Based on interviews with WWF representatives and other experts, this book explores WWF's approach to engagement in the Circumpolar North. It argues that the foundation of WWF's success in circumpolar engagement is based on four inter-related pillars: legacy, networks, scientific research and communication style. The book argues that WWF has made remarkable strides to distinguish itself in Arctic and northern engagement through its Global Arctic Programme and national organisations and associated offices in the Arctic states. However, WWF's work and successes are illustrative of the need for environmental and animal rights organisations to adopt a long-term strategy that show commitment to helping in the Arctic and North which factor in the needs and desires of northerners if they want their work to resonate and be welcomed by key northern audiences. -- .

"Both an homage and a final warning highlighting some of the treasures we stand to lose forever, Last of Their Kind is a powerful record of nature's splendour and fragility." - Outdoor Photography There are exactly two black rhinos left in the world, a subspecies of the white rhino, the very last of their kind. In this deeply poignant tribute, photographer Joachim Schmeisser presents these rhinos as well as other wild animals in the Amboseli National Park in Kenya, where Maasai tribespeople ensure that nobody endangers them. With his breathtaking black-and-white images, Schmeisser brings us up close to these extraordinary and endangered creatures, creating a powerful document of nature's splendour and fragility. Text in English and German.

Wind farms are an essential component of global renewable energy policy and the action to limit the effects of climate change. There is, however, considerable concern over the impacts of wind farms on wildlife, leading to a wide range of research and monitoring studies, a growing body of literature and several international conferences on the topic. This unique multi-volume work provides a comprehensive overview of the interactions between wind farms and wildlife. Volume 4 provides a state-of-the-science guide to monitoring and mitigation to minimise or even eliminate impacts on wildlife from offshore wind farms. The survey and monitoring section includes detailed chapters on fish and invertebrate communities, marine mammals and seabirds, and a chapter dedicated to the use of tracking technology applied to birds. The section continues with a chapter on collision risk and population modelling that underpins much current impact assessment, and a chapter detailing how collision risk for birds and bats may be monitored at sea. The mitigation section comprises chapters outlining mitigation options and strategies for birds and bats, and how to mitigate the effects of noise, especially during construction, on marine mammals and fish. A chapter on perspectives on marine spatial planning as applied to wind farms concludes the volume. The authors have been carefully selected from across the globe from the large number of academics, consultants and practitioners now engaged in wind farm studies, for their influential contribution to the science. Edited by Martin Perrow and with contributions by over 40 leading researchers including: Aonghais Cook, Thomas Dahlgren, Johann Koeppel, Meike Scheidat, Henrik Skov, Chris Thaxter & Frank Thomsen. The authors represent a wide range of organisations and institutions including the Universities of Gothenberg, Ghent, Highlands & Islands and Wageningen, Chalmers University of Technology and Technical University of Berlin, British Trust for Ornithology, The Carbon Trust, Institute of Avian Research Vogelwarte Helgoland, Institute for Applied Ecosystem Research (IfAOE), Norwegian Institute for Nature Research (NINA) and Sea Mammal Research Unit (SMRU); as well as several leading consultancies. Each chapter includes informative figures, tables, photographs and detailed case studies. Several of the latter are produced stand-alone from invited specialists to ensure geographic spread and to showcase exciting new research. This book is designed as the definitive guide on the topic for practitioners, researchers, managers and planners as well as students in higher education engaged in studies of the environment, ecology, climate change, conservation and impact assessment. Other volumes: Volume 1: Onshore: Potential Effects (978-1-78427-119-0) Volume 2: Onshore: Monitoring and Mitigation (978-1-78427-123-7) Volume 3: Offshore: Potential Effects (978-1-78427-127-5)

The chimpanzee is one of our planet's best-loved and most instantly recognisable animals. Splitting from the human lineage between four and six million years ago, it is (along with its cousin, the bonobo) our closest living relative, sharing around 94% of our DNA. First encountered by Westerners in the seventeenth century, virtually nothing was known about chimpanzees in their natural environment until 1960, when Jane Goodall travelled to Gombe to live and work with them. Accessibly written, yet fully referenced and uncompromising in its accuracy and comprehensiveness, this book encapsulates everything we currently know about chimpanzees: from their discovery and why we study them, to their anatomy, physiology, genetics and culture. The text is beautifully illustrated and infused with examples and anecdotes drawn from the author's thirty years of primate observation, making this a perfect resource for students of biological anthropology and primatology as well as non-specialists interested in chimpanzees.

