Download or read book From Conquest to Conservation written by Michael P. Dombeck and published by . This book was released on 2003-02 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From Conquest to Conservation is a visionary new work from three of the nation’s most knowledgeable experts on public lands. As chief of the Forest Service, Mike Dombeck became a lightning rod for public debate over issues such as the management of old-growth forests and protecting roadless areas. Dombeck also directed the Bureau of Land Management from 1994 to 1997 and is the only person ever to have led the two largest land management agencies in the United States. Chris Wood and Jack Williams have similarly spent their careers working to steward public resources, and the authors bring unparalleled insight into the challenges facing public lands and how those challenges can be met. Here, they examine the history of public lands in the United States and consider the most pressing environmental and social problems facing public lands. Drawing heavily on fellow Forest Service employee Aldo Leopold’s land ethic, they offer specific suggestions for new directions in policy and management that can help maintain and restore the health, diversity, and productivity of public land and water resources, both now and into the future. Also featured are lyrical and heartfelt essays from leading writers, thinkers, and scientists— including Bruce Babbitt, Rick Bass, Patricia Nelson Limerick, and Gaylord Nelson—about the importance of public lands and the threats to them, along with original drawings by William Millonig.
Download or read book Thomas Jefferson and the Changing West written by Missouri Historical Society and published by . This book was released on 1997 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An exploration of the complex relationship between the political philosophy of Thomas Jefferson and the modern American West. The questions Jefferson posed about the West and what it might become still hold relevance for westerners today.
Download or read book Crimes Against Nature written by Karl Jacoby and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2014-02-22 with total page 348 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This Study of the Early American conservation movement reveals the hidden history of three of the nation's first parks: the Adirondacks, Yellowstone, and the Grand Canyon. Karl Jacoby traces the effects that the criminalization of such traditional rural practices as hunting, fishing, and foraging had on country people in these areas. Despite the presence of new environmental regulations, poaching arson, and timber stealing became widespread among the Native Americans, poor whites, and others who had long relied on the natural resources now contained within conservation areas. Jacoby reassesses the nature of these "crimes," providing a rich and multifaceted portrayal of rural people and their relationship with the natural world in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries." "Crimes against Nature includes previously unpublished historical photographs depicting such subjects as poachers in Yellowstone and a Native American "squatters' camp" at the Grand Canyon. This study demonstrates the importance of considering class for understanding environmental history and opens a new perspective on the social history of rural and poor people a century age."--Jacket of 2001 edition
Download or read book Correction Lines written by Curt Meine and published by Island Press. This book was released on 2013-04-10 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The last fifteen years have been a period of dramatic change, both in the world at large and within the fields of ecology and conservation. The end of the Cold War, the dot-com boom and bust, the globalizing economy, and the attacks of September 11, among other events and trends, have reshaped our worldview and the political environment in which we find ourselves. At the same time, emerging knowledge, needs, and opportunities have led to a rapid evolution in our understanding of the scientific foundations and social context of conservation. Correction Lines is a new collection of essays from one of our most thoughtful and eloquent writers on conservation, putting these recent changes into perspective and exploring the questions they raise about the past, present, and future of the conservation movement. The essays explore interrelated themes: the relationship between biological and social dimensions; the historic tension between utilitarian and preservationist approaches; the integration of varied cultural perspectives; the enduring legacy of Aldo Leopold; the contrasts and continuities between conservation and environmentalism; the importance of political reform; and the need to "retool" conservation to address twentyfirst-century realities. Collectively the essays assert that we have reached a critical juncture in conservation—a "correction line" of sorts. Correction Lines argues that we need a more coherent and comprehensive account of the past if we are to understand our present circumstances and move forward under unprecedented conditions. Meine brings together a deep sense of history with powerful language and compelling imagery, yielding new insights into the origins and development of contemporary conservation. Correction Lines will help us think more clearly about the forces that have changed, and are changing, conservation, and inspire us to address current realities and future needs.
Download or read book The Social Conquest of Earth written by Edward O. Wilson and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2012-04-09 with total page 330 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: New York Times Bestseller and Notable Book of the Year A Kirkus Reviews Book of the Year (Nonfiction) Longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence (Nonfiction) From the most celebrated heir to Darwin comes a groundbreaking book on evolution, the summa work of Edward O. Wilson's legendary career. Sparking vigorous debate in the sciences, The Social Conquest of Earth upends “the famous theory that evolution naturally encourages creatures to put family first” (Discover). Refashioning the story of human evolution, Wilson draws on his remarkable knowledge of biology and social behavior to demonstrate that group selection, not kin selection, is the premier driving force of human evolution. In a work that James D. Watson calls “a monumental exploration of the biological origins of the human condition,” Wilson explains how our innate drive to belong to a group is both a “great blessing and a terrible curse” (Smithsonian). Demonstrating that the sources of morality, religion, and the creative arts are fundamentally biological in nature, the renowned Harvard University biologist presents us with the clearest explanation ever produced as to the origin of the human condition and why it resulted in our domination of the Earth’s biosphere.
