Download or read book Witness to Extinction written by Samuel Turvey and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2009 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Samuel Turvey here tells the story of the plight of the Yangtze River Dolphin from his unique perspective as a conservation biologist deeply involved in the struggle to save this species. His book is at once a celebration of a beautiful and remarkable animal that once graced one of China's greatest rivers; a study of the dolphin's natural history and its role as a cultural symbol; and a personal, eyewitness account of the failure to obtain funds that led to the dolphin's demise.
Download or read book Witness to Extinction written by Samuel Turvey and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2009-08-13 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The tragic recognition of the extinction of the Yangtze River Dolphin or baiji in 2007 became a major news story and sent shockwaves around the world. It made a romantic story, for the baiji was a unique and beautiful creature that features in many Chinese legends and folk tales. The Goddess of the Yangtze, as it was known, was also the lone representative of an entire and ancient branch of the Tree of Life. But perhaps the greater tragedy is that its status as one of the world's most threatened mammals had been widely recognized, yet despite wide publicity virtually no international funds became available. A compelling read by a young naturalist, Samuel Turvey tells the story of the plight of the Yangtze River Dolphin from his unique perspective as a conservation biologist deeply involved in the struggle to save the dolphin. This is both a celebration of a beautiful and remarkable animal that once graced one of China's greatest rivers, its natural history and its role as a cultural symbol; and also a personal, eyewitness account of the failures of policy and the struggle to get funds that led to its tragic demise. It is a true cautionary tale that we must learn from, for there are countless other threatened species that will suffer from the same human mistakes, and whose loss we shall not know until it is too late.
Download or read book Flames of Extinction written by John Pickrell and published by Island Press. This book was released on 2021-04-15 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Over Australia's 2019-20 Black Summer bushfire season, scientists estimate that more than three billion native animals were killed or displaced. Many species - koalas, the regent honeyeater, glossy black cockatoo, the platypus - are inching towards extinction at the hands of mega-blazes and the changing climate behind them. In Flames of Extinction, award-winning science writer John Pickrell investigates the effects of the 2019-2020 bushfires on Australian wildlife and ecosystems. Journeying across the firegrounds, Pickrell explores the stories of creatures that escaped the flames, the wildlife workers who rescued them, and the conservationists, land managers, Aboriginal rangers, ecologists and firefighters on the front line of the climate catastrophe. He also reveals the radical new conservation methods being trialled to save as many species as possible from the very precipice of extinction.
Download or read book Extinction Studies written by Deborah Bird Rose and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2017-05-02 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Extinction Studies focuses on the entangled ecological and social dimensions of extinction, exploring the ways in which extinction catastrophically interrupts life-giving processes of time, death, and generations. The volume opens up important philosophical questions about our place in, and obligations to, a more-than-human world. Drawing on fieldwork, philosophy, literature, history, and a range of other perspectives, each of the chapters in this book tells a unique extinction story that explores what extinction is, what it means, why it matters—and to whom.
Download or read book Witness to Extinction written by Sam Turvey and published by . This book was released on 2023 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'Witness to Extinction' tells the story of the plight of the Yangtze River dolphin. It is both a celebration of a remarkable animal that once graced China's greatest river, and a personal, eyewitness account of the failures of policy and the struggle to get funds that led to the tragic demise of a species.
Download or read book On Extinction written by Melanie Challenger and published by Granta Books. This book was released on 2011-10-06 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Cornwall, hiking around the half-buried ruins of an old tin mine, Melanie Challenger started to think about the things that have disappeared from our world. When the gigantic bones of mammoths were first excavated from the Siberian permafrost in the eighteenth century, scientists were forced to consider a terrifying possibility: many species that had once flourished on the Earth no longer existed. For the first time, humans had to contemplate the idea of extinction. Challenger became fascinated by this idea, and started to consider how we think about the things we have lost, and, indeed, how we come to lose them. From our destruction of the natural world to the human cultures that are rapidly dying out, On Extinction is a passionate exploration of these disappearances and why they should concern us. Challenger asks questions about how we've become destructive to our environment, our emotional responses to extinctions, and how these responses might shape our future relationship with nature. She travels to the abandoned whaling stations of South Georgia, the melting icescape of Antarctica and the Inuit camps of the Arctic, where she traces the links between human activities and environmental collapse. On Extinction is an account of Challenger's journey that brings together ideas about cultural, biological and industrial extinction in a beautiful, thought-provoking and ultimately hopeful book.
