A century ago, many people had given up on the wood duck, dooming it to extinction along with the passenger pigeon and Carolina parakeet. Today, it's one of the most familiar and most harvested ducks in the eastern half of the country, and one of America's great conservation success stories.In With Wings Extended, Minnesota conservationist Greg Hoch introduces readers to a duck they probably recognize but may not know well. This book shows how almost anyone can get involved in conservation and do something for wildlife beyond writing checks to conservation organizations. Hoch illustrates the complexities of wildlife and habitat management that landowners as well as state and federal wildlife agencies deal with on a daily basis, and takes readers through the life stages of what is largely considered the most beautiful duck in the world. In this fascinating and practical read, Hoch blends the historical literature about the species with modern science, and also shows how our views of conservation have changed over the last century.

For ten months of the year, the prairiechicken's drab colors allow it to disappear into the landscape. However, in April and May this grouse is one of the most outrageously flamboyant birds in North America. Competing with each other for the attention of females, males gather before dawn in an explosion of sights and sounds-"booming from the mists of nowhere," as Aldo Leopold wrote decades ago. There's nothing else like it, and it is perilously close to being lost. In this book, ecologist Greg Hoch shows that we can ensure that this iconic bird flourishes once again. Skillfully interweaving lyrical accounts from early settlers, hunters, and pioneer naturalists with recent scientific research on the grouse and its favored grasslands, Hoch reveals that the prairiechicken played a key role in the American settlement of the Midwest. Many hungry pioneers regularly shot and ate the bird, as well as trapping hundreds of thousands, shipping them eastward by the trainload for coastal suppers. As a result of both hunting and habitat loss, the bird's numbers plummeted to extinction across 90 percent of its original habitat. Iowa, whose tallgrass prairies formed the very center of the greater prairiechicken's range, no longer supports a native population of the bird most symbolic of prairie habitat. The steep decline in the prairiechicken population is one of the great tragedies of twentiethcentury wildlife management and agricultural practices. However, Hoch gives us reason for optimism. These birds can thrive in agriculturally productive grasslands. Careful grazing, reduced use of pesticides, wellplaced wildlife corridors, planned burning, higher plant, animal, and insect diversity: these are the keys. If enough blocks of healthy grasslands are scattered over the midwestern landscape, there will be prairiechickens-and many of their fellow creatures of the tall grasses. Farmers, ranchers, conservationists, and citizens can reverse the decline of grassland birds and insure that future generations will hear the booming of the prairiechicken.

The tallgrass prairie once stretched from Indiana to Kansas to Minnesota. Most of this land is now growing corn and soybeans. In To Find a Pasqueflower, Greg Hoch shows us that the tallgrass prairie is the most endangered ecosystem on the continent, but it's also an ecosystem that people can play an active role in restoring. Hoch blends history, culture, and science into a unified narrative of the tallgrass prairie, with an emphasis on humans' participation in its development and destruction. Hoch also demonstrates how variable and dynamic the prairie is, creating both challenges and opportunities for those who manage and restore and appreciate it.

Woodcock are one of the oddest birds in North America. They are a shorebird that got lost and ended up in the scrubby parts of the forest, and look like they were put together with the leftover parts of other birds. Oddities aside, each spring they rise to great beauty with their sky dance at dusk. Greg Hoch combines natural history, land management, scientific knowledge, and personal observation to examine this little game bird. Woodcock have a complex life history and the management of their habitat is also complex. The health of this bird can be considered a key indicator of what good forests look like.