Download or read book Where the Wild Things Were written by William Stolzenburg and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2011-01-15 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For years, predators like snow leopards and white-tipped sharks have been disappearing from the top of the food chain, largely as a result of human action. Science journalist Will Stolzenburg reveals why and how their absence upsets the delicate balance of the world's environment.
Download or read book Vanishing Animals written by Gianfranco Bologna and published by White Star. This book was released on 2008 with total page 314 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explores in vivid photography the world's most endangered animals, and the reasons their existences are threatened.
Download or read book National Geographic the Photo Ark Vanishing written by Joel Sartore and published by National Geographic Photo Ark. This book was released on 2019 with total page 404 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Celebrated National Geographic photojournalist Sartore continues his Photo Ark quest, photographing species around the world that are escaping extinction thanks to human efforts. The animals featured in these pages are either destined for extinction or already extinct in the wild but still alive today, thanks to dedication of a heroic group committed to their continued survival.l.
Download or read book Vanishing Act written by Art Wolfe and published by Australian Geographic. This book was released on 2016-04-05 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Captures the world of camouflage in nature in a collection of eighty photographs that reveal animals and insects that rely on disguises, lures, deception, and decoys to blend into their surroundings.
Download or read book A Vanishing Kind written by John Wamsley and published by Balboa Press. This book was released on 2020-10-29 with total page 219 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Wildlife conservation in Australia owes much to the ideas of a controversial mathematics professor whose attention-grabbing actions made him at once famous and widely vilified. John Wamsley overcame childhood disadvantage and trauma to create first a private sanctuary called Warrawong, then Earth Sanctuaries Limited, the world’s first publicly listed company devoted solely to wildlife conservation. His company fell from a great height, but its influence has been enormous. This is the story of that enterprise and the man who founded it.
Download or read book Best Canadian Essays 2020 written by Sarmishta Subramanian and published by Biblioasis. This book was released on 2020-10-20 with total page 119 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The twelfth installment of Best Canadian Essays speaks with striking prescience to our contemporary moment. “This book—like most that have found their way into the world this fall—began life in the Before Times,” writes editor Sarmishta Subramanian. Written and first published by leading magazines and journals in 2019, the essays selected here speak with striking prescience to our contemporary moment. From health concerns both global and individual; to decisions about how much of ourselves we should share, online and in person; to surveillance capitalism and cancel culture, public and private concerns intertwine throughout Best Canadian Essays 2020. Just as our current challenges in public health, policing, and justice require researchers, lawmakers, and citizen groups, writes Subramanian, they also require writers. Here she presents sixteen, “essaying in the French sense of the word to think it through.” Featuring work by: James Brooke-Smith • Larissa Diakiw • Jenny Ferguson • Wayne Grady • Alexandra Kimball • Amorina Kingdon • Andy Lamey • Michael LaPointe • Benjamin Leszcz • Alanna Mitchell • Alexandra Molotkow • Jeremy Narby • Andrew Nikiforuk • Michelle Orange • Christina Sharpe • Carl Wilson
Download or read book War and Peace with the Beasts written by Brian Griffith and published by Wood Lake Publishing Inc.. This book was released on 2020-09-01 with total page 125 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “The animals that one culture likes are often hated in the next, and it seems that the animals themselves know it well. Basically, one culture’s animal partner is often another culture’s nightmare from hell. “Naturally, I wonder how relations between people and animals got to be so different around the world. How did it happen that some cultures treat bats, snakes, wolves, or ravens as embodiments of evil, while other people treat the same animals with affection or even reverence?” Our wars with the animals go way back. Beyond the light cast by our prehistoric campfires, the eyes glowing in the night seemed to represent a great hostile force. As we began to cultivate crops and husband a few favoured animals, we generally regarded other creatures as threats to our chosen few. Using the logic of war, we sought to maximize the populations of certain creatures, and the destruction of others. In the past, that war effort was our great crusade for the advancement of civilization as we knew it. The war had a frontier, a front line, and an ongoing battle on the home front. Expanding outward from our various cradles of civilization, we progressively “tamed” the forests and grasslands, converting them to monocrop plantations or pastures. Then we had to defend our monocrops from encroaching weeds, insects, and wild animals. In this immediately engaging, story- and fact-filled page-turner of a book, Brian Griffith looks at the range of ways we relate to animals and the stories we tell about them. He asks how we choose whether buddyhood, fearful respect, businesslike predation, or genocidal war is the most appropriate response to each species we meet. He watches how our treatment of “inferior beings” affects our treatment of “inferior people,” and traces some of the chain reactions we unleash when we try to weed out species we don’t like. “Without much hope of making animals fit my personal preferences,” he writes, “I wonder how good our relations can get.”