Wetlands have already been recognised to hold the capacity for efficiently reducing or removing large amounts of pollutants from point sources (e.g. municipal and certain industrial effluents) as well as non-point sources (e.g. mining, agricultural and urban runoff) including organic matter, suspended solids, excess of nutrients, pathogens, metals and other micropollutants. This pollutant removal is accomplished by the interdependent action of several physical, chemical and biological processes which include sedimentation, filtration, chemical precipitation, sorption, biodegradation, and plants uptake among others. In this book, the authors present studies on the ecology, management and conservation of these valuable wetlands.

The Klamath River Basin on the California-Oregon border is a focal point for local and national discussions on water allocation and species protection. Previously, water and species management issues have exacerbated competition and generated conflict among several interests: farmers, Indian tribes, commercial and sport fisherman, federal wildlife refuge managers, environmental groups, and state, local, and tribal governments. As is true in many regions in the West, the federal government plays a prominent role in the Klamath Basin's waters. This role stems primarily from (1)operation and management of the Bureau of Reclamation's Klamath Water Project; (2)management of federal lands, including six national wildlife refugees; and (3)implementation of federal laws such as the Endangered Species Act. This book provides an overview of the issues in the Klamath Basin, with a focus on the federal government's role in the region.

Bees are our most loyal ally. These fascinating, enigmatic creatures are a key lynchpin in the working of our planet. Without them the landscape, as well as every aisle in our supermarkets would look radically different.

And we're not just talking about honey bees. There are more than 20,000 species of bee worldwide and only a handful make honey. Some live in colonies and others are solitary. We can all help protect them - and they desperately need protecting - but you can't save what you don't love. And you can't love what you don't know.

The Good Bee is a celebration of this most vital and mysterious of nature's wizards. Here you'll discover the complexities of bee behaviour - as well as the bits that still baffle us - the part they play in the natural world, their relationship with us throughout history, how they are coming under threat and what we can all do about it.

Beautifully produced, with hand-made illustrations throughout, it is a story for our times and a book to treasure.

The world is currently experiencing a sixth period of mass species extinction, and extinction of flora and fauna is caused by a variety of factors arising from industrial activity and increasing human population, such as global warming, climate change, habitat loss, pollution and use of pesticides. Most causes of extinction are linked to corporate activity, either directly or indirectly. Around the World in 80 Species: Exploring the Business of Extinction responds to the ongoing mass extinction crisis engulfing our planet by exploring the ways in which accounting, business and finance can be used to prevent species extinctions. From Africa to the Far East and from Europe to the Americas, the authors explore species loss and how businesses can stop mass extinctions through greater transparency, and through closer engagement with their investors and wildlife organisations. The book concludes that global capitalism has led us to this extinction crisis and that therefore the mechanisms of capitalism - namely accounting, finance, investment - can help to pull us out. Businesses must urgently address extinction before it is too late for all species, including ourselves. As the first book to explore corporate accounting and accountability in relation to species on the brink of extinction, this book will be of great interest to both professionals and a wider audience interested in the causes and prevention of extinction.

Croak is a collection of delightful quotes and gorgeous photographs celebrating the underappreciated beauty of frogs. It will delight anyone with a fondness of these fascinating creatures, and may surprise others who haven't yet come to appreciate the members of the animal kingdom who 'croak'. As amphibians, frogs are part of the most threatened group of land animals. They come in every shape and form, from round blobs to leaf-like mimics; they live on every continent in the world except for Antarctica; and they have a huge variety of lifestyles and reproductive modes, from giving birth to live young and carrying babies around on their backs to living their entire lives in deep caves underground! Croak will open your eyes to their vibrant variety and the urgent need to protect our amphibian friends. Many of the stunning, colourful images in Croak were taken by author Phil Bishop on his travels around the world. They showcase frogs in their natural habitats, paired with quotes from famous faces such as Cameron Diaz and John Steinbeck. Simultaneously amusing and illuminating, this is the perfect coffee table book to be dipped into occasionally, or to be read all at once by budding frog-aficionados. So if you're interested in what frogs were up to 65 million years ago, or how they are related to 10% of all Nobel prizes, pick up Croak and find out all about these wonderful creatures.

