The Hunstein Rainforest I loved as a child is scheduled to be logged. Blissful birds of paradise dance in the mysterious Hunstein Mountains, unaware of their impending doom. The inhabitants of the tiny village of Wagu in Papua New Guinea who own the pristine forest, most importantly the widow Moyali, will decide the rainforest's fate even though they are not aware of its intrinsic value. I initiate a National Geographic expedition and follow along, trying to understand their struggles. Will they choose to save the trees? What is going to happen to their culture? One year later, I lead a small team on another expedition, a two week trek deep into the uncharted forest, following my tribal "uncle's" ideas, to gather photographs and challenge Mt. Hunstein. We fight food shortages, leeches and giant cassowaries, while rare birds, exotic flowers and crystal clear rivers fuel my deep love for this delicate forest. I come to realize only the villagers can save the rainforest.

The conservation of biological diversity depends on people's knowledge and actions. This book presents the theory and practice for creating effective education and outreach programmes for conservation. The authors describe an exciting array of techniques for enhancing school resources, marketing environmental messages, using social media, developing partnerships for conservation, and designing on-site programmes for parks and community centres. Vivid case studies from around the world illustrate techniques and describe planning, implementation, and evaluation procedures, enabling readers to implement their own new ideas effectively. Conservation Education and Outreach Techniques, now in its second edition and updated throughout, includes twelve chapters illustrated with numerous photographs showing education and outreach programmes in action, each incorporating an extensive bibliography. Helpful text boxes provide practical tips, guidelines, and recommendations for further exploration of the chapter topics. This book will be particularly relevant to conservation scientists, resource managers, environmental educators, students, and citizen activists. It will also serve as a handy reference and a comprehensive text for a variety of natural resource and environmental professionals.

The authors detail the Aniakchak National Monument and Preserve vegetation classification and succession project which was undertaken by the National Park Service Inventory and Monitoring Program in cooperation with the Alaska Natural Heritage Program (AKNHP). The objectives of this project were to: Describe existing plant associations and produce a vegetation classification for Aniakchak National Monument and Preserve; Conduct an accuracy assessment of the Aniakchak National Monument and Preserve portion of the vegetation map developed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and Ducks Unlimited, Inc., referred to hereafter as the DU map (USFWS 2007); Provide detailed descriptions and distribution maps for earth cover class descriptions from the DU map that occur within the study area; and Describe vegetation succession on volcanic deposits within the study area.

Left in the wild, Billie the elephant would have spent her life surrounded by her family, free to wander the jungles of Asia. Instead, she was captured as a baby and shipped to America where she arrived in the mid 1950s, long before circus and zoo-goers worried about animal living conditions. Billie spent her first years confined in a tiny zoo yard giving rides to children. At 19, she was sold and groomed for life in the circus. Billie mastered difficult stunts: she could balance on her hind legs, walk on her front legs and perform one-foot handstands. For twenty-three years she dazzled audiences, but she lived a life of neglect and abuse. As years passed, Billie rebelled. When she attacked and injured her trainer, a federal inspector ordered her taken off the road. For a decade she languished in a dusty barn. Finally, fate intervened. The U.S. Department of Agriculture removed Billie and fifteen other elephants as part of the largest elephant rescue in American history. Billie wound up at a sanctuary for performing elephants in Tennessee at 45, but she thundered with anxiety in her new environment and refused to let anyone remove a chain still clamped around her leg. Last Chain on Billie charts the growing movement to rescue performing elephants from lives of misery, and tells the story of how one emotionally damaged elephant overcame her past and learned to trust humans again.

In Loe Bar and the Sandhill Rustic Moth, Adrian Spalding examines the survival of plants and animals on Loe Bar, a shingle beach on the coast of Cornwall, in the context of its history, geomorphology and exposure to the Atlantic environment. He develops these themes within a detailed study of the Sandhill Rustic moth that endures this harsh environment where storm surges, high salinity, high temperatures, strong winds and burial by sand affect the wildlife that occurs there.