Download or read book The Conquest of Texas written by Gary Clayton Anderson and published by University of Oklahoma Press. This book was released on 2019-02-14 with total page 789 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is not your grandfather’s history of Texas. Portraying nineteenth-century Texas as a cauldron of racist violence, Gary Clayton Anderson shows that the ethnic warfare dominating the Texas frontier can best be described as ethnic cleansing. The Conquest of Texas is the story of the struggle between Anglos and Indians for land. Anderson tells how Scotch-Irish settlers clashed with farming tribes and then challenged the Comanches and Kiowas for their hunting grounds. Next, the decade-long conflict with Mexico merged with war against Indians. For fifty years Texas remained in a virtual state of war. Piercing the very heart of Lone Star mythology, Anderson tells how the Texas government encouraged the Texas Rangers to annihilate Indian villages, including women and children. This policy of terror succeeded: by the 1870s, Indians had been driven from central and western Texas. By confronting head-on the romanticized version of Texas history that made heroes out of Houston, Lamar, and Baylor, Anderson helps us understand that the history of the Lone Star state is darker and more complex than the mythmakers allowed.
Download or read book The Conquest Of Nature written by David Blackbourn and published by Random House. This book was released on 2011-11-30 with total page 530 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The modern idea of 'mastery' over nature always had its critics, whether their motives were aesthetic, religious or environmentalist. By investigating how the most fundamental element - water - was 'conquered' by draining fens and marshes, straightening the courses of rivers, building high dams and exploiting hydro-electric power, The Conquest of Nature explores how over the last 250 years, the German people have shaped their natural environment and how the landscapes they created took a powerful hold on the German imagination. From Frederick the Great of Prussia to Johann Gottfried Tulla, 'the man who tamed the wild Rhine' in the nineteenth century to Otto Intze, 'master dambuilder' of the years around 1900, to the Nazis who set out to colonise 'living space' in the East, this groundbreaking study shows that while mastery over nature delivers undoubted benefits, it has often come at a tremendous cost to both the natural environment and human life.
Download or read book American Environmental Policy updated and expanded edition written by Christopher Mcgrory Klyza and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2013-08-30 with total page 449 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An updated investigation of alternate pathways for American environmental policymaking made necessary by legislative gridlock. The “golden era” of American environmental lawmaking in the 1960s and 1970s saw twenty-two pieces of major environmental legislation (including the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, and the Endangered Species Act) passed by bipartisan majorities in Congress and signed into law by presidents of both parties. But since then partisanship, the dramatic movement of Republicans to the right, and political brinksmanship have led to legislative gridlock on environmental issues. In this book, Christopher Klyza and David Sousa argue that the longstanding legislative stalemate at the national level has forced environmental policymaking onto other pathways. Klyza and Sousa identify and analyze five alternative policy paths, which they illustrate with case studies from 1990 to the present: “appropriations politics” in Congress; executive authority; the role of the courts; “next-generation” collaborative experiments; and policymaking at the state and local levels. This updated edition features a new chapter discussing environmental policy developments from 2006 to 2012, including intensifying partisanship on the environment, the failure of Congress to pass climate legislation, the ramifications of Massachusetts v. EPA, and other Obama administration executive actions (some of which have reversed Bush administration executive actions). Yet, they argue, despite legislative gridlock, the legacy of 1960s and 1970s policies has created an enduring “green state” rooted in statutes, bureaucratic routines, and public expectations.
Download or read book Caulerpa Conquest written by Eric Noel Muñoz and published by Open Books Press. This book was released on 2016-07-20 with total page 162 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Rarely have global battles in the war on invasive species been successful. Even tougher is fighting a mutant genetic clone of a natural counterpart on a marine coast. The first known Western Hemisphere detection of the invasive seaweed Caulerpa taxifolia occurred in Southern California, at San Diego County's Agua Hedionda Lagoon in Carlsbad. Caulerpa Conquest is the true story of the 2000 to 2006 precedent-setting local eradication effort inspired by missed opportunities and lessons learned from the Mediterranean Sea. City staff planner, designated agency liaison, lagoon foundation president, and agent for continued creative outreach through 2015, Eric Noel Muñoz connects the dots from local lagoon waters to foreign coastlines, including Australia, New Zealand, Croatia, France, and Monaco.
