With a new afterword, Why You Are Here: A speech on the opening of the COP26 climate summit As a young man, I felt I was out there in the wild, experiencing the untouched natural world - but it was an illusion. The tragedy of our time has been happening all around us, barely noticeable from day to day - the loss of our planet's wild places, its biodiversity. I have been witness to this decline. A Life on Our Planet contains my witness statement, and my vision for the future - the story of how we came to make this, our greatest mistake, and how, if we act now, we can yet put it right. We have the opportunity to create the perfect home for ourselves and restore the wonderful world we inherited. All we need is the will do so.

For over a century, Yellowstone National Park has been a monument to wildness in America. But long before flames swept through Yellowstone in 1988, that wildness had come under fire from encroachments that were making the park one of our nation's most commodified pieces of real estate.

For as long as they've existed, parks like Yellowstone have been the scene of some of the most intensive commercial activity in the American West. Selling Yellowstone recounts the story of such activities in our oldest park from the 1870s through the 1960s. It is the first book to examine critically the place of business in the development of America's national parks, demonstrating the prominent role played by profit-driven entrepreneurs in shaping the physical landscape of what is generally perceived as unaltered wilderness.

Challenging popular perceptions that our national parks are protected from commercialism, Mark Barringer reveals how businessmen, with the support of the National Park Service, marketed Yellowstone as a museum of mythology: a landscape created to look like what Americans wanted to believe the Old West once was. Together, the NPS and the concessionaires--particularly Harry W. Child's Yellowstone Park Company--altered the park repeatedly to fit a desired image and then creatively promoted it for mass consumption. As a result, the concessionaires virtually owned Yellowstone, selling it piecemeal to receptive customers as if it were an inexhaustible commodity.

First marketed as a nature museum to be viewed from the comfort of stagecoach seats or hotel room windows, the park was transformed from a wilderness preserve to a series of roadside attractions. Roads were built to geysers and waterfalls; wolves were eliminated and bison were bred; visitors were given a choice between comfortable hotels and more rustic lodges and camps. The Yellowstone Park Company sought to meet all of the public's expectations, reaping the profits from satisfying American idealizations.

Contemporary environmental attitudes eventually forced significant policy changes in the parks, but shifting political winds continue to determine such matters as snowmobile access to Yellowstone. Barringer's book contributes to the ongoing debate over the character and limits of the social construction of nature as it raises important questions about what our national parks represent, why so many people continue to feel so strongly about them, and what must be done to protect them.

Originally published in the early 1900s, this book is - 'primarily for the general reader who likes to know more about that much talked about, but little understood, topic - the weather'. Rather than being a dry text book, covering the entire field of meteorology, this includes general interest that the reader can use as a reference for the varying weather experienced every day. Contents Include: GENERAL NOTES AND SPRING WEATHER: Observe the Weather - Early Spring - Moisture in the Air - Clouds - Wind and Weather - rain - May Weather - Some Weather Proverbs - Summer Weather - Mountain Weather - Thunderstorms - Thunderstorms and the Vacationist - West Indian and Other Hurricanes - Autumn Foreshadows Winter - Autumn Winds and Storms - Weather Periods and Major Air Streams - Autumn Weather Proverbs - Our Atmosphere - WINTER: Winter Storms - Snow - Winter Resorts and Sports - Winter Sunshine - Winter Cold - Winter in the Home

