and ranch hand who suffers great tragedy, the venture capitalist who sees hope and opportunity in a struggling buffalo business, and the husband and wife behind the ranch who struggle daily, wondering if what they are doing will ever be enough to make a difference. At its center, Wild Idea is about a family and the people and animals that surround them—all trying to build a healthy life in a big, beautiful, and sometimes dangerous land.
Wild Law
by Cormac CullinanCullinan, CEO of an environmental law and policy consultancy in Cape Town, South Africa, presents the second edition of his ambitious 2003 volume outlining his vision of a legal system based on the laws of nature rather than those of an industry-based, man-made society. He begins by demonstrating the current human-centric state of man's relationship with nature, in which we view ourselves as separate, independent, and dominant; continues to posit an alternative view inspired by climate science and indigenous cultures, wherein we are interdependent with and reliant upon the natural world; and proceeds to employ political theory, legal history, science, and contemporary philosophy in service of his theory of Earth Jurisprudence and Earth Governance, which questions everything from property ownership, to the modern concept of time, to the legal rights of trees. Annotation ©2011 Book News, Inc. , Portland, OR (booknews. com)
Wild Law - In Practice (Law, Justice and Ecology #4)
by Peter Burdon Michelle MaloneyWild Law - In Practice aims to facilitate the transition of Earth Jurisprudence from theory into practice. Earth Jurisprudence is an emerging philosophy of law, coined by cultural historian and geologian Thomas Berry. It seeks to analyse the contribution of law in constructing, maintaining and perpetuating anthropocentrism and addresses the ways in which this orientation can be undermined and ultimately eliminated. In place of anthropocentrism, Earth Jurisprudence advocates an interpretation of law based on the ecocentric concept of an Earth community that includes both human and nonhuman entities. Addressing topics that include a critique of the effectiveness of environmental law in protecting the environment, developments in domestic/constitutional law recognising the rights of nature, and the regulation of sustainability, Wild Law - In Practice is the first book to focus specifically on the practical legal implications of Earth Jurisprudence.
Wild Life: The Institution of Nature
by Irus BravermanWild Life documents a nuanced understanding of the wild versus captive divide in species conservation. It also documents the emerging understanding that all forms of wild nature—both in situ (on-site) and ex situ (in captivity)—may need to be managed in perpetuity. Providing a unique window into the high-stakes world of nature conservation, Irus Braverman describes the heroic efforts by conservationists to save wild life. Yet in the shadows of such dedication and persistence in saving the life of species, Wild Life also finds sacrifice and death. Such life and death stories outline the modern struggle to define what conservation should look like at a time when the long-established definitions of nature have collapsed. Wild Life begins with the plight of a tiny endangered snail, and ends with the rehabilitation of an entire island. Interwoven between its pages are stories about golden lion tamarins in Brazil, black-footed ferrets in the American Plains, Sumatran rhinos in Indonesia, Tasmanian devils in Australia, and many more creatures both human and nonhuman. Braverman draws on interviews with more than one hundred and twenty conservation biologists, zoologists, zoo professionals, government officials, and wildlife managers to explore the various perspectives on in situ and ex situ conservation and the blurring of the lines between them.
Wild Lives: Leading Conservationists on the Animals and the Planet They Love
by Carl Safina Janie Chodosh Lori RobinsonToday we are faced with the alarming possibility that as many as 50 percent of species alive will become extinct within this century. This statistic is so staggering that scientists have begun to refer to the twenty-first century as the ?sixth extinction.” But while this is alarming, all hope is not lost; conservation experts across the globe are working tirelessly to preserve our planet for future generations. In Wild Lives, twenty of these pioneers share their stories via exclusive interviews. Coming from different countries, diverse cultures, a variety of socio-economic backgrounds, and specializing in different species, all of these conservationists have an important characteristic in common: they have committed their lives to saving our planet and the majestic species that call it home. Some of these esteemed contributors include: Today we are faced with the staggering possibility that as many as 50 percent of species alive will become extinct within this century. This statistic is so staggering that scientists have begun to refer to the twenty-first century as the ?sixth extinction.” But while this is alarming, all hope is not lost; conservation experts across the globe are working tirelessly to preserve our planet for future generations. Beverly and Dereck Joubert, National Geographic filmmakers and big cat experts Ric O’Barry, dolphin advocate and trainer of Flipper George Schaller, famed field biologist and author Yossi Leshem, Israeli ornithologist Dominique Bikaba, gorilla activist Paul Hilton, award-winning wildlife photographer Passionate and inspiring, Wild Lives is an important and timely reminder of the beauty and fragility of our world and the obligation that every person has towards preserving it.
