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Books > Earth & environment > The environment > Conservation of the environment > Conservation of wildlife & habitats > General
This is a major compendium of the existing knowledge of the ecology and management of tidal marshes by some of the leading experts in the field. The major theme of the book is the interconnectedness of the marsh, plants, marine organisms, soils and geology, energy and money flow, and legal and management effects on the system.
The chronicle of a family's first year alone in Alaskan wilderness, here is a poetic exploration into what we value in life. In 1992 Jean Aspen took her husband, Tom, and their young son to live in Alaska's interior mountains where they built a cabin from logs, hunted for food, and let the vast beauty of the Arctic close around them. Jean had faced Alaska's wilderness alone before in a life-altering experience she shared in Arctic Daughter. Cut off from the rest of the world for more than a year, now her family would discover strength and beauty in their daily lives. They candidly filmed themselves and later produced a companion documentary, ARCTIC SON: Fulfilling the Dream, which shows on PBS stations across the nation. From an encounter with a grizzly bear at arm's length to a challenging six-hundred-mile river passage back to civilization, Arctic Son chronicles fourteen remarkable months alone in the Brooks Range. At once a portrait of courage, a lyrical odyssey, and authentic adventure, this is a family's extraordinary journey into America's last frontier.
In a world filled with breathtaking beauty, we have often overlooked the elusive charm and magic of certain landscapes. A cloudy river flows into a verdant Arctic wetland where sandhill cranes and muskoxen dwell. Further south, cypress branches hang low over dismal swamps. Places like these–collectively known as swamplands or peatlands–often go unnoticed for their ecological splendor. They are as globally significant as rainforests, and function as critical carbon sinks for addressing our climate crisis. Yet, because of their reputation as wastelands, they are being systematically drained and degraded to make way for oilsands, mines, farms, and electricity. In Swamplands, journalist Edward Struzik celebrates these wild places, venturing into windswept bogs in Kauai and the last remnants of an ancient peatland in the Mojave Desert. The secrets of the swamp aren’t for the faint of heart. Ed loses a shoe to an Arctic wolf and finds himself ankle-deep in water during a lightning storm. But, the rewards are sweeter for the struggle: an enchanting Calypso orchid; an elusive yellow moth thought to be extinct; ancient animals preserved in lifelike condition down to the fur. Swamplands highlights the unappreciated struggle being waged to save peatlands by scientists, conservationists, and landowners around the world. An ode to peaty landscapes in all their offbeat glory, the book is also a demand for awareness of the myriad threats they face. It urges us to see the beauty and importance in these least likely of places. Our planet’s survival might depend on it.
How do you record the wildlife in a wood? This book explains ways to record the flora and fauna found in woodland and outlines the sources you can use to find out more about the history and management of an area. Whether you have just a few hours, or a few years, there are examples that you can follow to find out more about this important habitat. Woods include some of the richest terrestrial wildlife sites in Britain, but some are under threat and many are neglected, such that they are not as rich as they might be. If we are to protect them or increase their diversity we need first to know what species they contain, how they have come to be as they are, to understand how they fit into the wider landscape. Conservation surveys are the bedrock on which subsequent protection and management action is based. There is not one method that will be right for all situations and needs, so the methods discussed range from what one can find out online, to what can be seen on a general walk round a wood, to the insights that can come from more detailed survey and monitoring approaches. Fast-evolving techniques such as eDNA surveys and the use of LiDAR are touched on.
Butterflies and moths hold an enduring fascination for their unusual life cycle, as they change from one creature into another. Butterflies is an outstanding collection of photographs showcasing nature's most beautiful and often elusive butterflies and moths - members of the Lepidoptera order - in the variety of their natural habitats. With 17,500 species of butterfly and 160,000 species of moth in the world today, they can be found on every continent apart from Antarctica, and in every nation. Arranged in chapters covering some of the most beautiful and interesting types of butterfly and moth, their habitats, their transition from egg to caterpillar and from chrysalid to adult, as well as their behaviour, the book reveals little-known facts about their life cycle, anatomy, self-defence mechanisms, feeding and migration. For example, did you know that while caterpillars chew their solid food, adult butterflies can only consume liquid, and some moths do not even have mouths? Or that many species can taste with their feet? With full captions explaining how the species breeds, feeds, and changes from caterpillar to the animal kingdom's most stunning member, Butterflies is a brilliant examination in more than 200 outstanding colour photographs of these fascinating insects.
