Download or read book The Idea of Wilderness written by Max Oelschlaeger and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 1991-01-01 with total page 506 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How has the concept of wild nature changed over the millennia? And what have been the environmental consequences? In this broad-ranging book Max Oelschlaeger argues that the idea of wilderness has reflected the evolving character of human existence from Paleolithic times to the present day. An intellectual history, it draws together evidence from philosophy, anthropology, theology, literature, ecology, cultural geography, and archaeology to provide a new scientifically and philosophically informed understanding of humankind's relationship to nature. Oelschlaeger begins by examining the culture of prehistoric hunter-gatherers, whose totems symbolized the idea of organic unity between humankind and wild nature, and idea that the author believes is essential to any attempt to define human potential. He next traces how the transformation of these hunter-gatherers into farmers led to a new awareness of distinctions between humankind and nature, and how Hellenism and Judeo-Christianity later introduced the unprecedented concept that nature was valueless until humanized. Oelschlaeger discusses the concept of wilderness in relation to the rise of classical science and modernism, and shows that opposition to "modernism" arose almost immediately from scientific, literary, and philosophical communities. He provides new and, in some cases, revisionist studies of the seminal American figures Thoreau, Muir, and Leopold, and he gives fresh readings of America's two prodigious wilderness poets Robinson Jeffers and Gary Snyder. He concludes with a searching look at the relationship of evolutionary thought to our postmodern effort to reconceptualize ourselves as civilized beings who remain, in some ways, natural animals.
Download or read book Searching for Yellowstone written by Paul Schullery and published by Montana Historical Society. This book was released on 2004 with total page 364 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Schullery's book details the ecological history of Yellowstone National Park.
Download or read book The Boundary Waters Wilderness Ecosystem written by Miron L. Heinselman and published by Minneapolis, Minn. : University of Minnesota Press. This book was released on 1996 with total page 334 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Contains fifty pages of information on fires in the area and twenty-nine pages on logging in the area.
Download or read book Wetland Woodland Wildland written by Elizabeth Hathaway Thompson and published by University Press of New England. This book was released on 2000 with total page 472 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first field guide to all of Vermont's natural communities
Download or read book Accidental Wilderness written by Walter H. Kehm and published by Aevo Utp. This book was released on 2020-10-15 with total page 176 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Accidental Wilderness showcases how the removal of city rubble and its displacement can result in new urban parklands with significant ecological importance for the health of the city and its residents.
Download or read book A Healthy Nature Handbook written by Justin Pepper and published by Island Press. This book was released on 2021-10-28 with total page 166 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Chicago metropolitan area is home to far more protected nature than most people realize. There's a critical factor of the Chicago Wilderness restoration effort that makes it unique. A grassroots volunteer community, thousands strong, works alongside agency staff to give nearby nature what it needs to thrive in an everchanging urban context. A Healthy Nature Handbook captures hard-earned ecological wisdom from this community in engaging and highly readable chapters, each including illustrated restoration sequences.
Download or read book Manufacturing National Park Nature written by J. Keri Cronin and published by UBC Press. This book was released on 2011-07-01 with total page 230 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: National parks occupy a prominent place in the Canadian imagination, yet we are only beginning to understand how their visual representation has shaped and continues to inform our perceptions of ecological issues and the natural world. J. Keri Cronin draws on historical and modern postcards, advertisements, and other images of Jasper National Park to trace how various groups and the tourism industry have used photography to divorce the park from real environmental threats and instead package it as a series of breathtaking vistas and adorable-looking animals. Manufacturing National Park Nature demonstrates that popular forms of picturing nature can have ecological implications that extend far beyond the frame of the image.
Download or read book Emergent Ecologies written by Eben Kirksey and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2015-11-27 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In an era of global warming, natural disasters, endangered species, and devastating pollution, contemporary writing on the environment largely focuses on doomsday scenarios. Eben Kirksey suggests we reject such apocalyptic thinking and instead find possibilities in the wreckage of ongoing disasters, as symbiotic associations of opportunistic plants, animals, and microbes are flourishing in unexpected places. Emergent Ecologies uses artwork and contemporary philosophy to illustrate hopeful opportunities and reframe key problems in conservation biology such as invasive species, extinction, environmental management, and reforestation. Following the flight of capital and nomadic forms of life—through fragmented landscapes of Panama, Costa Rica, and the United States—Kirksey explores how chance encounters, historical accidents, and parasitic invasions have shaped present and future multispecies communities. New generations of thinkers and tinkerers are learning how to care for emergent ecological assemblages—involving frogs, fungal pathogens, ants, monkeys, people, and plants—by seeding them, nurturing them, protecting them, and ultimately letting go.