A Wild Love for the World: Joanna Macy and the Work of Our Time
by Edited by Stephanie KazaJoanna Macy is a scholar of Buddhism, systems thinking, and deep ecology whose decades of writing, teaching, and activism have inspired people around the world. In this collection of writings, leading spiritual teachers, deep ecologists, and diverse writers and activists explore the major facets of Macy&’s lifework. Combined with eleven pieces from Macy herself, the result is a rich chorus of wisdom and compassion to support the work of our time. &“Being fully present to fear, to gratitude, to all that is—this is the practice of mutual belonging. As living members of the living body of Earth, we are grounded in that kind of belonging. Even when faced with cataclysmic changes, nothing can ever separate us from Earth. We are already home.&”— Joanna Macy
Wild Mammals of Wyoming and Yellowstone National Park
by Steven W. BuskirkWild Mammals of Wyoming and Yellowstone National Park provides the scholar, conservationist, and interested lay reader with information on the state's 117 wild mammalian species from grizzly bears to pygmy shrews. It describes the history of mammalogy in Wyoming, the zoogeography of Wyoming mammals, and the prehistoric mammals of Wyoming. It also characterizes the habitats of Wyoming mammals and addresses the conservation and management of mammals in the region. Expanding beyond the traditional field guide, Steven W. Buskirk emphasizes taxonomic classification, geographic range, and conservation status for mammalian species. Introductory sections are provided for each order and family, and individual species accounts organize a wealth of data ranging from habitat associations to field measurements in an easy-to-use format. Featuring color species photos, continental and state-scale distribution maps, and a comprehensive bibliography with nearly 1,000 references, Wild Mammals of Wyoming and Yellowstone National Park is an indispensable resource for wildlife and conservation biologists and mammalogists working in this region.
Wild Maps for Curious Minds: 100 New Ways To See The Natural World (Maps for Curious Minds #0)
by Mike HigginsThe natural world has never been wilder—with 100 fiercely fun, curiously captivating, and amazingly adventurous maps Which nations have launched animals into space? Where are the world’s cat people? How many humans live in high-risk zones for natural disasters? How far do you have to travel to hug all fifteen of the world’s oldest trees? Where in the world do snakes live—or better yet, where can you avoid them?! Find the thought-provoking answers to these questions and many more in Wild Maps for Curious Minds. This infographic atlas of nature’s most impressive wonders and eye-popping oddities is bursting with discovery (Where’s the most remote place on Earth?), whimsical insight (Which animals have launched into space?), and startling revelations (How much forest have we destroyed?) that will change the way you see the natural world—and that celebrate our planet and the plants and animals with whom we share it.
The Wild Marsh: Four Seasons at Home in Montana
by Rick BassThe Wild Marsh is Rick Bass's most mature, full account of life in the Yaak and a crowning achievement in his celebrated career. It begins with his family settling in for the long Montana winter, and captures all the subtle harbingers of change that mark each passing month -- the initial cruel teasing of spring, the splendor and fecundity of summer, and the bittersweet memories evoked by fall. It is full of rich observation about what it takes to live in the valley -- ruggedness, improvisation and, of course, duct tape. The Wild Marsh is also tremendously poignant, especially when Bass reflects on what it means for his young daughters to grow up surrounded by the strangeness and wonder of nature. He shares with them the Yaak's little secrets -- where the huckleberries are best in a dry year, where to find a grizzly's claw marks in an old cedar -- and discovers that passing on this intimate local knowledge, the knowledge of home, is a kind of rare and valuable love. Bass emerges not just as a writer but as a father, a neighbor, and a gifted observer, uniquely able to bring us close to the drama and sanctity of small things, ensuring that though the wilderness is increasingly at risk, the voice of the wilderness will not disappear.
