Download or read book Return of the Condor written by John Moir and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2023-11-21 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A heart-stopping saga of the rescue from the very brink of extinction of one of the grandest of all birds.”—Thomas Lovejoy, president of the Amazon Biodiversity Center. RETURN OF THE CONDOR is the riveting account of one of the most dramatic attempts to save a species from extinction in the history of modern conservation. Features a new Afterword by the author. With the condor’s population down to only twenty-two birds in the 1980s and their very survival in doubt, the condor recovery team flouted conventional wisdom and pursued a controversial strategy to pull the bird back from the brink of extinction. Thus began the ongoing, decades-long program to reestablish America’s largest bird in its ancient home in Western skies. Award-winning science writer John Moir takes readers into the backcountry to get to know the recovery program scientists as well as some of the individual condors. These are stories of peril, uncertainty, and controversy. Woven throughout these tales of heartbreak and triumph is the extraordinary dedication of the humans who have sometimes risked their lives for this charismatic, intelligent, and social bird. Despite the program’s remarkable successes, the condor’s narrative is still unfolding with a number of challenges remaining. This includes the dilemma of lead poisoning among free-flying condors that is a major obstacle to the bird’s recovery. The new Afterword presents a compelling examination of the progress and continuing adversity facing the condor recovery effort since the first edition of the book was published. Finalist for the William Saroyan International Writing Prize from the Stanford University Libraries Honorable Mention from the National Association of Science Writers
Download or read book The California Condor written by Carl B. Koford and published by . This book was released on 1966 with total page 198 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Flight Ways written by Thom van Dooren and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2014-06-03 with total page 207 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A leading figure in the emerging field of extinction studies, Thom van Dooren puts philosophy into conversation with the natural sciences and his ethnographic encounters to vivify the cultural and ethical significance of modern-day extinctions. Unlike other meditations on the subject, Flight Ways incorporates the particularities of real animals and their worlds, drawing philosophers, natural scientists, and general readers into the experience of living among and losing biodiversity. Each chapter of Flight Ways focuses on a different species or group of birds: North Pacific albatrosses, Indian vultures, an endangered colony of penguins in Australia, Hawaiian crows, and the iconic whooping cranes of North America. Written in eloquent and moving prose, the book takes stock of what is lost when a life form disappears from the world—the wide-ranging ramifications that ripple out to implicate a number of human and more-than-human others. Van Dooren intimately explores what life is like for those who must live on the edge of extinction, balanced between life and oblivion, taking care of their young and grieving their dead. He bolsters his studies with real-life accounts from scientists and local communities at the forefront of these developments. No longer abstract entities with Latin names, these species become fully realized characters enmeshed in complex and precarious ways of life, sparking our sense of curiosity, concern, and accountability toward others in a rapidly changing world.
Download or read book Condor written by John Nielsen and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2009-10-13 with total page 372 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The California condor has been described as a bird "with one wing in the grave." Flying on wings nearly ten feet wide from tip to tip, these birds thrived on the carcasses of animals like woolly mammoths. Then, as humans began dramatically reshaping North America, the continent's largest flying land bird started disappearing. By the beginning of the twentieth century, extinction seemed inevitable. But small groups of passionate individuals refused to allow the condor to fade away, even as they fought over how and why the bird was to be saved. Scientists, farmers, developers, bird lovers, and government bureaucrats argued bitterly and often, in the process injuring one another and the species they were trying to save. In the late 1980s, the federal government made a wrenching decision -- the last remaining wild condors would be caught and taken to a pair of zoos, where they would be encouraged to breed with other captive condors. Livid critics called the plan a recipe for extinction. After the zoo-based populations soared, the condors were released in the mountains of south-central California, and then into the Grand Canyon, Big Sur, and Baja California. Today the giant birds are nowhere near extinct. The giant bird with "one wing in the grave" appears to be recovering, even as the wildlands it needs keep disappearing. But the story of this bird is more than the story of a vulture with a giant wingspan -- it is also the story of a wild and giant state that has become crowded and small, and of the behind-the-scenes dramas that have shaped the environmental movement. As told by John Nielsen, an environmental journalist and a native Californian, this is a fascinating tale of survival.