Bring the diversity and drama of the bird world to life with this encyclopedic new edition. A must-have for every avian enthusiast, this catalogue showcases thousands of bird species pictured in their native environment. Shot by photographers around the globe, the vivid images are accompanied by in-depth introductions to all 40 of the world's newly reclassified bird orders. Compiled by a team of experts and revised by BirdLife International, Bird provides the most up to date and comprehensive photographic tour of the wondrous world of birds. Dive in and you will find: -A bird by bird catalogue of more than 1,280 species, each with a description, data file, and distribution map -An introduction describing bird biology in beautiful visual detail. -Feature spreads showcasing the planet's most impressive sites for birdwatching -Photographic essays that display the best in bird photography Discover the world of the skies! Unrivaled in scope for a single-volume reference work, Bird's photographic catalogue features species from hummingbirds to monkey-eating eagles, organised in taxonomic order. Immerse yourself in the life of birds; read about their migrations, anatomy, feeding and breeding. All this, and special features on the world's most sought after bird watching locations, make this "A must-have reference for every bird enthusiast" - BBC Wildlife Magazine. Whether you're an avian expert who knows your Accipitriformes (birds of prey) from your Falconiformes (falcons and caracaras), or are simply a nature lover wanting to learn more, you won't find a more detailed or comprehensive photographic bird book than this. What's new? After a major reclassification of all birds, this new edition is the only guide currently in print covering the new system of 40 bird orders and 140+ families, including an updated catalogue with newly discovered species. Reviewed by the experts at BirdLife International, you can be sure that you are getting the latest knowledge of bird biology and classification.

More than 999 of every 1,000 species that have ever lived on the planet have become extinct. As part of evolution, extinction of the old allows emergence of the new. It is integral to the Earth's continually changing range and richness of life-forms. Extinction: not the end of the world? is a highly readable introduction to the causes of extinction, the different types of extinction and how relevant it is to the world today. The book discusses today's key issues, from biodiversity and conservation to the threat of human extinction, as well as exploring the major extinction events of the past and explaining how scientists know all this. Throughout the book there are engaging extinction case studies from around the world showing, for example, how local extinctions such as the large blue butterfly can be reversed. Presenting the latest research in an accessible and engaging way, this is a complete introduction to an important and often complex subject. The book is published to accompany the major new exhibition of the same name which opens at the Natural History Museum, London, in February 2013.

This book summarises legal and political events related to active sonar and marine mammals. While strandings and mortality of marine mammals, primarily beaked whales, have been observed in concurrence with mid-frequency sonar operation, additional controversy has focused on the development of low-frequency active (LFA) sonar. Some peacetime use of military sonar has been regulated under the Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA) and other statutes due to concerns that active military sonars are operated at frequencies used by some cetaceans (i.e., whales, porpoises, and dolphins), and their high-intensity sound pulses may travel long distances in the ocean. Although mid-frequency sonar has been implicated in several beaked whale strandings, there is scientific uncertainty surrounding the totality of the effects active sonar transmissions may have on marine mammals. This book also addresses the concern regarding environmental effects of ocean noise on three activities -- military sonar exercises, oil and gas exploration, and commercial shipping. This is an edited, excerpted and augmented edition of a CRS publication.

You might have heard that bees are in trouble -- but in fact, the trouble is coming our way too and bees are just showing it first. The looming environmental crisis means that, as a result of modern agricultural practices and pesticide,s we may well fail to prevent honeybee collapse. Honeybees are vital to the health of our planet, and this book is designed to equip and encourage small-scale backyard beekeepers -- who may end up having the only strong, healthy honeybees left. An expert beekeeper, Jack Bresette-Mills calls his approach 'sensitive beekeeping'. He promotes beekeeping without fear, beekeeping for the sake of the bee rather than for profit, and learning to answer your own questions about beekeeping. It's an approach that takes time, practice and patience to develop, and requires physical, mental and spiritual transformation. In the long run though, it results in healthier, sustainable hives and a happier beekeeper.

