Environment and Nature Books

I recommend this book to all persons interested in lions in the America's. It will appeal to and educate people with diverse opinions on the management of this wonderful species of cat. Mr. Shaw is not only a good biologist, he also tells it like it is, and in a well written way. I especially hope that North America's wildlife decision makers will read and heed Mr. Shaw's conclusions about lion management. This book is for the biologist, the rancher, the lion hunter, and the preservationist.

We bought this book to learn more about lions in general, and increase my rancher/lion hunter husband's understanding of issues surrounding them. We were a little concerned that the angle might lean one way or another but were gratified by the balance. Well crafted and very informative. Highly recommend to any one interested in mountain lions.

This book addresses the use of computer models in species conservation and management. It is a very informative book that will be of great value to graduate conservation biology courses, government agencies, and land managers. The book consists of a series of sections on plants, invertebrates, fish, herps, birds, and mammals. Each section has a summary chapter discussing the state of the art for that taxonomic group and a number of case studies. Some of the summary chapters, such as the amphibian and reptile chapter, are excellent. The case studies are informative and give the reader a good view of the breath of modeling studies that have been done to date. An accompanying CD provides a number of example models that the reader can use to explore the power of these procedures. I highly recommend this book.

This edited book covers conservation planning and population viability analyses in a clear and comprehensive fashion. The inclusion of chapters on plants, invertebrates, fishes, birds and mammals makes it particularly attractive for teaching students with broad taxonomic interests in conservation biology. Each chapter uses models from the software program RAMAS GIS which accompanies the book on CD. I use the RAMAS GIS software in my graduate course in landscape ecology and the material in this book provided a great diversity of data sets and case histories. The program has excellent graphics and is well documented enabling the reader to understand what models are being used and the assumptions of those models. I strongly recommend the book for advanced undergraduate and graduate courses in population and conservation biology.

Excellent information presented and summarized in an easy to read format. The book contains an especially informative and thought provoking look at global climate change and impacts on wild places and wild organisms. This is a great resource for anyone interested in conservation and could readily be used in a college level Environmental Science class.

State of the Wild is a much needed reference. This particular volume, the first I have read, ponders the interrelation of the health of wildlife health, the health of ecosystem and the health of humans and their pets and domesticated animals. By the way, this integratoing approach of human and ecosystem health is the approach for 2008 of the Ramsar Wetlands Treaty.
A sizable part of the book contains current statistics on the state of the world's wildlife, giving a solid reference to all those interested in conservation today.
A must-have addition to your library if you are interested in wildlife and Nature.

John King, as a retired English Professor, wrote here a classic gem of a travel book. It blends his deep reading and understanding of the geology and history of a seemingly drab and neglected region while slowly traveling the length of the Sheyenne River in North Dakota. He provides accurate observations and interesting encounters with natives not always at their best. With his heartfelt fondness for the region and sadness over the inexorable depopulation hitting this area as with the entire North American center he philosophizes on the greater things touching all mortals struggling to live fully awake on earth. He ends his reflections often on ironic tones of ambiguity which as a reader you will find yourself looking forward to and smiling inwardly. As a conscientious teacher of English and poet he exhibits outstanding literary craftsmanship, invoking spot-on local odd little speech inflections and word choices. Since I'm from the area I know I'll be returning often to this book to review his geological and historical understandings - outshining much larger and boring volumes. People not from this area can learn about a real trip down a small North Dakota river; but even more, all can learn how a classic travel book should be crafted. You will never believe the surprise ending!

I gave this book as a gift to my husband who is from the area. As he was reading it he constantly came and told me about places the author was talking about, and how we need to go and explore some areas.

When the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan went into effect during the Clinton administration, Florida's great grassy wilderness garnered a host of national attention -- and has since become a breeding ground for environmental dispute. What does it take to "save" a forest? How can it be preserved?

Enter W. Hodding Carter. For an Outside magazine feature he's agreed to paddle the ninety-nine-mile waterway in Everglades National Park to examine the landscape from all angles -- physical, political, cultural, and very personal -- and get to the rock-bottom heart of the story. Stolen Water is the outgrowth of Carter's journey.

Through investigative research, eyewitness accounts, and interviews with key players in the conservation controversy, Carter offers a rare portrait of a national treasure. Utterly important, and at times downright hilarious, Stolen Water is a classic American adventure tale, and an environmental parable for our time.

The author's newest book is:
Off the Deep End

Hodding Carter loves the Everglades and Stolen Water: Saving the Everglades from Its Friends, Foes, and Florida reflects this affection as much as it reflects arguments on both sides covering the management and utilization of the wilderness. From restoration plans for the Everglades to author Carter's own quest through the region to consider both its history and future, Stolen Water provides some hard-hitting facts about the real friends and foes of the area.