This book deals with the role of education in improving animal welfare and reducing animal suffering inflicted by humans. It embraces situations in which humans have direct control over animals or interfere directly with them, but it considers also indirect animal suffering resulting from human activities. Education is regarded in the broad sense of creating awareness and facilitating change. First, consideration is given to a number of specific themes in which education can make an important contribution towards reducing animal suffering, and subsequently an examination is made of a number of interrelated contexts in which education can address the various themes. The considered educational themes are: animal suffering and sentience that have both scientific and moral aspects human discrimination against animals known as speciesism and the need for attitudinal change by humans role and existing limitations of legislation in providing protection to animals matter of enforcement of animal protection legislation achievement of reform to improve animal protection by legislative and other means class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle"> training of professionals, carers, and users involved with animals to provide better protection the scope for science to contribute to improved animal protection animal protection as a regional and international issue
Richly detailed and timely study on conservation, development and sustainability in Tanzania. Provides valuable insights into the successes and failures of the management and governance of wildlife, forestry and coastal resources. Responding to the urgent need to examine the outcome of interventions in governing natural resources, this book analyses different types of sustainability partnerships - with donors, governments, business, NGOs and other actors, and, crucially, assesses which result in better livelihood and environmental outcomes. The contributors, from a range of disciplines, compare 'more complex' partnerships to relatively 'simpler', more traditional top-down and centralized management systems and to location where sustainability partnerships are not in place. Within-sector comparisons allow a fine-tuned analysis that is formed of historical, location and resource-specific issues, which can be used as input for resource-specific policy and partnership design. Experiences and lessons can be drawn from comparisons across the three different sectors, which can be applied to natural resource governance more broadly.
Traffication develops a bold new idea: that the trillions of miles of driving we do each year are just as destructive to our natural environment as any of the better known threats, such as habitat loss or intensive farming. The problem is not simply one of roadkill; the impacts of roads are far more pervasive, and they impact our wildlife in many subtle and unpredictable ways. Using the latest research, the book reveals how road traffic shatters essential biological processes, affecting how animals communicate, move around, feed, reproduce and die. Most importantly, it shows that the influence of traffic extends well beyond the verge, and that a busy road can strip the wildlife from our countryside for miles around. In the UK, almost nowhere is exempt from this environmental toll. Yet the final message here is one of hope: by identifying the car as a major cause of the catastrophic loss of wildlife, the solutions to our biodiversity crisis suddenly become much clearer. The first step to solving any problem is to recognise that it exists in the first place. But with road traffic, we are not even at that crucial initial stage in our recovery. Quite simply, Traffication does for road traffic what Silent Spring did for agrochemicals: awakening us from our collective road-blindness and opening up a whole new chapter in conservation. This urgent book is an essential contribution to the debate on how we restore the health of our countryside - and of our own minds and bodies.
This fun-filled outdoor adventure handbook is packed with unique ideas to help kids discover the great outdoors and get closer to nature. Created with the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS), the UK's leading gardening charity, this pocket-sized guide teached kids about different habitats. This gorgeously illustrated handbook is bursting with fun activities, top tips and nature facts to help inspire kids to explore the amazing world around them. Learn how to choose a campsite. Grow your own daffodils. Learn how to navigate using the night sky. Each page is packed with original ideas to help kids discover and explore plants and wildlife, with exciting activities for different habitats.
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 3 documents the current knowledge of the potential effects upon wildlife during both construction and operation of offshore wind farms. An introductory chapter on the nature of wind farms and the legislation surrounding them is followed by a series of in-depth chapters documenting effects on physical processes, atmosphere and ocean dynamics, seabed communities, fish, marine mammals, migratory birds and bats and seabirds. A synopsis of the known and potential effects of wind farms upon wildlife 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 30 leading researchers including: Goeran Brostroem, Steven Degraer, Mike Elliot, Andrew Gill, Ommo Huppop, Georg Nehls and Nicolas Vanermen. The authors represent a wide range of organisations and institutions including the Universities of Gothenburg, Hamburg and Hull, Alfred Wegener Institute, Cefas (UK), Research Institute for Nature and Forest (INBO), Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences, Vattenfall and several leading consultancies. Each chapter includes informative figures, tables, colour photographs and detailed case studies, including some from invited authors to showcase exciting new research. Other volumes: Volume 1: Onshore: Potential Effects (978-1-78427-119-0) Volume 2: Onshore: Monitoring and Mitigation (978-1-78427-123-7) Volume 4: Offshore: Monitoring and Mitigation (978-1-78427-131-2)
A charmingly illustrated ode to increasingly threatened wildlife.The much-loved illustrations of Hannah Dale celebrate a new generation of wildlife around the world, including many endangered animals. Born to Be Wild features 50 charming portraits of new cubs, chicks and calves, some with the mother and father, some in their pride or tribe and some setting off on their own. Wildlife has never been under such threat from climate change, habitation loss and poachers and hunters. This book is a timely reminder of the beauty of the wild and the accompanying text explains how the parents undertake their role of nurturer in the wild. From orangutans to humpback whales, tigers to hedgehogs, penguins to elephants, and meerkats to koalas, Hannah Dale captures and preserves the essence of wildlife in this pocket sized book. A wonderful reference and beautiful little gift book for nature lovers.