Download or read book Varmints and Victims written by Frank Van Nuys and published by University Press of Kansas. This book was released on 2015-11-09 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It used to be: If you see a coyote, shoot it. Better yet, a bear. Best of all, perhaps? A wolf. How we've gotten from there to here, where such predators are reintroduced, protected, and in some cases revered, is the story Frank Van Nuys tells in Varmints and Victims, a thorough and enlightening look at the evolution of predator management in the American West. As controversies over predator control rage on, Varmints and Victims puts the debate into historical context, tracing the West's relationship with charismatic predators like grizzlies, wolves, and cougars from unquestioned eradication to ambivalent recovery efforts. Van Nuys offers a nuanced and balanced perspective on an often-emotional topic, exploring the intricacies of how and why attitudes toward predators have changed over the years. Focusing primarily on wolves, coyotes, mountain lions, and grizzly bears, he charts the logic and methods of management practiced by ranchers, hunters, and federal officials Broad in scope and rich in detail, this work brings new, much-needed clarity to the complex interweaving of economics, politics, science, and culture in the formulation of ideas about predator species, and in policies directed at these creatures. In the process, we come to see how the story of predator control is in many ways the story of the American West itself, from early attempts to connect the frontier region to mainstream American life and economics to present ideas about the nature and singularity of the region.
Download or read book Mousy Cats and Sheepish Coyotes written by John A. Shivik and published by Beacon Press. This book was released on 2017-11-07 with total page 202 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A wildlife expert explores what science tells us about animals as unique individuals and why animal personality matters for the human-animal bond and for adaptation in nature. Why are some cats cuddly and others standoffish? Why are some dogs adventuresome, others homebodies? As any pet owner can attest, we feel that the animals we’ve formed bonds with are unique, as particular (and peculiar) as any human friend or loved one. Recent years have brought an increased understanding of animal intelligence and emotion. But is there a scientific basis for animal personality and individuality, or is this notion purely sentimental? It turns out that science has been reluctant to even broach the subject of individuality until recently. But now, a fundamental shift in scientific understanding is underway, as mainstream scientists begin to accept the idea that animals of all kinds—from beloved beasts like apes and birds to decidedly less cuddly creatures like crabs and spiders—do indeed have individual personalities. In Mousy Cats and Sheepish Coyotes, veteran wildlife expert Dr. John A. Shivik brings us stories from the front lines of this exciting new discipline. Drawing on his scientific training, as well as his storytelling gifts, Shivik serves as an accessible, humorous guide to the emerging body of research on animal personalities. Shivik accompanies researchers who are discovering that each wolf, bear, and coyote has an inherent tendency to favor either its aggressive nature or to shyly avoid conflicts. Some bluebirds are lovers, others are fighters. And some spiders prefer to be loners, while others are sociable. Unique personalities can be discovered in every corner of the animal kingdom—even among microscopic organisms. The array of personality types among all species is only beginning to be described and understood. As Shivik argues, animals’ unique personalities are important not only because they determine which animals we bond with. Individual animal traits are also fundamental but still inadequately understood drivers of evolution, adaptation, and species diversity. Ultimately, Mousy Cats and Sheepish Coyotes offers insight into the similarities humans share with animals and presents evidence of an unbroken biological connection from the smallest organisms to Homo sapiens.