Download or read book Thy Will Be Done written by Gerard Colby and published by Open Road Media. This book was released on 2017-11-21 with total page 781 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A “blistering exposé” of the USA’s secret history of financial, political, and cultural exploitation of Latin America in the 20th century, with a new introduction (Publishers Weekly). What happened when a wealthy industrialist and a visionary evangelist unleashed forces that joined to subjugate an entire continent? Historians Gerard Colby and Charlotte Dennett tell the story of the forty-year campaign led by Standard Oil scion Nelson Rockefeller and Wycliffe Bible Translators founder William Cameron Townsend to establish a US imperial beachhead in Central and South America. Beginning in the 1940s, future Vice President Rockefeller worked with the CIA and allies in the banking industry to prop up repressive governments, devastate the Amazon rain forest, and destabilize local economies—all in the name of anti-Communism. Meanwhile, Townsend and his army of missionaries sought to undermine the belief systems of the region’s indigenous peoples and convert them to Christianity. Their combined efforts would have tragic and long-lasting repercussions, argue the authors of this “well-documented” (Los Angeles Times) book—the product of eighteen years of research—which legendary progressive historian Howard Zinn called “an extraordinary piece of investigative history. Its message is powerful, its data overwhelming and impressive.”
Download or read book The Learning Theory of Piaget and Inhelder written by Jeanette McCarthy Gallagher and published by iUniverse. This book was released on 2002 with total page 364 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first compilation of research and concepts from genetic epistemology that directly addresses issues related to learning, The Learning Theory of Piaget and Inhelder emphasizes Piaget’s biological model and the importance of regulatory mechanisms, rather than stage theory. Consequently, the impact of feedback from observables in modifying the actions of a person engaged in an activity—an idea directly related to traditional learning theory—is a key concept in this book. Furthermore, this text uniquely addresses Barbel Inhelder’s important contributions to the Genevan School, particularly with respect to her empirical investigations of teaching-learning interactions and student strategizing. The book also summarizes Piaget’s latest thinking on equilibration as well as the Geneven studies on contradiction, awareness, reflexive abstraction, and correspondence as they relate directly or indirectly to learning of all children, including children with disabilities. Most significantly, this volume incorporates essential aspects of Piaget’s biological model that were previously available only in untranslated works. Finally, easily accessible speeches on developmental psychology, the theory of stages, problems of equilibration and creativity given by Piaget and Inhelder are included in their entirety. The foreword to the book was written by Piaget and Inhelder.
Download or read book We Alone written by David Western and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2020-11-24 with total page 335 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A thoughtful exploration of how humans have endangered the Earth but can pull it back from the brink, as told by a renowned conservationist This personal and thoughtful book by renowned Kenya conservationist David Western traces our global conquest from Maasai herders battling droughts in Africa to the technological frontiers of California. Western draws on a half century of research in the savannas and his own life’s journey to argue that conservation is not a modern invention. The success of all societies past and present lies in conservation practices, breaking biological barriers and learning to live in large cooperative groups able to sustain a healthy environment. Our ecological emancipation from nature enabled us to expand our horizons from conserving food and water for survival to saving whales, elephants, and our cultural heritage. In the Anthropocene, our scientific knowledge and modern sensibilities offer hope for combating global warming and creating a planet able to sustain the wealth of life, but only if we use our unique cultural capacity of cooperation to plan our future.
