Wildlife Books

This is a serious book about a serious subject, and reading it makes it clear how much we lost when we lost Graeme Caughley. This book is suitable for an advanced undergraduate or first-year graduate class in conservation where you are dealing with students who have at least some background in basic ecology and data analysis. Written in Caughley's iconoclastic style, with a strong Southern hemisphere emphasis in terms of examples and case studies, the book is a welcome relief from the conservation-lite type texts that litter the booksellers inventories. Caughley pulls no punches when he criticizes some of the more sweeping generalizations that have captured the popular imagination, and he expects his readers to be able to deal with math if they are going to mess around with survival curves, MVPs, or whatever. I found the writing to be clear, lucid, and to the point. Caughley gives an excellent review of theoretical aspects of conservation & then delvs into a series of case studies that illustrate points made in the first half of the book. Some of these will be familiar to most readers, others are more exotic, more intriguing, and each delivers useful lessons-of-practice to ponder over, argue about, and learn from. Even though this text is now 7 years old it is perhaps a mark of Caughley's foresight that it still has a very contemporary feel to it. Anne Gunn is to be commended for making sure that this book got out in a relatively intact form, and i would STRONGLY encourage professionals, teachers, and students to get it & keep it on your desk.

family, group, taxon, terrestrial, slugs, ecology, starvation, conservation.

Highly reccommended text for undergraduates studying environmental sciences or conservation biology. No strong mathmatical background needed.

This is a must read for anyone pursuing a career in wildlife/conservation biology and a great book for anyone interested in the issues facing wildlife biologists. Mills does a fantastic job of including enough detail and new information to refresh and push practicing wildlife biologist. This includes a good review of relevant literature on a variety of topics: predator-prey relationships, small and declining populations, harvested populations, genetics in population biology; and includes a nice introduction to important tools for studying populations (i.e., population project matrixes and genetic techniques). Often these topics are presented as isolated sub-disciplines but I thought the exceptional aspect of this book was how Mills tied all these subjects together. For those not in the profession, skipping some of the details will provide a great overview of the critical issues of today and the future in wildlife conservation biology.

Stewart Breck
Research Wildlife Biologist

As a practicing wildlife biologist for 40 years, I found this new text to be an excellent review of the key elements of population biology that are pertinent to wildlife management and conservation. Mills cogently discusses numerous new issues in population biology that have developed since I completed my academic studies (such as climate change) and updates long-known issues (like predator-prey relationships) with new studies and thinking. The boxes describing real-world examples of the issues described in the text are very helpful. This books fills a needed gap between traditionally-oriented texts and practical applications. It would be an excellent text for intermediate-level wildlife biology or conservation biology courses and would be an important addition to the shelves of any biologist working to resolve conservation problems in the real world where wildlife and people interact.
Sterling Miller Ph.D.
Senior Wildlife Biologist
National Wildlife Fedration (Missoula)
&
Research Biologist (Retired)
Alaska Department of Fish and Game

This book has become an invaluable reference around our office...for the engineers, landscape architect and directors. The book covers a range of useful topics, from design basics (including relevant modeling formulas), pricing estimates, integration information for planners, citizens and regulators, wetland ecology background notes, landscaping ideas and wonderful examples of systems that the authors themselves have designed and installed.

The book highlights the benefits of wetlands often overlooked or undervalued in other engineering-oriented texts - wildlife habitat creation, aesthetics, water recharge, etc.

Since the book was writen by a landscape architect and an engineer, two visionary pioneers in their fields, it covers a lot of useful ground.

I highly recommend Corridor Ecology for anyone who is interested in corridors, land fragmentation, and species conservation. It is the most comprehensive literature I have come across in terms of the role of corridors, corridor design and implementation. As a current graduate student working on a corridor project, this book has been incredibly helpful in planning my field work in ground truthing Least-Cost path corridors. Especially the chapter, Corridor Quality: Continuity, Composition, and Dimension. It has really helped me understand better how to evaluate potential corridors. My advisor has been so impressed with the book that she is going to order some for the library and a biodiversity center that is being set up at campus. I also feel that this would be an excellent text for conservation courses as it covers issues such as metapopulation theory, edge effects and focal species considerations. The book also covers issues and potential problems that need to be dealt with when designing a corridor, which is very valuable. I also think this would be a excellent source for land management agencies and the Department of Transportation to utilize. The authors do an excellent job in bringing together all aspect of corridor ecology by utilizing the most current literature, valuable study cases along with their incredible field and research experience.

Tanya Diamond
M.S. Candidate
San Jose State University

I have read this book to my 5 year old daughter, and we both loved it. The book was filled with facts on cranes which made for great discussions. It also had very good grammer which seems harder to find in a children's book. We love it and encourage others to read it.

For a short time, I interned with the editor, Dr. Ellis. He is quite the crane expert and has a way with words that keeps a person interested. The book is filled with pictures and diagrams of all the kinds of cranes in the world. It also shares details on how cranes are cared for in captive breeding programs, such as the one at Patuxent Wildlife Research Center in Laurel, Maryland. I am not a bird expert, but the book was very easy to read and I enjoyed all of the diagrams and photos. Although this is not a book for pleasure reading, it is extremely informative and makes a great resource for any novice or expert ornithologist.

Jack Boudreau grew up in the central BC lumber town of Penny, which is located along the Canadian National Railway line that runs through the Fraser valley in central B.C. He was regaled as a youth with stories of the guides, trappers, settlers, prospectors and others who tried to make this inhospitable wilderness their home during the beginning of the twentieth century. He decided that these stories were too valuable to let disappear with the passing of the original taletellers and began to record their stories. After several decades of collecting data from/about these individuals, Jack has done an excellent job of consolidating the best of their stories in this pleasurably readable collection. I highly recommend this book for anyone who is interested in outdoor adventures. The wondrous thing is that the stories are true and these robust individuals actually went through trials that the contemporary reader might find incredible.

I may be a biased reviewer in that, J. Boudreau is my mother's brother and I also grew up listening to a few of the tales depicted in this book. I can guarantee that once you pick it up, you won't want to put it down until it's finished. In my case, I read it several times. This book is worth every penny and will bring you much pleasure.

This is the "BEST" gardening book around. It changed my life.... and my garden! I definitely recommend this to all the garden lovers out there in the world! Sherry, you have inspired me to write a book of my own! Thank you! And happy writing/gardening!