Of all the books my brother, Bill has written, I most love this one. SUNSTRUCK is about the area of the world on which he is an expert, a remote area of the Sonoran Desert, but more importantly, these are thought-provoking essays on life and living. Even if, like me, you don't usually read essays about the natural world I think you'll appreciate his writing style and world outlook. Bill shares anecdotes about the outdoor life, hiking, those he meets and gets to know in the desert (including la migra and people escaping the border patrol, mountain lions, rattlesnakes, bighorn sheep) that make the reader feel as if they are there with Bill at the moment of encounter.

So I hope you'll enjoy a book about a wondrous place in the world that few people visit, and even fewer understand: El Gran Desierto, the Devil's Highway. Yes, this review is written by the author's sister, but don't hold that against me. Given my proclivity to reading fiction, I might not have picked up this book if my brother hadn't written it. I am so glad I had the opportunity to enjoy his vivid use of language and to vicariously experience some of Bill Broyles' adventures in the desert.

It is officially called El Camino del Diablo-The Devil's Highway. It's also known by a variety of other names best left out of this review. It stretches for some 130 miles of desert from Sonoyta, in Mexico's state of Sonora, to Yuma, Arizona, on the Colorado River. There is precious little permanent water and ground temperatures can, and do, reach 150 degrees and more. It includes parts of two national monuments, a national wildlife refuge, and a gunnery range in Arizona not to mention various intities in Mexico. The are can be explored via foot or four-wheel drive vehicle. It can be done. It's done every year by experts and fools, lots of fools, legal and illegal. Many don't make it. It is a killer. If you are intrigued by scorpions, drug smugglers, sidewinders, bandits, illegal aliens, rattlesnakes, sand storms, unbearable heat, lack of water, a military gunnery range, and a host of other unbelievable challenges this is the trip for you. I don't know of any typical travel or guide book that will prepare you for this trip but this book comes as close as any to providing one with a sense of what to expect and when to go. It is probably the very best book ever published about this special place. The author and photographer have a knack of presenting a highly readable, visually accurate account of the dangers and beauty that await the visitor to a place noted author Charles Bowden says "...we finally get to face ourselves because we are alone with life itself." I have done this trip in a four-wheel drive vehicle and can only say be careful...very careful. This is a must read both for the armchair traveler and boots on the ground type.

When I was Reading this book i got the chills. The creative quality of the statistics and inciteful view of populations is so rad. I love this book.

I have to say that before reading this book I hated statistics and everythingto do with any type of natural sampling. But this book has changed my life! It's easy to read text and easy to follow examples have reinvigorated my love for statistical sampling. I recommend this to anyone who has any interest in statistics. It will change you life too!

Where will the first fully fledged green economy be? Germany? Holland? Sweden? Some other advanced developed country? Not according to David Wallace, author of "Sustainable Industrialisation". The lesson of history seems to be that paradigm breaking new modes of production, while growing out of elements of the previous system, take root and flourish first, as integrated systems, in newly developing or redeveloping economies.

For example it was the US and not the leading industrial power of the day, the UK, that pioneered manufacturing based on interchangeable parts and, eventually, mass production. Lean production emerged, not in the US, but in Japan, an economy rebuilding after the devastation of war.

But why should leaders lose the lead? This is most likely to occur when a new approach to production cannot evolve easily or quickly from hundreds of independent innovations but requires a major synchronised shift in the psychological or physical structure of industry. In the established industrial powers, vested interests in the old paradigm work hard to slow the pace of change, individual investments in the new paradigm are too risky because they are not synchronised with other complementary investments. Mind sets that are vital to the new paradigm are considered to be radical, untested and threatening, so they find it hard to make it into the mainstream.

So it may well be that countries that are just starting the process of industrialisation, or regions whose industries have become obsolete or have been destroyed, may be the ones to take on the new approaches. There is no doubt that a green economy built from the ground up using closed-cycle, industrial ecology and dematerialisation principles and based on the use of recycled and renewable resources would be far more cost competitive than the marginally greened economies that we see now in the leading-edge countries.

But is the cost-competitiveness of an ultra-green economy going to be great enough to encourage newly emerging and newly rebuilding economies to take the risk of striking out into unchartered industrial waters? Wallace seems to believe it will be. I am not so sure. For example, while the revolutionary Lovins hypercar can deliver the same service level for between 75-90% less energy than conventional cars, its sale price will be similar. So while society will benefit massively from this car and the consumer will not lose, the producers are unlikely to gain major competitive leverage simply from reductions in the cost of production.

But all is not lost by any means. I think that the Wallace thesis is basically sound. It is just that, for this particular industrial paradigm shift, the critical economic driver for the establishment of greenfields green economies will be quality rather than cost-based competitiveness.