Historically, it is the land of the bison. But the land across which these powerful herds once thundered has been transformed. We know it today by such names as Montana, Wyoming, Dakota, western Iowa, and Nebraska--but it is really buffalo country, the land of the big sky rivers. This book is a tale of two rivers, a history of the majestic Missouri and how it was once wedded to the Yellowstone. Though quite different today--one dammed into reservoirs, the other unregulated with a semblance of wildness--they were once linked ecologically, geographically, and historically. Then in the twentieth century, Euro-Americans dismantled many of these connections and attempted to uncouple the streams. Viewing the rivers and their surrounding lands as a living system, Robert Kelley Schneiders focuses on four components within the Upper Missouri bioregion--the Missouri River valley, the Yellowstone River valley, Homo sapiens, and bison--to show the significance of their interaction over the past two hundred years. To frame his story, Schneiders goes back to the nineteenth-century journals of fur traders and settlers, and in the record of flora, fauna, floods, and human activity he finds evidence of rapid and disruptive change. Bison once had the greatest influence on the land, and Schneiders depicts an original bison and Indian trail network on which were overlaid the first forts and towns and then the railroads, highways, and reservoirs that reconfigured the region forever. Schneiders explains how these geographical constructs interacted with larger demographic and economic trends in the twentiety-century West, as dams and their resultant reservoirs enhanced the federal presence in the Dakotas andeastern Montana. He describes human encroachment on the rivers and tells why the Corps of Engineers dammed the Missouri but spared the Yellowstone. The engineers and their backers have so completely engineered the Missouri that few people today think of it as anything other than water. But we can reestablish our bonds to the river if we decide to let it flow once again, argues Schneiders. Removing the dams on the Missouri is the first step toward reasserting localism and grassroots democracy. In what was once buffalo country, a dormant ecology awaits rebirth. A major work of environmental history, "Big Sky Rivers offers a challenging vision for the future of the Upper Missouri bioregion.

THE DOG: MAN'S BEST FRIEND- A BOOK FOR ALL DOG LOVERS. By Captain A.H. Trapman A VINTAGE DOG BOOKS CLASSIC REPRINT. Originally published in 1929, this extremely scarce early work on the dog is both expensive and hard to find in its first edition. VINTAGE DOG BOOKS have republished it, using the original text and illustrations, as part of their History of the Dog series. This is a fascinating and absorbing title which will appeal to all true dog lovers. It is not just a collection of dog stories, but an attempt to present a synopsis of all that has been believed, thought, and written about man's best friend throughout the ages; and to deduce from it some knowledge of the dog's psychology and mental processes. Captain Trapman has written one of the most entertaining and instructive contributions to dog literature ever published. He writes with authority, and yet with charm, of the link between dog and man that exists between man and no other creature. 'To the memory of all dogs who have loved man, and to all men who have loved a dog, this study of man's best friend is dedicated." -- Author. The book consists of over three hundred pages, plus thirty pages of illustrations, including many etchings by the famous artist Diana Thorne: Origin of the Dog. - Adown the Ages. - The Dog in History and Literature. - Racial Characteristics. - Great Men and their Dogs. - Some Great Dogs. - Spirituality of the Dog. - Supernatural Instincts. - Morality and Conscience. - Sense of Scent. - Hearing, Sight and Memory. - Reasoning Power. - Duty and Honour. - Sense of Humour, Justice, and Protection. - Relations with other Animals. - Breeds and Breeding. - Utility Dogs in General. - War Dogs. - Training andManagement. - Health and Sickness. - Dogs Primer of the English Language. - Origins and Uses of the Various Breeds. - Function of Bench Shows. Etc.

Originally published in 1909, this early work on the History of Hereford Cattle is both expensive and hard to find in its first edition. The contents are extensively illustrated and it is highly recommended for inclusion on the bookshelf of all historians. Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. We are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.

This book was written in hopes of inspiring others. These poems are visions of art that I bring to you from my heart and soul. Some of the poems are true experiences in my life, while others are imaginary! Become inspired, in the inspiration and life sections. Bring romance into your life, in the love section. Wander through the beauty of Nature, in the Nature section.