The Last Giants explores the rapid decline of one of the world's favourite animals and the measures required to halt their extinction, through Levison Wood's time spent with elephants in Africa. *Levison Wood's documentary series on WALKING WITH ELEPHANTS is available to watch now on Channel 4* This book comes at a critical time. Fifty years ago, Africa was home to just over 1.3 million elephants, but by 1990 the number had halved. Meanwhile in the span of a lifetime, the human population has more than doubled. In Levison Wood's The Last Giants, he explores the rapid decline of one of the world's favourite animals. Filled with stories from his own time spent travelling with elephants in Africa, and documenting their migration in his Channel 4 series, Walking With Elephants, the book is a passionate wake-up call for this endangered species we take for granted. The Last Giants was written to inspire us all to act - to learn more and help save the species from permanent extinction.
In Never Home Alone, biologist Rob Dunn takes us to the edge of biology's latest frontier: our own homes. Every house is a wilderness -- from the Egyptian meal moths in our kitchen cupboards and the yeast in a sourdough starter, to the camel crickets living in the basement, to the thousands of species of insects, bacteria, fungi, and plants live literally under our noses. Our reaction, too often, is to sterilise. As we do, we unwittingly cultivate an entirely new playground for evolution. Unfortunately, this means that we have created a range of new parasites, from antibiotic-resistant microbes to nearly impossible to kill cockroaches, to threaten ourselves with and destroyed helpful housemates. If we're not careful, the "healthier" we try to make our homes, the more likely we'll be putting our own health at risk. A rich natural history and a thrilling scientific investigation, Never Home Alone shows us that if are to truly thrive in our homes, we must learn to welcome the unknown guests that have been there the whole time.
This volume examines women and wildlife trafficking via a collection of narratives, case studies and theoretical syntheses from diverse voices and disciplines. Wildlife trafficking has been documented in over 120 countries around the world. While species extinction and animal abuse are major problems, wildlife trafficking is also associated with corruption, national insecurity, spread of zoonotic disease, undercutting sustainable development investments and erosion of cultural resources, among others. The role of women in wildlife trafficking has remained woefully under-addressed, with scientists and policymakers failing to consider the important causes and consequences of the gendered dimensions of wildlife trafficking. Although the roles of women in wildlife trafficking are mostly unknown, they are not unknowable. This volume helps fill a lacuna by examining the roles and experiences of women with case studies drawn from across the world, including Mexico, Cameroon, the Central African Republic, South Africa and Norway. Women can be wildlife trafficking preventors, perpetrators, and pawns; their roles in facilitating wildlife trafficking are considered from both a supply and a demand viewpoint. The first half of the book assesses the range of science, offering four different perspectives on how women and wildlife trafficking can be studied or evaluated. The second half of the book profiles diverse case studies from around the world, offering context-specific insight about on-the-ground activities associated with women and wildlife trafficking. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of wildlife crime, environmental law, human geography, conservation, gender studies and green criminology. It will also be of interest to NGOs and policymakers working to improve efficacy of efforts targeting wildlife crime, the illegal wildlife trade and conservation more broadly.
Join Joe Shute as he travels across Britain tracing the history of our seasons and discovering how they are changing. We talk about them. We plan our lives around them. The changing seasons are part of us all. But what happens when the weather changes beyond recognition? Joe Shute has spent years unpicking Britain’s love affair with the weather, poring over the centuries of folklore, customs and rituals our seasons have inspired. But in recent years Shute has noticed a curious thing: the British seasons are changing far faster and far more profoundly than we realise. Daffodils in December, frogspawn in November, swallows that no longer fly home, floods, wildfires and winters without snow. Nothing is behaving as it should, sending nature into an increasing state of flux. In Forecast, Shute travels all over Britain tracing the history of the seasons, and discovering the extent to which we are now growing disconnected from them. While documenting these warped rhythms caused by the changing weather, he records the parallels in his personal journey as he and his wife struggle to conceive a child. This is a book that races to keep up with the march of the seasons as they rapidly change course. It examines how the weather is reshaping the world around us, and asks what happens to centuries of culture, memory and identity when the very thing they subsist on is slipping away.