Private wildlife conservation is booming business in South Africa! Nick Steele stood at the cradle of this development in the politically turbulent 1970s and 1980s, by stimulating farmers in Natal (now KwaZulu-Natal) to pool resources in order to restore wilderness landscapes, but at the same time improve their security situation in cooperative conservancy structures. His involvement in Operation Rhino in the 1960s and subsequent networks to save the rhino from extinction, brought him into controversial military (oriented) networks around the Western world. The author's unique access to his private diaries paints a personal picture of this controversial conservationist.

For thousands of years dolphins have been man's best friend in the sea. Their brain power, sociability, communication ability and altruism have been the issue of reference for myths, tales and several scientific or experimental studies. They have also inspired people to create several works of art from the ancient times until today. Ancient Greeks called dolphins "people of the sea" and considered them equal to human beings. This book discusses several topics on different species of dolphins, their natural habitat, behaviours, and conservation strategies. Some of the topics included are behaviours of botos and short-finned pilot whales; isolation of yeasts from stranded and captive dolphins in Italy; ecological stressors of the coastal bottlenose dolphin; and dolphin-assisted therapy.

A fixed-plot monitoring system was implemented in 1992 to evaluate vegetative communities in two large wooded areas at Valley Forge National Historical Park. The objectives of this monitoring system are to: 1) describe the existing understory plant community on Mount Misery and Mount Joy in terms of species richness and abundance; and 2) determine changes in abundance and species composition of understory plant communities in fenced and unfenced plots over time. This report summarizes the data collected in these plots in 1993, 1995-1996, 1998, and 2003, and presents the results of statistical analyses of the data to determine if specific vegetative changes have occurred over time.

The Upper Columbia Basin Network has identified 14 priority park vital signs, indicators of ecosystem health, which represent a broad suite of ecological phenomena operating across multiple temporal and spatial scales. Our intent has been to monitor a balanced and integrated "package" of vital signs that meets the needs of current park management, but will also be able to accommodate unanticipated environmental conditions in the future. Camas is one particularly high priority vital sign for two UCBN parks, Big Hole National Battlefield (BIHO) and Nez Perce National Historical Park (NEPE). Camas is a unique resource for these parks because it is both culturally and ecologically significant. Camas was and remains one of the most widely utilized indigenous foods in the Pacific Northwest and it is strongly associated with the wet prairie ecosystems of the region that have been degraded or lost due to historic land use practices. A long-term citizen science-based monitoring program for detecting status and trends in camas populations at BIHO and Weippe Prairie, a subunit of NEPE, will serve as a central information source for park adaptive management decision making and will provide essential feedback on any eventual restoration efforts of park wet prairie habitats. The involvement of student citizen scientists in this particular program has been effective both in terms of leveraging resources as well as in engaging communities in park stewardship and science education. This annual report details the status and trend estimates obtained from the first four years of monitoring, 2005-2008, at Weippe Prairie and BIHO.

The authors investigated how changing the magnitude and timing of water release in a regulated reservoir impacted macrobenthic invertebrates communities within Voyageurs National Park (VOYA), Minnesota with a before-after control-impact approach, using both multi- and univariate response measures to simultaneously compare impacts on macroinvertebrates across both time and treatment.

As part of the Upper Columbia Basin Network's effort to conduct vital signs monitoring, we completed monitoring of camas (Camassia quamash) in Big Hole National Battlefield (BIHO) and Nez Perce National Historical Park (NEPE). Camas is a unique resource for these parks because it is both culturally and ecologically significant. Camas was and remains one of the most widely utilized indigenous foods in the Pacific Northwest and it is strongly associated with the wet prairie ecosystems of the region that have been degraded or lost due to historic land use practices. A long-term citizen science-based monitoring program for detecting status and trends in camas populations at BIHO and Weippe Prairie, a unit of NEPE, serves as a central information source for park adaptive management decision making and will provide essential feedback on any eventual restoration efforts of park wet prairie habitats. The involvement of student citizen scientists in this particular program has been effective both in terms of leveraging resources as well as in engaging communities in park stewardship and science education. This annual report details the status and trend estimates obtained from the first six years of monitoring, 2005-2010, at Weippe Prairie and BIHO.