Download or read book Right Back Where We Started From written by Joy Lanzendorfer and published by Blackstone Publishing. This book was released on 2021-05-04 with total page 334 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: If misfortune hadn’t gotten in the way, Sandra Sanborn would be where she belongs—among the rich and privileged instead of standing outside a Hollywood studio wearing a sandwich board in the hope of someone discovering her. It’s tough breaking into the movies during the Great Depression, but Sandra knows that she’s destined for greatness. After all, her grandmother Vira crossed the country during the Gold Rush and established the Sanborns as one of San Francisco’s most prominent families, and her mother Mabel grew up in a lavish mansion and married into an agricultural empire. Success, Sandra feels, is in her blood. She just needs a chance to prove it. In between failed auditions, Sandra receives a letter from a man claiming to be her father, which calls into question everything she believes about her family—and herself. As she tries to climb the social ladder, family secrets lurk in the background, pulling her down. Until Sandra confronts the truth about how Vira and Mabel gained and lost their fortunes, she will always end up right back where she started from. Right Back Where We Started From is a sweeping, multigenerational work of fiction that explores the lust for ambition that entered into the American consciousness during the Gold Rush and how it affected our nation’s ideas of success, failure, and the pursuit of happiness. It is a meticulously layered saga—at once historically rich, romantic, and suspenseful—about three determined and completely unforgettable women.
Download or read book Atlas of Rare Birds written by Dominic Couzens and published by Bloomsbury Wildlife. This book was released on 2010 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: All life depends on plants but they are often taken for granted in our everyday lives. It is easy to ignore the fact that we are facing a crisis, with scientists estimating that one third of all flowering plant species are threatened with extinction. "Modern Day Arks" considers the essential conservation role of botanic gardens. Chapters feature gardens from around the world, including the UK, US, Australia, Germany, Turkey, Uganda, South Africa, Mexico, Brazil and China, revealing how a global network is striving to save our botanical heritage. Comments and photographs from the botanists involved lend an important personal angle to the text and reveal the important but little-known work that goes on behind the scenes of these beautiful gardens. In this elegant and engaging book, Sara Oldfield shows how botanic gardens truly are 'modern day arks' safeguarding species and saving resources on which we may soon depend. It is to be published in 2010, a year that sees the culmination of the Global Strategy for Plant Conservation.
Download or read book Vanished and Vanishing Parrots written by Joseph Forshaw and published by CSIRO PUBLISHING. This book was released on 2017-10-02 with total page 790 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Joseph M. Forshaw, one of the world’s leading authorities on parrots, calls attention to the threats they face: they are one of the most endangered groups of birds, with a growing number of species nearing extinction. The main threats arise from habitat loss through deforestation and agricultural development and from the taking of birds for the international live-bird trade. Vanished and Vanishing Parrots brings together information on species that have become extinct in historical times with information on species that are in danger of becoming extinct to increase public awareness of the plight of these magnificent birds. Vivid colour plates by the wildlife artist Frank Knight draw attention to the spectacular species that we have lost or that could be lost. Forshaw’s work gives us fascinating insight into these endangered and extinct parrots. Vanished and Vanishing Parrots will be a valuable reference for scientific, ornithological and avicultural organisations, as well as individual lovers of birds and of illustrated natural history books.
Download or read book Nine Feet from Tip to Tip written by Sanford R. Wilbur and published by Symbios. This book was released on 2012-01-01 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Historical review of those events and people that impacted the California condor, and led to its near-extinction.
Download or read book Conservation Biology of Hawaiian Forest Birds written by Thane K. Pratt and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2009-01-01 with total page 728 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hawaii’s forest bird community is the most insular and most endangered in the world and serves as a case study for threatened species globally. Ten have disappeared in the past thirty years, nine are critically endangered, and even common species are currently in decline. Thane K. Pratt, his coeditors, and collaborators, all leaders in their field, describe the research and conservation efforts over the past thirty years to save Hawaii’s forest birds. They also offer the most comprehensive look at the reasons for these extinctions and attempts to overcome them in the future. Among the topics covered in this book are trends in bird populations, environmental and genetic factors limiting population size, avian diseases, predators, and competing alien bird species. Color plates by award-winning local photographer Jack Jeffrey illustrate all living species discussed or described.