Wild Mushrooms: A Cookbook and Foraging Guide
by Kristen Blizzard Trent BlizzardGet ready to fall in love with wild mushrooms! Absolutely everything you need to know to make mushrooming a lifestyle choice, from finding, storing, preserving, and preparing common and unusual species. Packed with content and lore from more than 20 skilled foragers around the country, Wild Mushrooms will help mushroom hunters successfully utilize their harvest, and includes practical information on transporting, cleaning, and preserving their finds. One of the best things about cooking wild mushrooms is that every time you open your dried caches, their unique aroma recalls your foraging experience creating an immediate and visceral connection back to the forest. There is no finer way to appreciate food. You will not only learn the best ways to locate, clean, collect, and preserve your mushrooms from the experts, the book will also discuss safety and edibility, preservation techniques, mushroom sections and flavor profiles, and more. Recipes will be categorized by mushroom species, with 115 recipes in total. Recipes include: Smoked Marinated Wild MushroomsBlack Trumpet, Blood Orange, and Beet SaladMaitake Beef StewCandy Cap and Walnut SconesBaked Brie with Chanterelle JamPorcini with Braised Pork MedallionsYellowfoot Mushroom TartAnd more! From pickling to rich duxelles, soups, salads, and even mushroom teas, tinctures, jams, and ice cream, these recipes and invaluable insider tips will delight everyone from the most discerning mycophiles to brand new fungus fanatics.
Wild New World: The Epic Story Of Animals And People In America
by Dan FloresA deep-time history of animals and humans in North America, by the best-selling and award-winning author of Coyote America. In 1908, near Folsom, New Mexico, a cowboy discovered the remains of a herd of extinct giant bison. By examining flint points embedded in the bones, archeologists later determined that a band of humans had killed and butchered the animals 12,450 years ago. This discovery vastly expanded America’s known human history but also revealed the long-standing danger Homo sapiens presented to the continent’s evolutionary richness. Distinguished author Dan Flores’s ambitious history chronicles the epoch in which humans and animals have coexisted in the “wild new world” of North America—a place shaped both by its own grand evolutionary forces and by momentous arrivals from Asia, Africa, and Europe. With portraits of iconic creatures such as mammoths, horses, wolves, and bison, Flores describes the evolution and historical ecology of North America like never before. The arrival of humans precipitated an extraordinary disruption of this teeming environment. Flores treats humans not as a species apart but as a new animal entering two continents that had never seen our likes before. He shows how our long past as carnivorous hunters helped us settle America, initially establishing a coast-to-coast culture that lasted longer than the present United States. But humanity’s success had devastating consequences for other creatures. In telling this epic story, Flores traces the origins of today’s “Sixth Extinction” to the spread of humans around the world; tracks the story of a hundred centuries of Native America; explains how Old World ideologies precipitated 400 years of market-driven slaughter that devastated so many ancient American species; and explores the decline and miraculous recovery of species in recent decades. In thrilling narrative style, informed by genomic science, evolutionary biology, and environmental history, Flores celebrates the astonishing bestiary that arose on our continent and introduces the complex human cultures and individuals who hastened its eradication, studied America’s animals, and moved heaven and earth to rescue them. Eons in scope and continental in scale, Wild New World is a sweeping yet intimate Big History of the animal-human story in America.
