"The vital position of Africans in effective conservation has not been well described for the Western public, and "The Myth of Wild Africa takes an important step in redressing this lack of understanding. For anyone interested in the realities of conservation, it is a book well worth reading."--Dr. Amy Vedder, Biodiversity Program Coordinator, Wildlife Conservation Society

"A thoughtful and important examination of . . . the fatal fallacies of old-style conservation. The relationship between wildlife and people in Africa is as old as our species itself. The future of both must be taken into account together. Required reading for anyone who has ever cared about one or the other."--Thomas E. Lovejoy, Assistant Secretary for External Affairs, Smithsonian Institution

"I've never read any single other volume that has had as much impact on the problems, politics, and policies--and possible solution--of conservation in Africa."--Gary C. Clarke, Director Emeritus, Topeka, Kansas Zoological Park

Because carnivores are at the top of the food chain, it is often argued that protecting them will afford adequate protection to other taxa as well. In the past ten years, theoretical and empirical studies on carnivores have developed very quickly. This volume reviews and summarizes the current state of the field, describes limitations and opportunities for carnivore conservation, and offers a conceptual framework for future research and applied management. It will be of interest to students and researchers of conservation biology, mammalogy, animal behavior, ecology, and evolution.

The conservation movement is moving rapidly away from traditional "protectionist" approaches toward nature to more integrated views of wildlife and landscape conservation. This volume reviews modern conservation approaches as they relate to mammals. A team of researchers and conservationists provide focused perspectives on preservation, such as the role of mammals within the conservation movement, how priorities should be set, allocation of funds, and promising techniques and approaches for future mammal protection. In addition, issues of broader conservation relevance are highlighted, including the integration of species and biodiversity approaches, the role of "flagship species," and the need for holistic conservation models in the wider context of society and government.

Quaggas were beautiful pony-sized zebras in southern Africa that had fewer stripes on their bodies and legs, and a browner body coloration than other zebras. Indigenous people hunted quaggas, portrayed them in rock art, and told stories about them. Settlers used quaggas to pull wagons and to protect livestock against predators. Taken to Europe, they were admired, exhibited, harnessed to carriages, illustrated by famous artists and written about by scientists. Excessive hunting led to quaggas' extinction in the 1880s but DNA from museum specimens showed rebreeding was feasible and now zebras resembling quaggas live in their former habitats. This rebreeding is compared with other de-extinction and rewilding ventures and its appropriateness discussed against the backdrop of conservation challenges-including those facing other zebras. In an Anthropocene of species extinction, climate change and habitat loss which organisms and habitats should be saved, and should attempts be made to restore extinct species?

How does an understanding of the behavior of a given animal species contribute to its conservation? The answer has profound consequences for our efforts to conserve endangered species. Behaviour and Conservation links the extraordinary advances in behavioral ecology over the past thirty years with the new discipline of conservation biology. It shows how an evolutionary approach can help solve problems in practical conservation, and suggests a new direction for behavioral ecology. Leading authorities in animal behavior address the ways in which behavior and conservation interact, investigating the conservation impact of people, habitat loss and fragmentation, threats to wild populations of animals, conservation priorities, and the use of behavioral approaches for conservation applications.

This book explores the politics of wildlife conservation policy in Africa, specifically Zambia, Kenya, and Zimbabwe. The book addresses a general question: Why don't wildlife policies seem to be working? Rather than use standard explanations such as "bureaucratic inefficiency" or "corrupt dictators," the book demonstrates how politicians at all levels use wildlife policy for their own political ends, which may or may not include conservation. The book uses electoral and archival data, as well as interviews with individuals ranging from presidents to poachers to address this issue.

Based on a series of articles in the journal British Birds, this book highlights the international importance of the UK's 14 Overseas Territories for birds and other wildlife. Many of these places are small islands dispersed mostly across the Atlantic, Antarctic and Pacific Oceans, where they are home to a quarter of the world's penguins and a third of the word's breeding albatrosses, as well as 34 species that are globally threatened. With a foreword by RSPB President, Miranda Krestovnikoff, this book will be a 'must have' for anyone interested in international conservation or wanting to visit some of these jewels in the UK's natural history crown.