Download or read book The Photo Ark written by Joel Sartore and published by National Geographic Books. This book was released on 2017 with total page 404 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book of photography represents National Geographic's Photo Ark, a major cross-platform initiative and lifelong project by photographer Joel Sartore to make portraits of the world's animals -- especially those that are endangered. His message: to know these animals is to save them. Sartore intends to photograph every animal in captivity in the world. He is circling the globe, visiting zoos and wildlife rescue centers to create studio portraits of 12,000 species, with an emphasis on those facing extinction. He has photographed more than 6,000 already and now, thanks to a multi-year partnership with National Geographic, he may reach his goal. This book showcases his animal portraits: from tiny to mammoth, from the Florida grasshopper sparrow to the greater one-horned rhinoceros. Paired with the prose of veteran wildlife writer Douglas Chadwick, this book presents an argument for saving all the species of our planet.
Download or read book California Condors in the Pacific Northwest written by Jesse D'Elia and published by . This book was released on 2013 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The authors study the evolution and life history of the California Condor, its historical distribution, the reasons for its decline, and their hopes for its reintroduction in the Pacific Northwest"--
Download or read book The Condor s Shadow written by David S. Wilcove and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2000-05-09 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With gripping narrative power, The Condor's Shadow traces the ways in which human greed and ignorance have wreaked havoc on our ecological landscape. The heir apparent to Peter Matthiessen's 1959 classic Wildlife in America, The Condor's Shadow is a brilliant and compulsively readable study of the state of North American wildlife and what is being done to reverse the damage humans have caused. With equal respect for the smallest feather-mite and the fiercest grizzly, the frailest flower and the stateliest redwood, David S. Wilcove illustrates--in jargon-free, often witty prose--nature's delicate system of checks and balances, examining the factors that determine a species' vulnerability and the consequences of losing even the tiniest part of any ecosystem. An examination of both the heart-wrenching failures and stunning successes of our conservation efforts, The Condor's Shadow chronicles the destruction and resilience of our American wilderness and offers an insightful, eloquent overview that will appeal to avid conservationists and recreational nature-lovers alike.
Download or read book Facing Extinction written by Paul Donald and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2013-12-19 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examines extinction in birds, with case studies of critically endangered species and the research initiatives designed to save them.
Download or read book The Kirtland s Warbler written by William Rapai and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 2012-02-08 with total page 270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At a time when the world is seeing its species rapidly go extinct, the Kirtland's warbler is not just a survivor, it's a rock star. The Kirtland's warbler is the rarest warbler species in North America and will always be rare because of its persnickety nesting preferences. But when the total population fell below 400 birds in the 1970s and 1980s---driven largely by a loss of habitat and the introduction of a parasite---a small group of dedicated biologists, researchers, and volunteers vowed to save the Kirtland's warbler despite long odds. This is the story of the warbler's survival and gradual recovery, the people and policies that kept it from extinction, and the ongoing challenges that may again jeopardize the bird's future. In The Kirtland's Warbler, William Rapai explores the bird's fascinating natural history as well as the complex and evolving relationships between the warbler, its environment, its human protectors, and state and federal policies that today threaten to eradicate decades of work done on the species' behalf. Beginning with an account of the warbler's discovery in the mid-nineteenth century and ornithologists' desperate hunt for information on the elusive new species, the book goes on to examine the dramatic events that quickly led to the warbler's precarious status and its eventual emergence as a lightning rod for controversy. The Kirtland's warbler is often described as a "bird of fire" for its preference for nesting in areas cleared by wildfire. But it also warrants the name for the passion it ignites in humans. Both tragic and uplifting, the story of this intriguing bird is a stirring example of how strong leadership, vision, commitment, sustained effort, and cooperation can come together to protect our natural world.
Download or read book Catalogue written by and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on with total page 530 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