Download or read book Engineering Eden written by Jordan Fisher Smith and published by Crown. This book was released on 2016-06-07 with total page 394 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The fascinating story of a trial that opened a window onto the century-long battle to control nature in the national parks. When twenty-five-year-old Harry Walker was killed by a bear in Yellowstone Park in 1972, the civil trial prompted by his death became a proxy for bigger questions about American wilderness management that had been boiling for a century. At immediate issue was whether the Park Service should have done more to keep bears away from humans, but what was revealed as the trial unfolded was just how fruitless our efforts to regulate nature in the parks had always been. The proceedings drew to the witness stand some of the most important figures in twentieth century wilderness management, including the eminent zoologist A. Starker Leopold, who had produced a landmark conservationist document in the 1950s, and all-American twin researchers John and Frank Craighead, who ran groundbreaking bear studies at Yellowstone. Their testimony would help decide whether the government owed the Walker family restitution for Harry's death, but it would also illuminate decades of patchwork efforts to preserve an idea of nature that had never existed in the first place. In this remarkable excavation of American environmental history, nature writer and former park ranger Jordan Fisher Smith uses Harry Walker's story to tell the larger narrative of the futile, sometimes fatal, attempts to remake wilderness in the name of preserving it. Tracing a course from the founding of the national parks through the tangled twentieth-century growth of the conservationist movement, Smith gives the lie to the portrayal of national parks as Edenic wonderlands unspoiled until the arrival of Europeans, and shows how virtually every attempt to manage nature in the parks has only created cascading effects that require even more management. Moving across time and between Yellowstone, Yosemite, and Glacier national parks, Engineering Eden shows how efforts at wilderness management have always been undone by one fundamental problem--that the idea of what is "wild" dissolves as soon as we begin to examine it, leaving us with little framework to say what wilderness should look like and which human interventions are acceptable in trying to preserve it. In the tradition of John McPhee's The Control of Nature and Alan Burdick's Out of Eden, Jordan Fisher Smith has produced a powerful work of popular science and environmental history, grappling with critical issues that we have even now yet to resolve.
Download or read book Rewilding the World written by Caroline Fraser and published by Metropolitan Books. This book was released on 2014-04-29 with total page 457 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A gripping account of the environmental crusade to save the world's most endangered species and landscapes—the last best hope for preserving our natural home Scientists worldwide are warning of the looming extinction of thousands of species, from tigers and polar bears to rare flowers, birds, and insects. If the destruction continues, a third of all plants and animals could disappear by 2050—and with them earth's life-support ecosystems that provide our food, water, medicine, and natural defenses against climate change. Now Caroline Fraser offers the first definitive account of a visionary campaign to confront this crisis: rewilding. Breathtaking in scope and ambition, rewilding aims to save species by restoring habitats, reviving migration corridors, and brokering peace between people and predators. Traveling with wildlife biologists and conservationists, Fraser reports on the vast projects that are turning Europe's former Iron Curtain into a greenbelt, creating trans-frontier Peace Parks to renew elephant routes throughout Africa, and linking protected areas from the Yukon to Mexico and beyond. An inspiring story of scientific discovery and grassroots action, Rewilding the World offers hope for a richer, wilder future.
Download or read book Animals in the Fiction of Cormac McCarthy written by Wallis R. Sanborn, III and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2006-03-27 with total page 201 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The works of Cormac McCarthy have been critically studied as literature of the South and of the Border Southwest. Largely ignored is the omnipresence and presentation of animals in McCarthy's works. Yet the abundant representations of animals depict a part of the ceaseless battle for survival that is inherent in many of his writings. McCarthy's animals exist within the framework of a fictional natural world driven by biological determinism: Wild animals prey upon feral and domestic animals, horses exist as warriors, and the hunt is a ballet between man and hunting hound. Proximity to humans results in mistreatment and death, while distance results in survival and fitness. McCarthy also utilizes animals as harbingers of specific events; for example, hogs are so frequently a precursor of human death that McCarthy's narrators and characters wonder whether hogs are joined to the devil for evil purposes. The first chapter here examines animal presentations in The Stonemason, The Gardener's Son and two short stories, "Bounty" and "The Dark Waters." The following nine chapters focus on one text, one type of animal--feline, swine, bovine, bird and bat, canine, equine, lupine, and hound--and one particular thesis. Each chapter also briefly examines the specific animal as it exists in other McCarthy works.