Wild North Carolina Discovering The Wonders of Our State's Natural Communities
by David Blevins Michael P. SchafaleCelebrating the beauty, diversity, and significance of the state's natural landscapes,Wild North Carolinaprovides an engaging, beautifully illustrated introduction to North Carolina's interconnected webs of plant and animal life. From dunes and marshes to high mountain crags, through forests, swamps, savannas, ponds, pocosins, and flatrocks, David Blevins and Michael Schafale reveal in words and photographs natural patterns of the landscape that will help readers see familiar places in a new way and new places with a sense of familiarity. Wild North Carolinaintroduces the full range of the state's diverse natural communities, each brought to life with compelling accounts of their significance and meaning, arresting photographs featuring broad vistas and close-ups, and details on where to go to experience them first hand. Blevins and Schafale provide nature enthusiasts of all levels with the insights they need to value the state's natural diversity, highlighting the reasons plants and animals are found where they are, as well as the challenges of conserving these special places.
Wild Ones
by Jon MooallemA New York Times Notable Book of 2013 "Ambitious and fascinating... [Mooallem] seamlessly blends reportage from the front lines of wildlife conservation with a lively cultural history of animals in America... This is not a book about wilderness; it's a book about us." --New York Times Book Review Journalist Jon Mooallem has watched his little daughter's world overflow with animals butterfly pajamas, appliquéd owls--while the actual world she's inheriting slides into a great storm of extinction. Half of all species could disappear by the end of the century, and scientists now concede that most of America's endangered animals will survive only if conservationists keep rigging the world around them in their favor. So Mooallem ventures into the field, often taking his daughter with him, to move beyond childlike fascination and make those creatures feel more real. Wild Ones is a tour through our environmental moment and the eccentric cultural history of people and wild animals in America that inflects it--from Thomas Jefferson's celebrations of early abundance to the turn-of the-last-century origins of the teddy bear to the whale-loving hippies of the 1970s. In America, Wild Ones discovers, wildlife has always inhabited the terrain of our imagination as much as the actual land. The journey is framed by the stories of three modern-day endangered species: the polar bear, victimized by climate change and ogled by tourists outside a remote northern town; the little-known Lange's metalmark butterfly, foundering on a shred of industrialized land near San Francisco; and the whooping crane as it's led on a months-long migration by costumed men in ultralight airplanes. The wilderness that Wild Ones navigates is a scrappy, disorderly place where amateur conservationists do grueling, sometimes preposterous-looking work; where a marketer maneuvers to control the polar bear's image while Martha Stewart turns up to film those beasts for her show on the Hallmark Channel. Our most comforting ideas about nature unravel. In their place, Mooallem forges a new and affirming vision of the human animal and the wild ones as kindred creatures on an imperfect planet. With propulsive curiosity and searing wit, and without the easy moralizing and nature worship of environmental journalism's older guard, Wild Ones merges reportage, science, and history into a humane and endearing meditation on what it means to live in, and bring a life into, a broken world. --And don't miss the album based on the book: WILD ONES by Black Prairie--
Wild Planet: The Inspiring Life and Wisdom of Sir David Attenborough
by Hayley RoccoA fascinating picture book biography of broadcaster and biologist, Sir David Attenborough'A beautiful book with a timely message accessible for all ages.' Rick Riordan, bestselling author of the Percy Jackson and the Olympians seriesAs a boy, David loved exploring the wild places near his home. When he was older, he travelled the world to film animals in their natural habitats. His adventures brought the wonders of the world into our homes. But David also noticed that our planet was changing. What could David do to help? What could we all do? This is the inspiring story of Sir David Attenborough. It&’s also the story of our planet and an urgent call for us to do our part to protect our planet and the creatures who call Earth home. 'Nothing short of stunning.' Sherri Duskey Rinker, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Steam Train, Dream Train
Wild Product Governance: Finding Policies that Work for Non-Timber Forest Products (People and Plants International Conservation)
by Sarah A. Laird Rebecca J. McLain Rachel P. WynbergProducts from the wild, also known as non-timber forest products (NTFPs), are used as medicines, foods, spices, and a multitude of other purposes. They contribute substantially to rural livelihoods, generate revenue for companies and governments, and have a range of impacts on biodiversity conservation. However, there is little information available for those seeking to develop effective policy frameworks and regulation. This book addresses that shortage with information and recommendations on the drafting, content and implementation of NTFP policies, and the broader issues of governance associated with these products. It reviews the diverse elements that combine to create laws and policies that promote sustainable and equitable management, trade and use of species. Drawing on a wealth of unique case studies from around the world, this volume examines experiences with NTFP regulation, including its sometimes unintended consequences. It looks at economic factors, the interface between traditional and western knowledge and legal systems, and relationships between NTFP regulation, land tenure and resource rights, as well as power and equity imbalances. The volume includes a review of available literature and resources, plus an annotated bibliography linked to the People and Plants International website (www.peopleandplants.org). Published with People and Plants International
