What are the challenges we face around water in Western Canada? What are our rights to water? Does water itself have rights? Water Rites: Reimagining Water in the West documents the many ways that water flows through our lives, connecting the humans, animals and plants that all depend on this precious and endangered resource. Essays from scholars, activists, environmentalists, and human rights advocates illuminate the diverse issues surrounding water in Alberta, including the right to access clean drinking water, the competing demands of the resource development industry and Indigenous communities, and the dwindling supply of fresh water in the face of human-caused climate change. Statements from community organizations detail the challenges facing watersheds, and the actions being taken to mitigate these problems. With a special focus on Environmental and Indigenous issues, Water Rites explores how deeply water is tied to human life. These essays are complemented by full-colour portfolios of work by contemporary painters, photographers, and installation artists who explore our relation to water. Reproductions of historical paintings, engravings and film stills demonstrate how water has shaped our country's cultural imaginary from its beginnings, proving that water is a vital resource for our lives and our imaginations.

From Lake Coeur d'Alene to its confluence with the Columbia, the Spokane River travels 111 miles of varied and often spectacular terrain-rural, urban, in places wild. The river has been a trading and gathering place for Indigenous peoples for thousands of years. With bountiful trout, accessible swimming holes, and challenging rapids, it is a recreational magnet for residents and tourists alike. The Spokane also bears the legacy of industrial growth and remains caught amid interests competing over natural resources. The contributors to this collection profile this living river through personal reflection, history, science, and poetry. They bring a keen environmental awareness of resource scarcity, climate change, and cultural survival tied to the river's fate.

Journalist Richard Schweid first learned the strange facts of the freshwater eel's life from a fisherman in a small Spanish town just south of Valencia. ""The eeler who explained the animal's life cycle to me did so as he served up an eel he had just taken from a trap, killed, cleaned, and cooked in olive oil in an earthenware dish,"" writes Schweid. ""I ate it with a chunk of fresh, crusty bread. It was delicious. I was immediately fascinated."" As this engaging culinary and natural history reveals, the humble eel is indeed an amazing creature. Every European and American eel begins its life in the Sargasso Sea--a vast, weedy stretch of deep Atlantic waters between Bermuda and the Azores. Larval eels drift for up to three years until they reach the rivers of North America or Europe, where they mature and live as long as two decades before returning to the Sargasso to mate and die. Eels have never been bred successfully in captivity. Consulting fisherfolk, cooks, and scientists, Schweid takes the reader on a global tour to reveal the economic and gastronomic importance of eel in places such as eastern North Carolina, Spain, Northern Ireland, England, and Japan. (While this rich yet mild-tasting fish has virtually disappeared from U.S. tables, over $2 billion worth of eel is still eagerly consumed in Europe and Asia each year.) The book also includes recipes, both historic and contemporary, for preparing eel.

A water strider darts across a pond, its feet dimpling the surface tension; a giant water bug dives below, carrying his mate's eggs on his back; hidden among plant roots on the silty bottom, a dragonfly larva stalks unwary minnows. Barely skimming the surface, in the air above the pond, swarm mayflies with diaphanous wings. Take this walk around the pond with Gilbert Waldbauer and discover the most amazingly diverse inhabitants of the freshwater world.

In his hallmark companionable style, Waldbauer introduces us to the aquatic insects that have colonized ponds, lakes, streams, and rivers, especially those in North America. Along the way we learn about the diverse forms these arthropods take, as well as their remarkable modes of life--how they have radiated into every imaginable niche in the water environment, and how they cope with the challenges such an environment poses to respiration, vision, thermoregulation, and reproduction. We encounter the caddis fly larva building its protective case and camouflaging it with stream detritus; green darner dragonflies mating midair in an acrobatic wheel formation; ants that have adapted to the tiny water environment within a pitcher plant; and insects whose adaptations to the aquatic lifestyle are furnishing biomaterials engineers with ideas for future applications in industry and consumer goods.

While learning about the evolution, natural history, and ecology of these insects, readers also discover more than a little about the scientists who study them.

