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It was a familiar sight at Yellowstone National Park: traffic backed up for miles as visitors fed bears from their cars. It may have been against the rules, but park officials were willing to turn a blind eye if it kept the public happy. But bear feeding eventually became too widespread and dangerous to everyone-including the bears-for the National Park Service (NPS) to allow it any longer. As one of the park's most beloved and enduring symbols, the Yellowstone bears have long been a flashpoint for controversy. Alice Wondrak Biel traces the evolution of their complex relationship with humans-from the creation of the first staged wildlife viewing areas to the present-and situates that relatio...
If you’ve ever had a medical check-up, did you wonder why they put a cuff around your forearm, gave it a squeeze, and made you sit still and quiet? Or why they asked you to open your mouth so they could stick a thermometer under your tongue? Or put that cold stethoscope against your chest while you took deep breaths followed by sticking a clothespin thingamabob on your finger? What’s up with all the gizmos and gadgets and why all the bother?
What’s up is that all of these instrumen...
In The Bear Doesn’t Know, Paul Schullery—honored naturalist, storyteller, and former Yellowstone ranger—has given us a bear-lover’s book of wonders. It is rich in the joy, beauty, inspiration, and pure fun to be had during a life well lived in bear country. While exploring the cultural complications of an animal we have long both feared and adored, he chronicles the bumpy course of our coming to terms with the mysteries of bear ecology and behavior. Schullery brings to the matter of bears a long view—of our centuries-long and always-evolving perception of wild bears, of the scientific exploration of bear ecology and behavior, and of the sometimes bitter struggles to protect bear po...
The Third Domain is the untold story of how the discovery of a new form of life-first ridiculed, then ignored for the past thirty years by mainstream scientists-is revolutionizing science, industry, and even our search for extraterrestrial life. Classification is a serious issue for science: if you don't know what you're looking at, how can you interpret what you see? Starting with Carolus Linnaeus in the 17th century, scientists have long struggled to order and categorize the many forms of life on Earth. But by the early 20th century the tree of life seemed to have stabilized, with two main domains of life at its roots: single-celled and multi-celled organisms. All creatures fit into one of...
“Betsy Watry tells the tales of a dozen women, some of whom had short-lived adventures in Yellowstone National Park, but most of whom spent decades as rangers, scientists, interpreters, and entrepreneurs, shaping the Park’s physical and cultural landscape. This is a wonderful ‘hidden’ history, full of surprising stories, grounded in intensive research and written with charm.” —Dr. Mary Murphy, historian and author of Hope in Hard Times “For so long, Yellowstone National Park has needed a book about the women who stood and today stand tall in its history. At long last, Elizabeth Watry has produced it. Women across the nation should celebrate this book for its noteworthy contribu...
American wildlife biologists first began fitting animals with radio transmitters in the 1950s. By the 1980s the practice had proven so useful to scientists and nonscientists alike that it became global. Wired Wilderness is the first book-length study of the origin, evolution, use, and impact of these now-commonplace tracking technologies. Combining approaches from environmental history, the history of science and technology, animal studies, and the cultural and political history of the United States, Etienne Benson traces the radio tracking of wild animals across a wide range of institutions, regions, and species and in a variety of contexts. He explains how hunters, animal-rights activists,...
Whittlesey shares tales of "the great Geyserland" as told by the earliest tour guides of America's first and most unique national park.
Part historical narrative, part travelogue, and part environmental plea, Selling Your Father's Bones recounts one of the most astonishing journeys in the history of the American West. The year 1877 bore witness to a broken promise. Joseph, chief of the peaceable Nez Perce band who made their home in Oregon's Wallowa Valley, had long sworn to uphold the dying words of his father: "This country holds your father's body. Never sell the bones of your mother and your father." Yet, as the U.S. government confined the tribe to ever smaller reservations in favor of miners and ranchers in their westward sprawl, the fateful decision of several young Nez Perce warriors to attack the settlers set in mot...
First published more than a century ago, The Biography of a Grizzly recounts the life of a fictitious bear named Wahb who lived and died in the Greater Yellowstone region. This new edition combines Ernest Thompson Seton’s classic tale and original illustrations with historical and scientific context for Wahb’s story, providing a thorough understanding of the setting, cultural connections, biology, and ecology of Seton’s best-known book. By the time The Biography of a Grizzly was published in 1900, grizzly bears had been hunted out of much of their historical range in North America. The characterization of Wahb, along with Seton’s other anthropomorphic tales of American wildlife, help...