The Wild River and the Great Dam: The Construction of Hoover Dam and the Vanishing Colorado River
by Simon BoughtonDiscover the complicated history behind the construction of Hoover Dam—one of the country’s most recognizable and far-reaching landmarks—and its lasting political and environmental effects on the Colorado River and the American West. <P><P> At the time of its completion in 1936, Hoover Dam was the biggest dam in the world and the largest feat of architecture and engineering in the country—a statement of national ambition and technical achievement. It turned the wild Colorado River into a tame and securely managed water source, transforming millions of acres of desert into farmland while also providing water and power to the fast-growing population of the Southwest. The concrete monolith quickly became a symbol of American ingenuity; however, its history is laden with contradiction. It provided work for thousands, but it was a dangerous project that exploited desperate workers during the Depression. It helped secure the settlement and economies of the Southwest, but at the expense of Indigenous peoples and the environment; and it created a dependency on the Colorado River’s water, which is under threat from overuse and climate change. <P><P> Weaving together elements of engineering, geography, and political and socioeconomic history, and drawing heavily from unpublished oral histories taken from dam workers and their families, Simon Boughton’s thoughtful and compelling debut—featuring historical photographs throughout—follows the construction and impact of Hoover Dam, and how its promise of abundance ultimately created a river in crisis today.
Wild Romanticism (Routledge Environmental Literature, Culture and Media)
by Markus Poetzsch Cassandra FalkeWild Romanticism consolidates contemporary thinking about conceptions of the wild in British and European Romanticism, clarifying the emergence of wilderness as a cultural, symbolic, and ecological idea. This volume brings together the work of twelve scholars, who examine representations of wildness in canonical texts such as Frankenstein, Northanger Abbey, "Kubla Khan," "Expostulation and Reply," and Childe Harold´s Pilgrimage, as well as lesser-known works by Radcliffe, Clare, Hölderlin, P.B. Shelley, and Hogg. Celebrating the wild provided Romantic-period authors with a way of thinking about nature that resists instrumentalization and anthropocentricism, but writing about wilderness also engaged them in debates about the sublime and picturesque as aesthetic categories, about gender and the cultivation of independence as natural, and about the ability of natural forces to resist categorical or literal enclosure. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of Romanticism, environmental literature, environmental history, and the environmental humanities more broadly.
Wild Sea: A History of the Southern Ocean
by Joy McCann“The Southern Ocean is a wild and elusive place, an ocean like no other. With its waters lying between the Antarctic continent and the southern coastlines of Australia, New Zealand, South America, and South Africa, it is the most remote and inaccessible part of the planetary ocean, the only part that flows around Earth unimpeded by any landmass. It is notorious amongst sailors for its tempestuous winds and hazardous fog and ice. Yet it is a difficult ocean to pin down. Its southern boundary, defined by the icy continent of Antarctica, is constantly moving in a seasonal dance of freeze and thaw. To the north, its waters meet and mingle with those of the Atlantic, Indian, and Pacific Oceans along a fluid boundary that defies the neat lines of a cartographer.” So begins Joy McCann’s Wild Sea, the remarkable story of the world’s remote Southern, or Antarctic, Ocean. Unlike the Pacific, Atlantic, Indian, and Arctic Oceans with their long maritime histories, little is known about the Southern Ocean. This book takes readers beyond the familiar heroic narratives of polar exploration to explore the nature of this stormy circumpolar ocean and its place in Western and Indigenous histories. Drawing from a vast archive of charts and maps, sea captains’ journals, whalers’ log books, missionaries’ correspondence, voyagers’ letters, scientific reports, stories, myths, and her own experiences, McCann embarks on a voyage of discovery across its surfaces and into its depths, revealing its distinctive physical and biological processes as well as the people, species, events, and ideas that have shaped our perceptions of it. The result is both a global story of changing scientific knowledge about oceans and their vulnerability to human actions and a local one, showing how the Southern Ocean has defined and sustained southern environments and people over time. Beautifully and powerfully written, Wild Sea will raise a broader awareness and appreciation of the natural and cultural history of this little-known ocean and its emerging importance as a barometer of planetary climate change.