A credible scenario might be as follows. A number of (multi-national?) consumer products manufacturers come to the conclusion that they can gain a decisive competitive edge in their respective markets if they produce ultra-green products at a reasonable price. However they recognise that all the existing industrial bases (even in the greener European economies) cannot deliver products with the desired life-cycle profile - existing industrial bases are fossil fuel dependent, materials intensive, throughput based and high in indirect biodiversity impacts.

So these manufacturers form a strategic alliance with a diverse network of other firms to develop an ultra-green industrial base. They approach the governments of newly industrialising and newly rebuilding countries with the proposition that the firms will make very substantial long term investments provided the partner governments are able to assist the process with strict environmental laws, appropriate eco-tax regimes and the creation of appropriate physical infrastructure and educational programs. Environmentally-orientated aid bodies complement this process with assistance to governments and communities to work through the issues and to undertake relevant policy making and planning.

As this concept takes on the initiative could be reversed with countries actively brokering the formation of green production alliances to manufacture within their borders.

Once one or more ultra-green industrial bases have been established and are seen to be working, the ideas are likely to flow back fairly rapidly into the established industrial economies, accelerating their transition to a green structure. This speed-up will be driven by the power of the concrete example and by competitive pressures, both of which speak louder than a thousand words.

The process of creating new ultra-green industrial bases is likely to require a higher degree of forethought and coordination than occurred in the earlier manufacturing paradigm shifts. The idea is unlikely to emerge spontaneously from the normal strategic thinking processes of governments or companies because of its novelty and initial complexity. However, think tanks will be able to play a critical role in articulating the concept and working through some of the practical issues.

So who would like to give it a go?

This is a book of great significance. Wallace makes a convincing case that developments in the Third World are key to the resolution of global environmental problems. He argues that sustainable patterns of production and consumption are unlikely to be adopted on a sufficiently large scale in the already-industrialized world of North America, North West Europe and Japan. The economic, social and political changes required present too large a challenge for established ways of life. A large, newly-industrializing country, however, could pioneer a new, sustainable, pattern of industrial production, which could then be adopted more widely.

Wallace makes an argument, which many will find counterintuitive, that multinational corporations could play a major role in this process. Sustainable forms of industrialization will need innovative technologies and substantial investment capital, both of which are commanded by large corporations. Wallace suggests that a Third World government, pressured by an effective environmental movement, could establish guidelines which steer commercial forces toward sustainable production. Large corporations could be persuaded to comply with these guidelines by their desire to gain access to the country's market.

Sustainable Industrialization is a short, clearly-written book with a sophisticated and plausible analysis of how an environmental movement in a newly-industrializing country could begin to influence corporations and help to resolve global environmental problems. My students like the book a lot.

Each summer wildfires destroy American communities and wreck havoc - yet there are 'good' fires, too: those which restore habitats and strike habitats which rely on them for ecological balance. How to cope? Stephen Pyne is an expert on fire, having spent fifteen seasons fighting fires in the Grand Canyon: he outlines in Tending Fire: Coping With America's Wildland Fires, a new paradigm for viewing American wildland fires, discussing the history of fires and human habitats around the world, and contrasting the pros and cons of current fire politics in the last decade.

"Tending Fire" by Steve Pyne is a landmark work. Modern society has lost its connection to the natural world, a connection that our ancestors depended upon and nurtured with fire. Pyne reveals the price of our foolish Faustian bargain to ignore our fire roots, and how our self-proclaimed "sophisticated" culture is continually staggered by natural forces we have forgotten how to deal with. Pyne's point is that man is a fire creature, unique among animals in our ability to create fire and to manipulate our world with fire. Our disconnect from our fire roots has had unfortunate consequences, including the catastrophic destruction of our forests and the wholesale alteration of other ecosystems. If we do not relearn how to tend fire, to produce it where and when we need to, then we will not be able to prevent or control the most destructive fires, the firestorm holocausts that threaten rural and urban America alike.

Plus, Pyne is a poet, a master wordsmith, and tons of fun to read.

... because I keep taking it out to look at again. The photographs are stunning. And Graves's prose is just lovely, as it always is. The reason the essays are all too brief (as the previous reviewer noted) is that they originally appeared in "Texas Parks & Wildlife Magazine," which set strict limits on length. I read each piece in the series as it came out, but it's lovely to see them all in one place, with more - and very well printed - illustrations.

Meinzer's photography was great but John Graves seemed at a loss for words, i.e. his essays were far too short. Graves takes time to get into his subject ("Goodbye to a River" and "Hardscrabble"). Even though I wanted more, what he wrote is first rate. He understands the magic and individuality of each river, even my Llano.