Download or read book The Ecology and Conservation of Seasonally Dry Forests in Asia written by William J. McShea and published by . This book was released on 2011 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This edited collection explores the forest, animals, plants, and people that inhabit a unique forest ecosystem in South and Southeast Asia. From detailed descriptions of forest communities to case studies of endangered species, this volume ties the region's conservation to local human communities and their historic and present management of natural
Download or read book The Nation s Largest Landlord written by James R. Skillen and published by University Press of Kansas. This book was released on 2009-09-02 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It is the largest landholder in America, overseeing nearly an eighth of the country: 258 million acres located almost exclusively west of the Mississippi River, with even twice as much below the surface. Its domain embraces wildlife and wilderness, timber, range, and minerals, and for over 60 years, the Bureau of Land Management has been an agency in search of a mission. This is the first comprehensive, analytical history of the BLM and its struggle to find direction. James Skillen traces the bureau's course over three periods—its formation in 1946 and early focus on livestock and mines, its 1970s role as mediator between commerce and conservation, and its experience of political gridlock since 1981 when it faced a powerful antienvironmental backlash. Focusing on events that have shaped the BLM's overall mission, organization, and culture, he takes up issues ranging from the National Environmental Policy Act to the Sagebrush Rebellion in order to paint a broad picture of the agency's changing role in the American West. Focusing on the vast array of lands and resources that the BLM manages, he explores the complex and at times contradictory ways that Americans have valued nature. Skillen shows that, although there have been fleeting moments of consensus over the purpose of national forests and parks, there has never been any such consensus over the federal purpose of the public lands overseen by the BLM. Highlighting the perennial ambiguities shadowing the BLM's domain and mission, Skillen exposes the confusion sown by conflicting congressional statutes, conflicting political agendas, and the perennial absence of public support. He also shows that, while there is room for improvement in federal land management, the criteria by which that improvement is measured change significantly over time. In the face of such ambiguity—political, social, and economic--Skillen argues that the agency's history of limited political power and uncertain mission has, ironically, better prepared it to cope with the more chaotic climate of federal land management in the twenty-first century. Indeed, operating in an increasingly crowded physical and political landscape, it seems clear that the BLM's mission will continue to be marked by ambiguity. For historians, students, public administrators, or anyone who cares about American lands, Skillen offers a cautionary tale for those still searching for a final solution to federal land and resource conflicts.
Download or read book Investing in Nature written by William Ginn and published by Island Press. This book was released on 2013-04-10 with total page 229 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 2004, U.S. consumers spent $5.2 billion purchasing bottled water while the government only invested 5 percent of that amount to purchase critical watersheds, parks, and wildlife refuges-systems vital to clean water and healthy environments. How can we reverse the direction of such powerful economic forces? A group of dedicated business-people-turned-environmental-entrepreneurs is pioneering a new set of tools for land conservation deals and other market-based strategies. These pragmatic visionaries have already used these methods to protect millions of acres of land and to transform the practices of entire industries. They are transforming the very nature of conservation by making it profitable. Drawing on his vast experience in both business and land conservation at The Nature Conservancy (TNC), William Ginn offers a practical guide to these innovative methods and a road map to the most effective way to implement them. From conservation investment banking, to emerging markets for nature's goods and services, to new tax incentives that encourage companies to do the "right" thing, Ginn goes beyond the theories to present real-world applications and strategies. And, just as importantly, he looks at the lessons learned from what has not worked, including his own failed efforts in Papua New Guinea and TNC's controversial compatible development approach in Virginia. In an era of dwindling public resources and scarce charitable dollars, these tools reveal a new, and perhaps the only, pathway to achieving biodiversity goals and protecting our lands. Conservation professionals, students of land conservation, and entrepreneurs interested in green business will find Ginn's tales of high-finance deals involving vast tracts of pristine land both informative and exciting. More than just talk, Investing in Nature will teach you how to think big about land conservation.
Download or read book The Broken Spears 2007 Revised Edition written by Miguel Leon-Portilla and published by Beacon Press. This book was released on 2011-02-07 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For hundreds of years, the history of the conquest of Mexico and the defeat of the Aztecs has been told in the words of the Spanish victors. Miguel León-Portilla has long been at the forefront of expanding that history to include the voices of indigenous peoples. In this new and updated edition of his classic The Broken Spears, León-Portilla has included accounts from native Aztec descendants across the centuries. These texts bear witness to the extraordinary vitality of an oral tradition that preserves the viewpoints of the vanquished instead of the victors. León-Portilla's new Postscript reflects upon the critical importance of these unexpected historical accounts.
Download or read book The Rise of the American Conservation Movement written by Dorceta E. Taylor and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2016-08-04 with total page 498 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this sweeping social history Dorceta E. Taylor examines the emergence and rise of the multifaceted U.S. conservation movement from the mid-nineteenth to the early twentieth century. She shows how race, class, and gender influenced every aspect of the movement, including the establishment of parks; campaigns to protect wild game, birds, and fish; forest conservation; outdoor recreation; and the movement's links to nineteenth-century ideologies. Initially led by white urban elites—whose early efforts discriminated against the lower class and were often tied up with slavery and the appropriation of Native lands—the movement benefited from contributions to policy making, knowledge about the environment, and activism by the poor and working class, people of color, women, and Native Americans. Far-ranging and nuanced, The Rise of the American Conservation Movement comprehensively documents the movement's competing motivations, conflicts, problematic practices, and achievements in new ways.