Self-described as half-teacher, half-naturalist, Dr. Kenneth S. Norris is one of the world s foremost authorities on whales and dolphins, those most appealing creatures with whom we share the planet. Focusing on the spinner dolphins off Hawaii, Norris carries us through his earliest contacts with these graceful animals (including work with Gregory Bateson), his attempts with teams of students to learn about their complex lives in the sea, and finally to the tragic dolphin kill in the yellowfin tuna industry."

Traditionally, most Americans have viewed natural wetlands as wastelands, places to be drained and converted for farming or filled for housing and industrial development. To date, over half of the country's wetlands that existed when the Pilgrims first landed in America have been destroyed. Today these ""wastelands"" are beginning to be recognized as one of the world's most valuable natural resources. They are the temperate zone equivalent of rain forests, serving vital life-sustaining functions in water-quality renovation, aquatic ecosystem productivity, and biodiversity, as well as providing benefits such as flood-damage protection and shoreline stabilization. In the revised and expanded edition of this classic guide, Ralph W. Tiner introduces readers to the ecology and beauty of these valuable natural resources. Topics include the formation and functions of wetlands, wetland types, causes of loss and degradation, and recent efforts to protect them. The discussion now includes many examples from the Great Lakes region and information on best management practices for working in and around wetlands including vernal pools. A new chapter on classification and assessment further clarifies how the unique characteristics of wetlands serve specific functions. ""In Search of Swampland"" also provides a field guide to wetland plants, soils, and animals. It includes detailed descriptions and illustrations - many of which are new to this edition - of more than 300 plants and 200 animals. Clear identification keys, information on how to distinguish typical hydric or ""wet"" soils from dryland soils, and general procedures for identifying wetlands in the field make this book an indispensable resource for readers with little or no training in wetland science, as well as for the scientist or amateur naturalist. While the book focuses on the northeastern and north-central regions of the United States (from Maine through Maryland and west to the Great Lakes states), many of the plants and animals described are common throughout much of the eastern United States. Tiner also includes a list of Northeastern wetlands to visit and suggestions on how we can all help save these vital, threatened areas.

Identifies turtles, toads, newts, and river otters and more than ten types of dragonflfly

Five immense lakes lie at the heart of North America. They cover an area of nearly 95,000 square miles and hold more than 5,500 cubic miles of water. Together they comprise the world's largest freshwater system, containing 95 percent of the continent's fresh water - and one-fifth of the planet's total supply. Home to 40 million people, the Great Lakes' drainage basin is the hub of industry and agriculture in North America. More than a region; it is almost a nation in itself. The Great Lakes: A Natural History of a Changing Region is the most authoritative, complete and accessible book to date about the biology and ecology of this vital, ever-changing terrain. It begins with an account of the geological formation of the lakes and an overview of the lakes' role in relatively recent human history. Grady takes readers through the lakes basin, defined and explored by its three component forest ecosystems: the Boreal, the Great Lakes/St Lawrence and the Carolinian Forests. Representative flora and fauna species are profiled, along with notable physical, climatic, and environmental features. The Great Lakes is both a first-hand tribute and an essential guide to a fascinating ecosystem in eternal flux.

Published in 1984, the first edition of Life in the Chesapeake Bay became an instant classic, providing fascinating insights into some of the more than two thousand plants and animals that make their home in America's largest estuary, the Chesapeake Bay. Superbly illustrated and clearly written, this acclaimed field guide described the richly varied habitats found along the mid-Atlantic coast and cataloged more than three hundred species of fish, invertebrates, and aquatic plants commonly found in the Chesapeake Bay and in coastal inlets from Cape Hatteras to Cape Cod.

Reflecting a further decade of research, this new edition expands on the Lippsons' discussion of wetland habitats and covers an additional 116 species closely associated with the Chesapeake Bay, including a broad range of birds and several species of insects, reptiles, and mammals. Written to be useful to a variety of readers--year-round residents and summer vacationers, professional biologists and amateur scientists, conservationists and sportsmen--Life in the Chesapeake Bay is a unique and comprehensive guide to one of this country's most important and beautiful natural resources.