Download or read book Beyond Naturalness written by David N. Cole and published by Island Press. This book was released on 2012-06-22 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The central concept guiding the management of parks and wilderness over the past century has been “naturalness”—to a large extent the explicit purpose in establishing these special areas was to keep them in their “natural” state. But what does that mean, particularly as the effects of stressors such as habitat fragmentation, altered disturbance regimes, pollution, invasive species, and climate change become both more pronounced and more pervasive? Beyond Naturalness brings together leading scientists and policymakers to explore the concept of naturalness, its varied meanings, and the extent to which it provides adequate guidance regarding where, when, and how managers should intervene in ecosystem processes to protect park and wilderness values. The main conclusion is the idea that naturalness will continue to provide an important touchstone for protected area conservation, but that more specific goals and objectives are needed to guide stewardship. The issues considered in Beyond Naturalness are central not just to conservation of parks, but to many areas of ecological thinking—including the fields of conservation biology and ecological restoration—and represent the cutting edge of discussions of both values and practice in the twenty-first century. This bookoffers excellent writing and focus, along with remarkable clarity of thought on some of the difficult questions being raised in light of new and changing stressors such as global environmental climate change.
Download or read book Wilderness Ecosystems written by Jerry F. Franklin and published by . This book was released on 1978 with total page 26 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Multiple Values of Wilderness written by H. Ken Cordell and published by Venture Publishing (PA). This book was released on 2005 with total page 332 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Gone are those of the 1950s and early 1960s who championed preserving wild lands and who influenced and saw the birth of the National Wilderness Preservation System (NWPS). Gone too are myriad eager managers and proponents of wild land protection of the late 1960s and 1970s who helped rear the fledgling Wilderness system and bring it into adolescence by adding management practices and policy interpretations. In this, the 40th year since the birth of the NWPS, this middle-age federal land system is surrounded by many new faces as its childhood friends have moved on to other callings, have retired, or are no longer with us. Needed in these new times is a clear, comprehensive articulation of the multiple values of Wilderness. The overall purpose of this book is to tell fully what we know about the range of values Americans hold toward the NWPS in a factual, wide-ranging, and science-based way. A multidisciplinary team of authors and researchers clarify the meaning of different types of Wilderness values and present replicable, science-based evidence of these values in this volume. The intended audience is all those new faces who can and do have power over the future of the U.S. National Wilderness Preservation System as well as all who seek to influence those who have this power. This book is also intended for teachers, students, and other inquisitive people involved in formal or informal learning and research programs. The authors intend this compilation to help better inform interested and engaged members of the general public about the values of their public Wilderness areas. After all, it is the American citizen who is ultimately responsible and can influence public policy in the greatest measure through their individual and collective voices and actions." -- Publisher.
Download or read book Driven Wild written by Paul S. Sutter and published by University of Washington Press. This book was released on 2009-11-23 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In its infancy, the movement to protect wilderness areas in the United States was motivated less by perceived threats from industrial and agricultural activities than by concern over the impacts of automobile owners seeking recreational opportunities in wild areas. Countless commercial and government purveyors vigorously promoted the mystique of travel to breathtakingly scenic places, and roads and highways were built to facilitate such travel. By the early 1930s, New Deal public works programs brought these trends to a startling crescendo. The dilemma faced by stewards of the nation's public lands was how to protect the wild qualities of those places while accommodating, and often encouraging, automobile-based tourism. By 1935, the founders of the Wilderness Society had become convinced of the impossibility of doing both. In Driven Wild, Paul Sutter traces the intellectual and cultural roots of the modern wilderness movement from about 1910 through the 1930s, with tightly drawn portraits of four Wilderness Society founders--Aldo Leopold, Robert Sterling Yard, Benton MacKaye, and Bob Marshall. Each man brought a different background and perspective to the advocacy for wilderness preservation, yet each was spurred by a fear of what growing numbers of automobiles, aggressive road building, and the meteoric increase in Americans turning to nature for their leisure would do to the country’s wild places. As Sutter discovered, the founders of the Wilderness Society were "driven wild"--pushed by a rapidly changing country to construct a new preservationist ideal. Sutter demonstrates that the birth of the movement to protect wilderness areas reflected a growing belief among an important group of conservationists that the modern forces of capitalism, industrialism, urbanism, and mass consumer culture were gradually eroding not just the ecology of North America, but crucial American values as well. For them, wilderness stood for something deeply sacred that was in danger of being lost, so that the movement to protect it was about saving not just wild nature, but ourselves as well.
Download or read book Wild by Design written by Laura J. Martin and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2022-05-17 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Laura J. Martin examines ecological restoration’s long history. Since the early 1900s, restorationists have confronted vexing philosophical questions: Which states of nature should be restored? Who should choose? Is human-designed wilderness really wild? Restoration work leads us to reimagine nature and the nature of environmental justice.
