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This book traces the history of threats to species and habitat in California, from the time of the Gold Rush to the present. The author shows how, over the course of more than a century, scientists and conservationists came to view the fates of endangered species as dependent on the ecological conditions and human activities in the places where those species lived. The story begins with the tale of the state's extinct mascot, the California grizzly, and the conservation movements and laws that followed its disappearance. The second half of the book focuses on four high-profile endangered species: the California condor, the desert tortoise, the San Joaquin kit fox, and the Delta smelt. The author offers an account of how Americans developed a civil system in which imperiled species serve as proxies for broader conflicts about the politics of place. The book concludes that the challenge for conservationists in the twenty-first century will be to expand habitat conservation beyond protected wildlands to build more diverse and sustainable landscapes.
This book initiates multipolar climate/clime studies of the world’s altitudinal and latitudinal highlands with terrestrial, experiential, and affective approaches. Framed in the environmental humanities, it is an interdisciplinary, comparative study of the mutually-embodied relations of climate, nature, culture, and place in the Himalaya, Andes, and Arctic. Innovation-driven, the book offers multipolar clime case studies through the contributors’ historical findings, ethnographic documentations, and diverse conceptualizations and applications of clime, an overlooked but returning notion of place embodied with climate history, pattern, and changes. The multipolar clime case studies in the...
An argument that the perception of arid lands as wastelands is politically motivated and that these landscapes are variable, biodiverse ecosystems, whose inhabitants must be empowered. Deserts are commonly imagined as barren, defiled, worthless places, wastelands in need of development. This understanding has fueled extensive anti-desertification efforts—a multimillion-dollar global campaign driven by perceptions of a looming crisis. In this book, Diana Davis argues that estimates of desertification have been significantly exaggerated and that deserts and drylands—which constitute about 41% of the earth's landmass—are actually resilient and biodiverse environments in which a great many...
From Jamestown to 9/11, concerns about the landscape, husbanding of natural resources, and the health of our environment have been important to the American way of life. Natural Protest is the first collection of original essays to offer a cohesive social and political examination of environmental awareness, activism, and justice throughout American history. Editors Michael Egan and Jeff Crane have selected the finest new scholarship in the field, establishing this complex and fascinating subject firmly at the forefront of American historical study. Focused and thought-provoking, Natural Protest presents a cutting-edge perspective on American environmentalism and environmental history, providing an invaluable resource for anyone concerned about the ecological fate of the world around us.
This long-anticipated reference and sourcebook for CaliforniaÕs remarkable ecological abundance provides an integrated assessment of each major ecosystem typeÑits distribution, structure, function, and management. A comprehensive synthesis of our knowledge about this biologically diverse state, Ecosystems of California covers the state from oceans to mountaintops using multiple lenses: past and present, flora and fauna, aquatic and terrestrial, natural and managed. Each chapter evaluates natural processes for a specific ecosystem, describes drivers of change, and discusses how that ecosystem may be altered in the future. This book also explores the drivers of CaliforniaÕs ecological patte...
This latest Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) will again form the standard reference for all those concerned with climate change and its consequences, including students, researchers and policy makers in environmental science, meteorology, climatology, biology, ecology, atmospheric chemistry and environmental policy.
What emerged from these efforts was a hybrid environment, where the distinctions between irrigated farms and wildlife refuges blurred. Management of the refuges was fraught with conflicting priorities and practices. Farmers and refuge managers harassed birds with shotguns and Hares to keep them off private lands, and government pilots took to the air, dropping hand grenades among flocks of geese and herding the startled birds into nearby refuges. Such actions masked the growing connections between refuges and the land around them. --
He's operated on whales, administered antibiotics to a group of performing lions, barely escaped alive after treating unpredictable chimps, cared for every imaginable household pet - and most of all, enjoyed every minute of it. Well-known veterinarian, cartoonist, writer, and one of the world's leading authorities on horse behavior - Dr. Robert M. Miller shares his memoirs of a life filled with all the joys and tragic moments that caring for, and loving, animals brings. Now the vet known for his hilarious cartoons brings the same delicious humor and warm compassion to a distinctly American book in the Herriot tradition: a story that will touch your heart, and remind you of why our bond with animals is so special."
When Europeans first arrived at what is now California’s San Joaquin Valley, they found a vast landscape of wetlands, small ponds, riparian forests, and grasslands surrounding three large swampland lakes. What greets a visitor to the region today is a dramatically different view of mile after mile of row crops, vineyards, orchards, and grazing acreage—some of the most fertile and productive agricultural land in the world. This remarkable transformation, with its enduring consequences, is at the center of Ruling the Waters, a legal, social, and environmental history of how western water law shaped, and was shaped by, the subjugation of the largest freshwater wetlands wildlife habitat in t...
Award-winning author, naturalist, and conservationist Tim Palmer presents the world of California rivers in this practical and inspiring field guide. Loaded with tips on where to hike, fish, canoe, kayak, and raft, it offers an interpretive approach that reveals geology, plant and wild life, hydrologic processes, and other natural phenomena. Palmer reports on conservation with a perspective from decades of personal engagement. More than 150 streams are featured, 50 riparian species are illustrated, and 180 photos show the essence of California’s rivers. Palmer brings a natural history guide, a recreation guide, and an introduction to river ecology together in one illuminating volume; it belongs in every river lover’s book collection, boat, and backpack.