Download or read book Animals On the Edge written by C Weston and published by Thames and Hudson. This book was released on 2009-09-22 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Animal Extinction & Conservation.
Download or read book Decolonizing Extinction written by Juno Salazar Parreñas and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2018-08-09 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Decolonizing Extinction Juno Salazar Parreñas ethnographically traces the ways in which colonialism, decolonization, and indigeneity shape relations that form more-than-human worlds at orangutan rehabilitation centers on Borneo. Parreñas tells the interweaving stories of wildlife workers and the centers' endangered animals while demonstrating the inseparability of risk and futurity from orangutan care. Drawing on anthropology, primatology, Southeast Asian history, gender studies, queer theory, and science and technology studies, Parreñas suggests that examining workers’ care for these semi-wild apes can serve as a basis for cultivating mutual but unequal vulnerability in an era of annihilation. Only by considering rehabilitation from perspectives thus far ignored, Parreñas contends, could conservation biology turn away from ultimately violent investments in population growth and embrace a feminist sense of welfare, even if it means experiencing loss and pain.
Download or read book Extinction Island written by Janice Boekhoff and published by . This book was released on 2020-08-24 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Dedicated reptile expert Oakley Laveau loves the thrill of wrestling a 'gator. But her dream job at the swamp tour slips away when she's charged with a crime she doesn't remember: her best friend's murder. Sentenced to life on a secluded isle, she'll have to battle violent criminals and genetically modified dinosaurs to uncover the truth.
Download or read book The Sixth Extinction written by Elizabeth Kolbert and published by Henry Holt and Company. This book was released on 2014-02-11 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ONE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW'S 10 BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR A major book about the future of the world, blending intellectual and natural history and field reporting into a powerful account of the mass extinction unfolding before our eyes Over the last half a billion years, there have been five mass extinctions, when the diversity of life on earth suddenly and dramatically contracted. Scientists around the world are currently monitoring the sixth extinction, predicted to be the most devastating extinction event since the asteroid impact that wiped out the dinosaurs. This time around, the cataclysm is us. In The Sixth Extinction, two-time winner of the National Magazine Award and New Yorker writer Elizabeth Kolbert draws on the work of scores of researchers in half a dozen disciplines, accompanying many of them into the field: geologists who study deep ocean cores, botanists who follow the tree line as it climbs up the Andes, marine biologists who dive off the Great Barrier Reef. She introduces us to a dozen species, some already gone, others facing extinction, including the Panamian golden frog, staghorn coral, the great auk, and the Sumatran rhino. Through these stories, Kolbert provides a moving account of the disappearances occurring all around us and traces the evolution of extinction as concept, from its first articulation by Georges Cuvier in revolutionary Paris up through the present day. The sixth extinction is likely to be mankind's most lasting legacy; as Kolbert observes, it compels us to rethink the fundamental question of what it means to be human.
Download or read book Witness written by Susan Middleton and published by . This book was released on 1994-09 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A collection of photographic portraits of one hundred plants and animals currently on the Endangered Species list of North America. These portraits bear testimony to the beauty, diversity, and sacredness of life on this planet.
Download or read book Extinction Point written by Paul Antony Jones and published by Extinction Point. This book was released on 2013 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First comes the red rain: a strange, scarlet downpour from a cloudless sky that spreads across cities, nations, and the entire globe. In a matter of panicked hours, every living thing on earth succumbs to swift, bloody death. With only wits, weapons, and a bicycle, Emily must undertake a grueling journey across a country that's turning increasingly alien. For though she fears she's been left to inherit the earth, the truth is far more terrifying than a lifetime of solitude.
Download or read book After They re Gone written by Peter Marren and published by Hodder & Stoughton. This book was released on 2022-05-05 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'Wise, challenging and offering some unexpected laughter in the dark, this is a rational and insightful account of the sixth great extinction event. Peter Marren is a brilliant writer and a national treasure.' PATRICK BARKHAM 'Thoughtful, fascinating and very timely.' STEPHEN MOSS 'Important and thought-provoking.' CAROLINE LUCAS, GREEN PARTY MP 'Essential reading. Marren makes a page-turner out of Armageddon.' SIMON BARNES 'In his characteristic style Peter Marren has humanised the story of wildlife losses with humour and wit but also with his enormous knowledge and deep love for the living world.' MARK COCKER We are in the midst of an extinction event: the sixth mass extinction on earth and one entirely caused by mankind. All species become extinct sooner or later, but we have accelerated that natural process several hundredfold and now, it is happening right in front of our eyes. Extinction has a terrifying finality to it. And many species have already been lost to us forever; there is little we can do about that. What we can do, however, is reflect, remember, and ultimately acknowledge the unvarnished truth. We must see the natural world as it is, and not as we might want it to be. Our trajectory is one that has benefited one species alone - humankind. For all other beings, from mammals to fish, from birds to insects and coral, from plants to lichens and fungi, the future, for better or worse, is in our hands.