No American president has been more enthusiastic in appreciating the wilderness and in conserving our nation's natural treasures than Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919). And no other president wrote more about nature and his explorations of it than T. R., in scattered books, such as African Wilderness, and in his countless letters, including those collected in The Selected Letters of Theodore Roosevelt). Roosevelt the Explorer, by historian and Roosevelt biographer H. Paul Jeffers, is the only book to offer a comprehensive, lifelong chronicle of the consummate adventurer's exploits and expeditions, which compelled him to traverse some of our planet's most difficult terrains. Within these lively pages, Roosevelt collects more than a hundred bird specimens in Egypt at age fourteen; hunts grizzlies and other game in the wilds of the Dakota territory; founds the Boon and Crockett Club, the nation's first conservation group; and inspires the first Teddy Bear. Jeffers describes T. R.'s efforts as president, against fierce opposition, to establish an unprecedented system of national parks and to ensure the safety of America's vast federal forests and wetlands from rampant development. In the words of Roosevelt himself, the adventures unfold T. R.'s 1909-1910, eleven-month, Smithsonian-inspired safari across Africa, from Mombasa on the Indian Ocean to Khartoum in Egypt, which followed his two terms as president; and his 1913-1914 danger-drenched expedition to map South America's 950-mile River of Doubt (a previously unexplored tributary to the Amazon River later renamed Rio Roosevelt in his honor). During the trip, one man drowned, another was murdered, and the culprit went insane, fleeing into the jungle. Roosevelt was lucky to escape alive, nearly drowning and plagued by jungle fever, dysentery, an ulcerated leg, blood poisoning, and malaria. Illustrated with rare cartoons and photos, and filled with hairbreadth escapes, exotic animals and locales, and unparalleled excitement, Roosevelt the Explorer brings to life T. R.'s thrilling and often controversial exploits as no other book has done since the twenty-sixth president took his pen in hand over eighty years ago.

The Labrador Retriever - A Complete Anthology of the Dog gathers together all the best early writing on the breed from our library of scarce, out-of-print antiquarian books and documents and reprints it in a quality, modern edition. This anthology includes chapters taken from a comprehensive range of books, many of them now rare and much sought-after works, all of them written by renowned breed experts of their day. These books are treasure troves of information about the breed - The physical points, temperaments, and special abilities are given; celebrated dogs are discussed and pictured; and the history of the breed and pedigrees of famous champions are also provided. The contents were well illustrated with numerous photographs of leading and famous dogs of that era and these are all reproduced to the highest quality. Books used include: The Kennel Encyclopaedia by J. Sidney Turner (1910), Dogs Of The World by Arthur Craven (1931), About Our Dogs by A. Croxton Smith (1931) and many others.

This is an EXACT reproduction of a book published before 1923. This IS NOT an OCR'd book with strange characters, introduced typographical errors, and jumbled words. This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book.

The Mastiff - A Complete Anthology of the Dog gathers together all the best early writing on the breed from our library of scarce, out-of-print antiquarian books and documents and reprints it in a quality, modern edition. This anthology includes chapters taken from a comprehensive range of books, many of them now rare and much sought-after works, all of them written by renowned breed experts of their day. These books are treasure troves of information about the breed - The physical points, temperaments, and special abilities are given; celebrated dogs are discussed and pictured; and the history of the breed and pedigrees of famous champions are also provided. The contents were well illustrated with numerous photographs of leading and famous dogs of that era and these are all reproduced to the highest quality. Books used include: My Dog And I by H. W. Huntington (1897), Dogs Of The World by Arthur Craven (1931), Hutchinson's Dog Encyclopaedia by Walter Hutchinson (1935) and many others.

The Maltese Dog - A Complete Anthology of the Dog gathers together all the best early writing on the breed from our library of scarce, out-of-print antiquarian books and documents and reprints it in a quality, modern edition. This anthology includes chapters taken from a comprehensive range of books, many of them now rare and much sought-after works, all of them written by renowned breed experts of their day. These books are treasure troves of information about the breed - The physical points, temperaments, and special abilities are given; celebrated dogs are discussed and pictured; and the history of the breed and pedigrees of famous champions are also provided. The contents were well illustrated with numerous photographs of leading and famous dogs of that era and these are all reproduced to the highest quality. Books used include: My Dog And I by H. W. Huntington (1897), The Show Dog by H. W. Huntington (1901), The New Book Of The Dog by Robert Leighton (1907) and many others.

Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900's and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. We are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.