Urban Evolutionary Biology fills an important knowledge gap on wild organismal evolution in the urban environment, whilst offering a novel exploration of the fast-growing new field of evolutionary research. The growing rate of urbanization and the maturation of urban study systems worldwide means interest in the urban environment as an agent of evolutionary change is rapidly increasing. We are presently witnessing the emergence of a new field of research in evolutionary biology. Despite its rapid global expansion, the urban environment has until now been a largely neglected study site among evolutionary biologists. With its conspicuously altered ecological dynamics, it stands in stark contrast to the natural environments traditionally used as cornerstones for evolutionary ecology research. Urbanization can offer a great range of new opportunities to test for rapid evolutionary processes as a consequence of human activity, both because of replicate contexts for hypothesis testing, but also because cities are characterized by an array of easily quantifiable environmental axes of variation and thus testable agents of selection. Thanks to a wide possible breadth of inference (in terms of taxa) that may be studied, and a great variety of analytical methods, urban evolution has the potential to stand at a fascinating multi-disciplinary crossroad, enriching the field of evolutionary biology with emergent yet incredibly potent new research themes where the urban habitat is key. Urban Evolutionary Biology is an advanced textbook suitable for graduate level students as well as professional researchers studying the genetics, evolutionary biology, and ecology of urban environments. It is also highly relevant to urban ecologists and urban wildlife practitioners.

An appealing book that rightfully raises the profile of the kestrel. It provides an extensive picture of this delightful falcon, including its lifestyle and the factors that affect its breeding success and survival. This is based upon almost 40 years' monitoring of the kestrel in south-west Scotland and further afield by the author and colleagues, giving a flavour of the integrated approach to monitoring and conservation. As well as the wealth of factual data, there are entertaining anecdotes and stories both from the author's experiences and from the wider media coverage of this raptor over the years. The reader is taken to exotic locations such as the Seychelles, Mauritius and the Cape Verde Islands to see the endemic island kestrels which have always held a great fascination for the author. Latest figures show an alarming decline of 36% in the kestrel population in the UK, with even more dramatic falls such as 64% in Scotland. The fieldwork techniques which play such an important role are detailed in a composite breeding season. The kestrel is not portrayed in isolation and the bird's current circumstance is tied into the bigger picture of raptor conservation and the struggle against sustained persecution. The author reflects upon the political, economic and conservation issues that have dominated this field in the past few decades and through this personal and well-informed account the reader gains access to the world of the kestrel.

Life histories can be defined as the means by which individuals (or more precisely genotypes) vary their age- or stage-specific expenditures of reproductive effort in response to genetic, phenotypic, and environmental correlates of survival and fecundity. Life histories reflect the expression of traits most closely related to individual fitness, such as age and size at maturity, number and size of offspring, and the timing of the expression of those traits throughout an individual's life. In addition to addressing questions of fundamental importance to ecology and evolution, life-history research plays an integral role in species conservation and management. This accessible primer encompasses the basic concepts, theories, and applied elements of life history evolution, including patterns of trait variability, underlying mechanisms of plastic/evolutionary change, and the practical utility of life-history traits as metrics of species/population recovery, sustainable exploitation, and risk of extinction. Empirical examples are drawn from the entire spectrum of life. A Primer of Life Histories is designed for readers from a broad range of academic backgrounds and experience including graduate students and researchers of ecology and evolutionary biology. It will also be useful to a more applied audience of academic/government researchers in fields such as wildlife biology, conservation biology, fisheries science, and the environmental sciences.