Download or read book Vaquita written by Brooke Bessesen and published by Island Press. This book was released on 2018-09-11 with total page 318 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Intrepid conservation detective story." --Nature "A lucid, informed, and gripping account...a must-read." --Science "Passionate...a heartfelt and alarming tale." --Publishers Weekly "Gripping...a well-told and moving tale of environmentalism and conservation." --Kirkus "Compelling." --Library Journal In 2006, vaquita, a diminutive porpoise making its home in the Upper Gulf of California, inherited the dubious title of world's most endangered marine mammal. Vaquita have been in decline for decades, dying in illegal gillnets intended for a giant fish, totoaba. Author Brooke Bessesen takes us to the Upper Gulf region in search of answers to a heart-wrenching dilemma. When diplomatic efforts to save the porpoise failed, Bessesen followed a scientific team in a binational effort to capture remaining vaquita and breed them in captivity--the only hope for their survival. In this fast-paced, soul-searing tale, she learned that there are no easy answers when extinction is profitable.
Download or read book The Passenger Pigeon written by Errol Fuller and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2014-09-15 with total page 182 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A haunting, beautifully illustrated memorial to this iconic extinct bird At the start of the nineteenth century, Passenger Pigeons were perhaps the most abundant birds on the planet, numbering literally in the billions. The flocks were so large and so dense that they blackened the skies, even blotting out the sun for days at a stretch. Yet by the end of the century, the most common bird in North America had vanished from the wild. In 1914, the last known representative of her species, Martha, died in a cage at the Cincinnati Zoo. This stunningly illustrated book tells the astonishing story of North America's Passenger Pigeon, a bird species that—like the Tyrannosaur, the Mammoth, and the Dodo—has become one of the great icons of extinction. Errol Fuller describes how these fast, agile, and handsomely plumaged birds were immortalized by the ornithologist and painter John James Audubon, and captured the imagination of writers such as James Fenimore Cooper, Henry David Thoreau, and Mark Twain. He shows how widespread deforestation, the demand for cheap and plentiful pigeon meat, and the indiscriminate killing of Passenger Pigeons for sport led to their catastrophic decline. Fuller provides an evocative memorial to a bird species that was once so important to the ecology of North America, and reminds us of just how fragile the natural world can be. Published in the centennial year of Martha’s death, The Passenger Pigeon features rare archival images as well as haunting photos of live birds.
Download or read book The Extinction Event written by David Black and published by St. Martin's Press. This book was released on 2011-05-24 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: John Grisham meets Whitley Strieber in this headlong chase-thriller that plunges a man and woman into an apocalyptic maelstrom of violence and intrigue. David Black is a renaissance man . . . and this is his best work!--Stuart Woods.
Download or read book Wild Dog Dreaming written by Deborah Bird Rose and published by University of Virginia Press. This book was released on 2011-03-04 with total page 183 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We are living in the midst of the Earth's sixth great extinction event, the first one caused by a single species: our own. In Wild Dog Dreaming, Deborah Bird Rose explores what constitutes an ethical relationship with nonhuman others in this era of loss. She asks, Who are we, as a species? How do we fit into the Earth's systems? Amidst so much change, how do we find our way into new stories to guide us? Rose explores these questions in the form of a dialogue between science and the humanities. Drawing on her conversations with Aboriginal people, for whom questions of extinction are up-close and very personal, Rose develops a mode of exposition that is dialogical, philosophical, and open-ended. An inspiration for Rose--and a touchstone throughout her book--is the endangered dingo of Australia. The dingo is not the first animal to face extinction, but its story is particularly disturbing because the threat to its future is being actively engineered by humans. The brazenness with which the dingo is being wiped out sheds valuable, and chilling, light on the likely fate of countless other animal and plant species. "People save what they love," observed Michael Soul , the great conservation biologist. We must ask whether we, as humans, are capable of loving--and therefore capable of caring for--the animals and plants that are disappearing in a cascade of extinctions. Wild Dog Dreaming engages this question, and the result is a bold account of the entangled ethics of love, contingency, and desire.