This report describes the methods used and results obtained from a four-year project (2003-2007) to classify, describe, and develop a vegetation map database for Petrified Forest National Park (PEFO).

Retrogressive thaw slumps (RTS) are caused by thaw of massive ground ice on slopes and combine subsidence, mass movement, and water erosion. They can expose several hectares of bare soil that is susceptible to erosion into nearby water bodies. In the summers of 2010 and 2011, oblique aerial-photographs of 26 RTS in Noatak National Preserve (NOAT) and Gates of the Arctic National Park and Preserve (GAAR) were taken with a hand-held, 35-mm digital camera. Accurate ground control was obtained at 23 of the slumps by surveying the location of temporary targets that were captured on the aerial photographs and then removed. These photographs were used to create high-resolution three-dimensional topographic models with photographic overlay. Photographs were taken in both years at 18 of the RTS. The current report: 1) documents changes in the slumps that had photographs from both years, and 2) describes a new slump photographed for the first time in 2011.

Gavin Francis fulfilled a lifetime's ambition when he spent fourteen months as the basecamp doctor at Halley, a profoundly isolated British research station on the Caird Coast of Antarctica. So remote, it is said to be easier to evacuate a casualty from the International Space Station than it is to bring someone out of Halley in winter.
Antarctica offered a year of unparalleled silence and solitude, with few distractions and very little human history, but also a rare opportunity. Throughout the year -- from a summer of perpetual sunshine to months of winter darkness -- Gavin Francis explores the world of great beauty conjured from the simplest of elements, the hardship of living at 50 c below zero and the unexpected comfort that this penguin community brings, for this is the story of one man and his fascination with the world's loneliest continent, as well as the emperor penguins who weather the winter with him. Combining an evocative narrative with a sublime sensitivity to the natural world, this is travel writing at its very best.

Since its publication in 1979, Classification of Wetlands and Deepwater Habitats of the United States has been used in the National Inventory of Wetlands conducted by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife service. The system has been widely used throughout the U.S. and is often cited in the scientific literature. There has also been considerable international interest in use of the classification. This reprint allows for the opportunity to correct a number of minor typographical errors, bring plant names into conformity with the National List of Scientific Plant Names (U.S. Dept. Agriculture, 1982) and to upgrade the quality of plates as well as furnish additional plates. No changes have been made that either alter the structure of the classification or the meaning of the definitions.

Begins with in-depth coverage of wildlife behavior concepts as they relate to conservation problems. Topics will focus principally on discussion, critique, and development of behavioral concepts, with particular attention given to published studies on various topics in wildlife behavioral concepts as related to conservation and natural history. He will include an extensive list of references.

From deep ocean trenches and the geographical poles to outer space, organisms can be found living in remarkably extreme conditions. This book provides a captivating account of these systems and their extraordinary inhabitants, 'extremophiles'. A diverse, multidisciplinary group of experts discuss responses and adaptations to change; biodiversity, bioenergetic processes, and biotic and abiotic interactions; polar environments; and life and habitability, including searching for biosignatures in the extraterrestrial environment. The editors emphasize that understanding these systems is important for increasing our knowledge and utilizing their potential, but this remains an understudied area. Given the threat to these environments and their biota caused by climate change and human impact, this timely book also addresses the urgency to document these systems. It will help graduate students and researchers in conservation, marine biology, evolutionary biology, environmental change and astrobiology better understand how life exists in these environments and their susceptibility or resilience to change.