For the last twenty years, The Destruction of the Bison has been an essential work in environmental history. Andrew C. Isenberg offers a concise analysis of the near-extinction of the North American bison population from an estimated 30 million in 1800 to fewer than 1000 a century later. His wide-ranging, interdisciplinary study carefully considers the multiple causes, cultural and ecological, of the destruction of the species. The twentieth-anniversary edition includes a new foreword connecting this seminal work to developments in the field - notably new perspectives in Native American history and the rise of transnational history - and placing the story of the bison in global context. A new afterword extends the study to the twenty-first century, underlining the continued importance of this ground-breaking text for current, and future, students and scholars.

As environmental problems grow larger and more pressing, conservationists have had to adapt. With a shrinking window of time to act, they are turning to broad approaches to combat continental- and global-scale crises of biodiversity loss, invasive species, and climate change. Pathways to Success—the long-awaited successor to the classic volume Measures of Success—is a modern guide to building large-scale transformative programs capable of tackling the complex conservation crises we face today. In this strikingly illustrated volume, coauthors Nick Salafsky and Richard Margoluis walk readers through fundamental concepts of effective program-level design, helping them to think strategically about project coordination, funding, and stakeholder input. Chapters in the first part of the book look at all aspects of designing and implementing large-scale conservation programs while the second part focuses on how to use data and information to manage, adapt, and learn from program strategies. In addition, the authors offer practical advice for avoiding pitfalls, such as formulaic recipes and simplistic silver-bullet solutions that can trip up otherwise well-intentioned efforts. Abundant graphics help to explain and clarify concepts presented in the text, and a glossary in the back matter defines technical terms for the reader. Pathways to Success is the definitive guide for conservation program managers and funders who want to increase the scale and effectiveness of their work combating biodiversity loss, climate change, and other pressing environmental issues.

'A delight' Hugh Warwick, ecologist and author of A Prickly Affair 'Hilarious and heartbreaking' Lee Schofield, author of Wild Fell 'A necessary nature book.' John Lewis-Stempel 'A triumph' Charles Foster, author of Cry of the Wild, Being a Human and A Little Brown Sea Hedgehogs are disappearing. Their numbers are estimated to have halved in less than twenty years. Why? Who could possibly have it in for the hedgehog when in poll after poll they come out top as our favourite mammal. Is it the car driver, the badger, the farmer, or the gardener? Magnifying glass in hand, Tom Moorhouse investigates the evidence. On a vital mission to bring those responsible to justice, prevent further murder and save a species, he uncovers a story full of twists, turns and uncomfortable truths about the trade-offs that exist between humans and wildlife. And then thankfully he provides solutions. A final chapter equips the reader with the toolkit required to try and coax our beloved hedgehogs back.

Wildlife and the countryside are highly valued by people in the UK, and for good reason. Healthy habitats are invaluable assets and promote human wellbeing. However, they are under increasing threat from, among other things, relentless urban expansion and intensive modern agriculture. These pressures largely stem from a major underlying cause - the high and growing population of humans living in the UK. This book provides an overview of wildlife in the UK and its recent status; factors contributing to wildlife declines; trends in human numbers; international deliberations about the impacts of human population growth; and the implications for the future of wildlife conservation in the UK. The evidence-based text includes comparisons of wildlife declines and their causes in other countries, providing a global perspective. This book is for ecologists, naturalists and conservation biologists studying and working in academia or in consultancies, as well as all those interested in wildlife conservation.

There are many hypotheses describing the interactions involved in biological invasions, but it is largely unknown whether they are backed up by empirical evidence. This book fills that gap by developing a tool for assessing research hypotheses and applying it to twelve invasion hypotheses, using the hierarchy-of-hypotheses (HoH) approach, and mapping the connections between theory and evidence. In Part 1, an overview chapter of invasion biology is followed by an introduction to the HoH approach and short chapters by science theorists and philosophers who comment on the approach. Part 2 outlines the invasion hypotheses and their interrelationships. These include biotic resistance and island susceptibility hypotheses, disturbance hypothesis, invasional meltdown hypothesis, enemy release hypothesis, evolution of increased competitive ability and shifting defence hypotheses, tens rule, phenotypic plasticity hypothesis, Darwin's naturalization and limiting similarity hypotheses and the propagule pressure hypothesis. Part 3 provides a synthesis and suggests future directions for invasion research