A book that emphasized the concept of wildlife habitat for a generation of students and professionals is now available to even more readers. "Habitat" is probably the most common term in ecological research. Elementary school students are introduced to the term, college students study the concept in depth, hunters make their plans based on it, nature explorers chat about the different types, and land managers spend enormous time and money modifying and restoring habitats. Although a broad swath of people now have some notion of what habitat is, the scientific community has by and large failed to define it concretely, despite repeated attempts in the literature to come to meaningful conclusions regarding what habitat is and how we should study, manipulate, and ultimately conserve it. Wildlife Habitat Conservation presents an authoritative review of the habitat concept, provides a scientifically rigorous definition, and emphasizes how we must focus on those critical factors contained within what we call habitat. The result is a habitat concept that promises long-term persistence of animal populations. Key concepts and items in the book include: * Rigorous and standard conceptual definitions of wildlife and their habitat. * A discussion of the essential integration of population demographics and population persistence with the concept of habitat. * The importance of carryover and lag effects, behavioral processes, genetics, and species interactions to our understanding of habitat. * An examination of spatiotemporal heterogeneity, realized through fragmentation, disruption to eco-evolutionary processes, and alterations to plant and animal assemblages. * An explanation of how anthropogenic effects alter population size and distribution (isolation), genetic processes, and species diversity (including exotic plants and animals). * Advocacy of proactive management and conservation through predictive modeling, restoration, and monitoring. Each chapter is accessibly written in a style that will be welcomed by private landowners and public resource managers at local, state, and federal levels. Also ideal for undergraduate and graduate natural resource and conservation courses, the book is organized perfectly for a one-semester class. Published in association with The Wildlife Society.
Winner of the 2014 Albert Corey Prize from the American Historical Association Winner of the 2013 Hal Rothman Award from the Western History Association Winner of the 2013 John Lyman Book Award in the Naval and Maritime Science and Technology category from the North American Society for Oceanic History For centuries, borders have been central to salmon management customs on the Salish Sea, but how those borders were drawn has had very different effects on the Northwest salmon fishery. Native peoples who fished the Salish Sea--which includes Puget Sound in Washington State, the Strait of Georgia in British Columbia, and the Strait of Juan de Fuca--drew social and cultural borders around salmon fishing locations and found ways to administer the resource in a sustainable way. Nineteenth-century Euro-Americans, who drew the Anglo-American border along the forty-ninth parallel, took a very different approach and ignored the salmon's patterns and life cycle. As the canned salmon industry grew and more people moved into the region, class and ethnic relations changed. Soon illegal fishing, broken contracts, and fish piracy were endemic--conditions that contributed to rampant overfishing, social tensions, and international mistrust. The Nature of Borders is about the ecological effects of imposing cultural and political borders on this critical West Coast salmon fishery. This transnational history provides an understanding of the modern Pacific salmon crisis and is particularly instructive as salmon conservation practices increasingly approximate those of the pre-contact Native past. The Nature of Borders reorients borderlands studies toward the Canada-U.S. border and also provides a new view of how borders influenced fishing practices and related management efforts over time. Watch the book trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ffLPgtCYHA&feature=channel_video_title
The relentless loss of biodiversity is among the greatest problems facing the world today. The third edition of this established textbook provides an updated and comprehensive overview of the essential background, concepts, and tools required to understand how genetics can be used to conserve species, reduce threat of extinction, and manage species of ecological or commercial importance. This edition is thoroughly revised to reflect the major contribution of genomics to conservation of populations and species. It includes two new chapters: "Genetic Monitoring" and a final "Conservation Genetics in Practice" chapter that addresses the role of science and policy in conservation genetics. New genomic techniques and statistical analyses are crucial tools for the conservation geneticist. This accessible and authoritative textbook provides an essential toolkit grounded in population genetics theory, coupled with basic and applied research examples from plants, animals, and microbes. The book examines genetic and phenotypic variation in natural populations, the principles and mechanisms of evolutionary change, evolutionary response to anthropogenic change, and applications in conservation and management. Conservation and the Genomics of Populations helps demystify genetics and genomics for conservation practitioners and early career scientists, so that population genetic theory and new genomic data can help raise the bar in conserving biodiversity in the most critical 20 year period in the history of life on Earth. It is aimed at a global market of applied population geneticists, conservation practitioners, and natural resource managers working for wildlife and habitat management agencies. It will be of particular relevance and use to upper undergraduate and graduate students taking courses in conservation biology, conservation genetics, and wildlife management.