Although wildlife fascinates citizens of industrialized countries, little is known about the politics of wildlife policy in Africa. In this innovative book, Clark Gibson challenges the rhetoric of television documentaries and conservation organizations to explore the politics behind the creation and change of wildlife policy in Africa. This book examines what Clark views as a central puzzle in the debate: Why do African governments create policies that apparently fail to protect wildlife? Moving beyond explanations of bureaucratic inefficiency and corrupt dictatorships, Gibson argues that biologically disastrous policies are retained because they meet the distributive goals of politicians and bureaucrats. Using evidence from Zambia, Kenya, and Zimbabwe, Gibson shows how institutions encourage politicians and bureaucrats to construct wildlife policies that further their own interests. Different configurations of electoral laws, legislatures, party structures, interest groups, and traditional authorities in each country shape the choices of policymakers - many of which are not consonant with conservation. This book will appeal to students of institutions, comparative politics, natural resource policymaking, African politics, and wildlife conservationists.

Conservationist Grant Fowlds lives to save and protect Africa's rhinos, elephants and other iconic wildlife, to preserve their habitats, to increase their range and bring back the animals where they have been decimated by decades of war, as in Angola, Mozambique and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. This vivid account of his work tells of a fellow conservationist tragically killed by the elephants he was seeking to save and a face-off with poachers, impoverished rural people exploited by rapacious local businessmen. Fowlds describes the impact of the Covid pandemic on conservation efforts, the vital wildlife tourism that sustains these and rural communities; and tells of conservationists' efforts to support people through the crisis. Lockdowns may have brought a welcome lull in rhino and other poaching, but also brought precious tourism to a standstill. He shows how the pandemic has highlighted the danger to the world of the illicit trade in endangered wildlife, some of it sold in 'wet markets', where pathogens incubate and spread. He describes a restoration project of apartheid-era, ex-South African soldiers seeking to make reparations in Angola, engulfed for many years in a profoundly damaging civil war, which drew in outside forces, from Cuba, Russia and South Africa, with a catastophic impact on that country's wildlife. Those who fund conservation, whether in the US, Zambia or South Africa itself, are of vital importance to efforts to conserve and rewild: some supposed angel-investors turn out to be not what they had appeared, some are thwarted in their efforts, but others are open-hearted and generous in the extreme, which makes their sudden, unexpected death an even greater tragedy. A passionate desire to conserve nature has also brought conservationists previously active in far-off Venezuela to southern Africa. Fowlds describes fraught meetings to negotiate the coexistence of wildlife and rural communities. There are vivid accounts of the skilled and dangerous work of using helicopters to keep wildebeest, carrying disease, and cattle apart, and to keep elephants from damaging communal land and eating crops such as sugar cane. He tells of a project to restore Africa's previously vast herds of elephants, particularly the famed 'tuskers', with their unusually large tusks, once prized and hunted almost to extinction. The range expansion that this entails is key to enabling Africa's iconic wildlife to survive, to preserving its wilderness and, in turn, helping humankind to survive. There is a heartening look at conservation efforts in Mozambique, a country scarred by years of war, which are starting to bear fruit, though just as a new ISIS insurgency creates havoc in the north of the country. What will humanity's relationship with nature be post-pandemic? Will we have begun to learn that by conserving iconic wildlife and their habitats we help to preserve and restore precious pockets of wilderness, which are so vital not only the survival of wildlife, but to our own survival on our one precious planet.

This book highlights the fundamental association between aquaculture and engineering in classifying fish hunger behaviour by means of machine learning techniques. Understanding the underlying factors that affect fish growth is essential, since they have implications for higher productivity in fish farms. Computer vision and machine learning techniques make it possible to quantify the subjective perception of hunger behaviour and so allow food to be provided as necessary. The book analyses the conceptual framework of motion tracking, feeding schedule and prediction classifiers in order to classify the hunger state, and proposes a system comprising an automated feeder system, image-processing module, as well as machine learning classifiers. Furthermore, the system substitutes conventional, complex modelling techniques with a robust, artificial intelligence approach. The findings presented are of interest to researchers, fish farmers, and aquaculture technologist wanting to gain insights into the productivity of fish and fish behaviour.

Today's conservation literature emphasizes landscape ecology and population genetics without addressing the behavioral links that enable the long-term survival of populations. This book presents theoretical and practical arguments for considering behavior patterns in attempts to conserve biodiversity. It brings together prominent scientists and wildlife managers to address a number of issues, including the limits and potentials of behavioral research to conservation, the importance of behavioral variation as a component of biodiversity, and the use of animal behavior to solve conservation problems. Throughout, the text provides specific direction for research and management practices. The book is unique in its emphasis on conservation of wild populations as opposed to captive and reintroduced populations, where behavioral research has concentrated in the past.