Wild Sonoma: Exploring Nature in Wine Country
by Charles HoodAn all-access guide to the abundant natural splendor of Sonoma CountyWild Sonoma celebrates the spectacular and resilient natural landscapes of Sonoma County, which along with its neighboring counties is one of the world’s premier winegrowing regions. Our exploration launches with an entertaining primer on ecology basics, including the impact of fire, before a fun fact–filled survey of sixty-two of the area’s iconic and commonly encountered species—from vivacious acorn woodpeckers to disease-neutralizing Western fence lizards. It caps off with a tour of six sites to experience Sonoma’s diverse natural beauty, with a special emphasis on access. Written by Wild LA author Charles Hood, introduced by renowned naturalist Jane Goodall, and illustrated by John Muir Laws, Wild Sonoma offers residents and tourists from eight to eighty a sense of wonder and cause for hope.
Wild Soundscapes: Discovering the Voice of the Natural World, Revised Edition
by Bernie Krause Roger PayneWild Soundscapes is the first comprehensive guide to listening to--and recording--nature. Learn how to tune in to nature's biophonies, or creature symphonies; how to use simple microphones to hear more; and how to record, mix, and play with sounds you gather. Keep it simple or launch yourself into a new creative field. Whether you're an amateur naturalist, novice field recordist, musician, want to create your own natural sound library, or just want to gain further appreciate of the natural world, this is the book for you. Bernie Krause, a professional field recordist and bioacoustician, shares his expertise in exploring nature's sonic landscapes. Wild Soundscapes comes with a full-length CD, narrated by Krause, sampling a variety of natural sounds: the crashing sea, the singing of ants, the bugling of Yellowstone elk, the plop of falling Costa Rican crabs, and more. With the help of this CD, Krause demonstrates techniques and tricks for field recording success.
Wild Species as Commodities: Managing Markets And Ecosystems For Sustainability
by Curtis FreeseIn recent years, some policymakers and conservationists have argued that natural resources will be protected only if economic benefits accrue to those who are responsible for caring for the resources. Such commercial consumptive use of wild species (CCU) provides an economically viable alternative to more ecologically destructive land uses, and could help accomplish the overall goals of biodiversity conservation.Yet many questions remain: Will the harvest of wild species be sustainable? Will habitats be protected? What tradeoffs are implied for the populations and ecosystems under management? While this debate goes on, researchers and managers are confronting an array of real-world problems in managing harvested populations of wild species. Wild Species as Commodities presents a balanced, scientifically rigorous consideration of the link between CCU and biodiversity conservation. The outgrowth of a four-year World Wildlife Fund study, the book is both a synthesis of findings and a practical guide. Topics examined include:forestry, fisheries, sport hunting, and nontimber forest products the economics of wild species use social and institutional frameworks required for sustainability ecological impacts biodiversity consequences of ecosystem specialization conservation benefits of wild species use management principles and guideline.Wild Species as Commodities provides a primer on the CCU-biodiversity link, and an interdisciplinary analysis of the major economic, social, and ecological factors involved, along with guidelines for incorporating biodiversity conservation into commercial harvesting programs. It is a highly accessible source of information, concepts, and management approaches for professionals in resource management and wildlife conservation, and academics in conservation biology, environmental and ecological economics, and environmental studies.