Download or read book Before They Vanish written by Paul R. Ehrlich and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2024-09-17 with total page 253 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Legendary conservationists show us that we still have the power to prevent critical consequences of the sixth extinction in this game-changing book. Can we save threatened animals and ecosystems in the midst of a mass extinction? The answer is a resounding yes! Before They Vanish shows us how. In this wise and impassioned book, renowned conservation scientists Paul R. Ehrlich, Gerardo Ceballos, and Rodolfo Dirzo urge us to shift our thinking rather than succumb to grief over the losses that humanity faces. This comprehensive look at a crucial but often overlooked aspect of conservation—population extinction, or the loss of a species within a specific geographic location—guides us onto a new, hopeful path. The authors argue that conservationists have placed too much emphasis on the extinction of entire species, which occurs gradually enough that we only detect it in the direst of cases. By that time, meaningful action may be impossible. By shifting our focus to identifying extinction threats at the more localized population level, we can intervene more rapidly and effectively to prevent broader declines before it's too late. This change in perspective represents a critical step in saving these vanishing species; early detection and intervention may be our last, best hope for stemming the tide of this global crisis. Using examples from the worlds of vertebrates, invertebrates, plants, fungi, and microorganisms, the authors explain the concept of population extinction, its causes and consequences, and how to prevent the mass destruction of the amazing and unique creatures with whom we share our planet. This call to action is a must-read for anyone concerned with saving endangered and threatened species, our natural world—and ourselves.
Download or read book Science and Politics written by Brent S. Steel and published by CQ Press. This book was released on 2014-04-21 with total page 633 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Recent partisan squabbles over science in the news are indicative of a larger tendency for scientific research and practice to get entangled in major ideological divisions in the public arena. This politicization of science is deepened by the key role government funding plays in scientific research and development, the market leading position of U.S.-based science and technology firms, and controversial U.S. exports (such as genetically modified foods or hormone-injected livestock). This groundbreaking, one-volume, A-to-Z reference features 120-150 entries that explore the nexus of politics and science, both in the United States and in U.S. interactions with other nations. The essays, each by experts in their fields, examine: Health, environmental, and social/cultural issues relating to science and politics Concerns relating to government regulation and its impact on the practice of science Key historical and contemporary events that have shaped our contemporary view of how science and politics intersect Science and Politics: An A to Z Guide to Issues and Controversies is a must-have resource for researchers and students who seek to deepen their understanding of the connection between science and politics.
Download or read book Sea Otters written by Isabelle Groc and published by Orca Book Publishers. This book was released on 2020-04-07 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sea otters once ruled the Pacific Ocean, but the fur trade of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries brought this predator to near extinction. Today they’re slowly coming back from the brink, and scientists are learning more about their pivotal role as one of nature’s keystone species. This book looks at the history, biology, behavior and uncertain future of sea otters. Author and photojournalist Isabelle Groc takes us into the field: watching sea otter rafts off the British Columbia coast from a kayak, exploring what makes their fur coats so special, understanding how their voracious appetites are helping kelp forests thrive and, ultimately, learning how sea otters are leaving their mark (or paws) on every part of the ecosystem. They might be one of the most adorable creatures in the ocean, but kids will discover how their survival is key to a rich, complex and connected ecosystem.
Download or read book Among Wolves written by Marybeth Holleman and published by University of Alaska Press. This book was released on 2013-10-15 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Alaska’s wolves lost their fiercest advocate, Gordon Haber, when his research plane crashed in Denali National Park in 2009. Passionate, tenacious, and occasionally brash, Haber, a former hockey player and park ranger, devoted his life to Denali’s wolves. He weathered brutal temperatures in the wild to document the wolves and provided exceptional insights into wolf behavior. Haber’s writings and photographs reveal an astonishing degree of cooperation between wolf family members as they hunt, raise pups, and play, social behaviors and traditions previously unknown. With the wolves at risk of being destroyed by hunting and trapping, his studies advocated for a balanced approach to wolf management. His fieldwork registered as one of the longest studies in wildlife science and had a lasting impact on wolf policies. Haber’s field notes, his extensive journals, and stories from friends all come together in Among Wolves to reveal much about both the wolves he studied and the researcher himself. Wolves continue to fascinate and polarize people, and Haber’s work continues to resonate.
Download or read book Congressional Record written by United States. Congress and published by . This book was released on 1969 with total page 1364 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