Today, the East African state of Tanzania is renowned for wildlife preserves such as the Serengeti National Park, the Ngorongoro Conservation Area, and the Selous Game Reserve. Yet few know that most of these initiatives emerged from decades of German colonial rule. This book gives the first full account of Tanzanian wildlife conservation up until World War I, focusing upon elephant hunting and the ivory trade as vital factors in a shift from exploitation to preservation that increasingly excluded indigenous Africans. Analyzing the formative interactions between colonial governance and the natural world, The Nature of German Imperialism situates East African wildlife policies within the global emergence of conservationist sensibilities around 1900.

As the human impact on the earth leads to ever increasing environmental degradation, the restoration of dwindling populations of numerous plant and animal species has become urgent. In this volume, contributors examine the conceptual, planning, and applied aspects of recovery of rare or endangered species. It is unique in its treatment of both plants and animals, and in its presentation of scientific approaches to implemented restorations. Experts report on the restoration efforts and plans for the restoration of a wide variety of species including the dune thistle, lakeside daisy, woodland caribou, kit fox, and black-footed ferret and end with a broad overview, suggesting future opportunities and problems.

Despite many wetland sites having suffered various forms of damage, there has been a recent recognition that, in some instances, it may be possible to rectify this through deliberate and controlled restoration programmes. Wetland restoration involves a variety of disciplines and interests, concerning groups who are interested in wetland utilization (such as farmers, foresters, peat extractors and water authorities), as well as those who wish to safeguard the site or its wildlife (such as conservationists, natural historians, ecologists and archaeologists). Interaction between these action groups is regulated by planners and politicians, and disagreements are frequently fuelled by an absence of reliable information. In these circumstances, wetland scientists have a responsibility to try to acquire and interpret relevant data in an informed, objective and impartial way. This volume reviews the current scientific knowledge of wetland restoration, identifying the problems and opportunities associated with it. Based on revised and edited contributions to the recent Restoration of Temperate Wetlands symposium, it provides a broad overview of current information and experience of wetland restoration. In some cases it highlights the lack of knowledge available and illustrates how difficult it can be to make informed decisions. With contributions from Scandinavia, Europe, Australia, the USA and Canada, outlining the latest research and observations from a range of international wetland scientists and practitioners, this book provides a critical review of current information and knowledge and gives insights into many aspects of wetland restoration, with a focused approach to the ecological principles that underpin it.

As it becomes ever more expensive to purchase land for conservation purposes, it is becoming increasingly important both to manage existing sites properly and to create new habitats. This comprehensive volume provides a pragmatic, habitat-by-habitat guide to conservation management, in which the prescriptions and methods are based on sound science coupled with practical experience. For each habitat, the book guides the reader through the options and solutions, highlights potential problems, and gives good and bad examples of habitat management in the past. This will be required reading for all practicing ecologists, land managers, wardens, landscape architects and conservationists, and will provide a valuable reference for students of ecology, conservation and environmental science.

This is the first comprehensive reference on New Zealand freshwater fishes since the publication of Bob McDowell's field guide (Heinemann Reed) over 12 years ago. It includes all freshwater fishes, both introduced and native fishes, with useful identification charts at the back of the book for bullies and whitebait (diadromous galaxids). Rod Morris has gone to great lengths to capture the very best images and numerous colour photographs through the book will assist in identifying the male and female of the species, and the subtle differences between related fishes. An extensive introduction includes highly topical coverage of freshwater ecology and conservation issues surrounding the quality of New Zealand's waterways, making this book an invaluable information resource. In addition, keen anglers will be delighted to find full entries on trout, salmon, and rudd, including rare hybrids. And mini-maps provided for each entry give an indication of the distribution of each species throughout the country.

Network thinking and network analysis are rapidly expanding features of ecological research. Network analysis of ecological systems include representations and modelling of the interactions in an ecosystem, in which species or factors are joined by pairwise connections. This book provides an overview of ecological network analysis including generating processes, the relationship between structure and dynamic function, and statistics and models for these networks. Starting with a general introduction to the composition of networks and their characteristics, it includes details on such topics as measures of network complexity, applications of spectral graph theory, how best to include indirect species interactions, and multilayer, multiplex and multilevel networks. Graduate students and researchers who want to develop and understand ecological networks in their research will find this volume inspiring and helpful. Detailed guidance to those already working in network ecology but looking for advice is also included.