Download or read book Ecology and Recovery of Eastern Old Growth Forests written by Andrew M. Barton and published by Island Press. This book was released on 2018-11-08 with total page 362 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The landscapes of North America, including eastern forests, have been shaped by humans for millennia, through fire, agriculture, hunting, and other means. But the arrival of Europeans on America’s eastern shores several centuries ago ushered in the rapid conversion of forests and woodlands to other land uses. By the twentieth century, it appeared that old-growth forests in the eastern United States were gone, replaced by cities, farms, transportation networks, and second-growth forests. Since that time, however, numerous remnants of eastern old growth have been discovered, meticulously mapped, and studied. Many of these ancient stands retain surprisingly robust complexity and vigor, and forest ecologists are eager to develop strategies for their restoration and for nurturing additional stands of old growth that will foster biological diversity, reduce impacts of climate change, and serve as benchmarks for how natural systems operate. Forest ecologists William Keeton and Andrew Barton bring together a volume that breaks new ground in our understanding of ecological systems and their importance for forest resilience in an age of rapid environmental change. This edited volume covers a broad geographic canvas, from eastern Canada and the Upper Great Lakes states to the deep South. It looks at a wide diversity of ecosystems, including spruce-fir, northern deciduous, southern Appalachian deciduous, southern swamp hardwoods, and longleaf pine. Chapters authored by leading old-growth experts examine topics of contemporary forest ecology including forest structure and dynamics, below-ground soil processes, biological diversity, differences between historical and modern forests, carbon and climate change mitigation, management of old growth, and more. This thoughtful treatise broadly communicates important new discoveries to scientists, land managers, and students and breathes fresh life into the hope for sensible, effective management of old-growth stands in eastern forests.
Download or read book Conservation of Wildlife Populations written by L. Scott Mills and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2012-12-17 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Population ecology has matured to a sophisticated science with astonishing potential for contributing solutions to wildlife conservation and management challenges. And yet, much of the applied power of wildlife population ecology remains untapped because its broad sweep across disparate subfields has been isolated in specialized texts. In this book, L. Scott Mills covers the full spectrum of applied wildlife population ecology, including genomic tools for non-invasive genetic sampling, predation, population projections, climate change and invasive species, harvest modeling, viability analysis, focal species concepts, and analyses of connectivity in fragmented landscapes. With a readable style, analytical rigor, and hundreds of examples drawn from around the world, Conservation of Wildlife Populations (2nd ed) provides the conceptual basis for applying population ecology to wildlife conservation decision-making. Although targeting primarily undergraduates and beginning graduate students with some basic training in basic ecology and statistics (in majors that could include wildlife biology, conservation biology, ecology, environmental studies, and biology), the book will also be useful for practitioners in the field who want to find - in one place and with plenty of applied examples - the latest advances in the genetic and demographic aspects of population ecology. Additional resources for this book can be found at: www.wiley.com/go/mills/wildlifepopulations.
Download or read book Wildlife Ecology Conservation and Management written by Anthony R. E. Sinclair and published by Wiley-Blackwell. This book was released on 2009-03-12 with total page 488 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The second edition of Wildlife Ecology, Conservation, and Management provides a thorough introduction to general ecological principles and examines how they can be applied to wildlife management and conservation. Expanded and updated, this second edition includes new chapters on understanding ecosystems and the use of computer models in wildlife management Gives a comprehensive, up-to-date overview of ecology including the latest theories on population dynamics and conservation Reviews practical applications and techniques and how these can be used to formulate realistic objectives with in an ecological framework Examples of real-life management situations from around the world provide a broad perspective on the international problems of conservation Worked examples on CD enable students to practice calculations explained in the text Artwork from the book is available to instructors online at www.blackwellpublishing.com/sinclair. An Instructor manual CD-ROM for this title is available. Please contact our Higher Education team at [email protected] for more information. Note: CD-ROM/DVD and other supplementary materials are not included as part of eBook file.
Download or read book Ecology Evolution and Behaviour of Wild Cattle written by Mario Melletti and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2014-10-30 with total page 1056 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Covering all thirteen species of wild cattle, Ecology, Evolution and Behaviour of Wild Cattle brings together the contributions of international leading experts on the biology, evolution, conservation status and management of the tribe Bovini, providing: • A comprehensive review of current knowledge on systematic, anatomy and ecology of all wild cattle species (chapters 1 to 8); • A clear understanding of the conservation status of each species and the gaps in our current knowledge (chapters 9 to 20); • A number of case studies on conservation activities and an investigation of some of the most threatened and poorly understood species (chapters 21 to 27). An invaluable resource for students, researchers, and professionals in behavioural ecology, evolutionary biology and conservation biology, this beautifully illustrated reference work reveals the extraordinary link between wild cattle and humans, the benefits some of these species have brought us, and their key roles in their natural ecosystems.