Whether you have a lifelong love of nature or you cannot identify whether something is an elder or an alder, a daisy or a dandelion, or a heron or a herring gull, The Wonders of the Wild Places is the book for you. From the mountains to the sea, woodland to farmland, heaths and riversides we have many habitats in the United Kingdom, and The Wonders of the Wild Places provides information about some of the many species which inhabit these habitats. It is packed with interesting facts about nature designed to encourage you to go out and about and enjoy the wonders of the wild places. If you have ever wondered how birds migrate or which invertebrate has the largest brain, The Wonders of the Wild Places provides the answers - and many more. It covers many subjects from folklore to language, social history to the latest science. The Wonders of the Wild Places also explains the current threats to the natural world and provides details of what is being done to protect nature and also has suggestions of how individuals can help nature, from cleaning up your nearest beach to building a bug hotel. After reading The Wonders of the Wild Places you will never see the natural world in the same way again.
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.
'Exquisite and timely.' Maggie O'Farrell 'A rare and magical book. I didn't want it to end.' Bill Bryson 'A witty, intoxicating paean to Earth's wondrous creatures.' Observer 'A total miracle.' Max Porter ** SHORTLISTED FOR WATERSTONES AND FOYLES BOOK OF THE YEAR AWARDS ** The world is more astonishing, more miraculous and more wonderful than our wildest imaginings. In this passionately persuasive and sharply funny book, Katherine Rundell tells us how and why. A lavishly illustrated collection of the lives of some of the Earth's most astounding animals, The Golden Mole is a chance to be awestruck and lovestruck - to reckon with the beauty of the world, its fragility, and its strangeness. A swift flies two million kilometres in its lifetime. That's far enough to get to the moon and back twice over - and then once more to the moon. A pangolin keeps its tongue furled in a pouch by its hip. A Greenland shark can live five hundred years. A wombat once inspired a love poem. 'Rundell's pen is gold-tipped.' Sunday Times 'I love everything about this book: it is a rare little treasure.' Joanna Lumley 'Beautifully written.' Monty Don
Bumblebees are familiar and charismatic insects, occurring
throughout much of the world. They are increasingly being used as a
model organism for studying a wide range of ecological and
behavioural concepts, such as social organization, optimal foraging
theories, host-parasite interactions, and pollination. Recently
they have become a focus for conservationists due to mounting
evidence of range contractions and catastrophic extinctions with
some species disappearing from entire continents (e.g. in North
America). Only by improving our understanding of their ecology can
we devise sensible plans to conserve them. The role of bumblebees
as invasive species (e.g. Bombus terrestris in Japan) has also
become topical with the growing trade in commercial bumblebee nests
for tomato pollination leading to establishment of non-native
bumblebees in a number of countries.
Flowers in a Thorn Tree is the story of wildlife conservation in Northern Kenya. Over three years, Thackston made several trips to Kenya, whereupon he would imbed with ranger units of the Northern Rangelands Trust. They’re known as the Warriors for Peace and Wildlife. He lived off a troop-carrier. He would patrol, eat and sleep with the rangers, photographing them as they chased poachers, murderers, and as they worked within the pastoral communities. In this regard, the book is very much an “On the Road,” book. The aim of the photographer is to show and let the pictures tell, in a nonlinear and organic manner. NRT rangers work both on and off of their respective conservancies (there are 5 ranger groups, the 9-1 through the 9-5 sprinkled throughout northern Kenya.) Amongst the pastoral peoples, they have contacts who tell them about the movements of animal herds and potential poaching rings. They also work as peacekeepers within these communities with the idea that a happy and stable community is less likely to feel the need to poach an endangered animal. The mission to change the hearts and minds of the pastoral people regarding the treatment of endangered animals, is instilled within the ranks of the ranger units. The elephants and rhinos that appear in this book are all rescue animals or live on conservancies. They would probably not be alive without the efforts of men, particularly the rangers who populate my book. The rangers believe in their work. This group of humble men have one of the most important jobs in the world and they are succeeding. That’s good for you and me and our families. |
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