This book describes the natural processes that must be understood in order to manage and protect the Earth's biological diversity. The author begins with a clear definition of biological diversity and a summary of the types of diversity patterns found on Earth. Next he lays out a scientific framework for understanding the complex array of diversity patterns, including the distribution of rare species to landscape patterns visible from space. Many fascinating case studies of coral reefs, fire-maintained shrublands, prairies, and tropical rain forests illustrate the theories and models described in this book, including such fundamental issues as endemism, invasions, and extinction in temperate, tropical, and marine ecosystems.

The Global Carbon Cycle and Climate Change examines the global carbon cycle and the energy balance of the biosphere, following carbon and energy through increasingly complex levels of metabolism from cells to ecosystems. Utilizing scientific explanations, analyses of ecosystem functions, extensive references, and cutting-edge examples of energy flow in ecosystems, it is an essential resource to aid in understanding the scientific basis of the role played by ecological systems in climate change. This book addresses the need to understand the global carbon cycle and the interrelationships among the disciplines of biology, chemistry, and physics in a holistic perspective. The Global Carbon Cycle and Climate Change is a compendium of easily accessible, technical information that provides a clear understanding of energy flow, ecosystem dynamics, the biosphere, and climate change. "Dr. Reichle brings over four decades of research on the structure and function of forest ecosystems to bear on the existential issue of our time, climate change. Using a comprehensive review of carbon biogeochemistry as scaled from the physiology of organisms to landscape processes, his analysis provides an integrated discussion of how diverse processes at varying time and spatial scales function. The work speaks to several audiences. Too often students study their courses in a vacuum without necessarily understanding the relationships that transcend from the cellular process, to organism, to biosphere levels and exist in a dynamic atmosphere with its own processes, and spatial dimensions. This book provides the template whereupon students can be guided to see how the pieces fit together. The book is self-contained but lends itself to be amplified upon by a student or professor. The same intellectual quest would also apply for the lay reader who seeks a broad understanding." --W.F. Harris| Deputy Assistant Director, Biological Sciences, National Science Foundation (Retired); Associate Vice Chancellor for Research, University of Tennessee, Knoxville (Retired)

Glow-in-the-dark owls, eggs boiling in Icelandic hot pools, the gangster tactics of the devil's coach-horse beetle ... Eanna Ni Lamhna has seen them all! Eanna explores the wonders of our wild world, from a safari in Tanzania to the cloud forests of Costa Rica, from rat-hunting in Canada to whale watching in New Zealand. She draws on her experience as a diver to tell of face-to-face encounters with fascinating fan worms, elusive sea hares and a murderous crab, and rings the alarm bells on the environmental challenges facing us. Eanna also recounts with cheerful relish the pitfalls and delights of being a broadcaster and a scientist. Sure why would anyone want to be anything else?

Life on Earth is facing a mass extinction event of our own making. Human activity is changing the biology and the meaning of extinction. What Is Extinction? examines several key moments that have come to define the terms of extinction over the past two centuries, exploring instances of animal and human finitude and the cultural forms used to document and interpret these events. Offering a critical theory for the critically endangered, Joshua Schuster proposes that different discourses of limits and lastness appear in specific extinction events over time as a response to changing attitudes toward species frailty. Understanding these extinction events also involves examining what happens when the conceptual and cultural forms used to account for species finitude are pressed to their limits as well. Schuster provides close readings of several case studies of extinction that bring together environmental humanities and multispecies methods with media-specific analyses at the terminus of life. What Is Extinction? delves into the development of last animal photography, the anthropological and psychoanalytic fascination with human origins and ends, the invention of new literary genres of last fictions, the rise of new extreme biopolitics in the Third Reich that attempted to change the meaning of extinction, and the current pursuit of de-extinction technologies. Schuster offers timely interpretations of how definitions and visions of extinction have changed in the past and continue to change in the present.

Examines the beauty, history, and controversy of Voyageurs National Park.

Over 250,000 people visit Minnesota's only national park each year. This popularity raises crucial questions: Can timberwolves thrive amid snowmobiles and jet-skis? Can the thin layer of fragile soil atop the Precambrian shield, the oldest exposed rock on earth, survive the feet of campers? Voyageur Country explores these quandaries and presents the only complete history of this environmentally important region.

Voyageur Country describes the environmental significance of the park, beginning with its geologic and glacial history and continuing through current flora and fauna. Treuer then examines human influences on the land, including those of the Ojibwe Indians, French voyageurs, lumber barons, and wilderness advocates. The birth of the modern incarnation of Voyageurs as a national park is detailed, with accounts of the contributions of Sigurd Olson and other conservationists.

The first paperback edition of this modern classic includes an updated preface and chronology. Voyageur Country is an important launching point for considering the policy that guides our relationship with the land.