For nearly twenty years, alone and unarmed, author Doug Peacock traversed the rugged mountains of Montana and Wyoming tracking the magnificent grizzly. His narrative takes us into the bear's habitat, where we observe directly this majestic animal's behavior, from hunting strategies, mating patterns, and denning habits to social hierarchy and methods of communication. As Peacock tracks the bears, his story turns into a story about the breaking down of suspicion between man and beast in the wild.

Very few of the 2.5 million people who visit Yellowstone National Park and who are awed by America's only continuously wild and genetically pure bison herd are aware that over the past decade, state and federal agencies have engaged in the wanton slaughter of 3,500 of these magnificent animals, solely because they wandered out of delineated confines of the National Park.       Author Daniel Brister has dedicated his life to protecting the buffalo through field work and at every level of the policy arena. In the Presence of Buffalo was inspired by his desire to see the buffalo honored and respected and the slaughter stopped. This inspiring narrative weaves personal reflections and stories of the present-day buffalo slaughter with information gathered through historical, cultural, and scientific research. Five chapters and an appendix explore the relationship between human beings and bison, or buffalo, as they are popularly called in this country. 

Very few of the 2.5 million people who visit Yellowstone National Park and who are awed by America's only continuously wild and genetically pure bison herd are aware that over the past decade, state and federal agencies have engaged in the wanton slaughter of 3,500 of these magnificent animals, solely because they wandered out of delineated confines of the National Park.       Author Daniel Brister has dedicated his life to protecting the buffalo through field work and at every level of the policy arena. In the Presence of Buffalo was inspired by his desire to see the buffalo honored and respected and the slaughter stopped. This inspiring narrative weaves personal reflections and stories of the present-day buffalo slaughter with information gathered through historical, cultural, and scientific research. Five chapters and an appendix explore the relationship between human beings and bison, or buffalo, as they are popularly called in this country. 

"Doug Peacock, as ever, walks point for all of us. Not since Bill McKibben's "The End of Nature" has a book of such import been presented to readers. Peacock's intelligence defies measure. His is a beautiful, feral heart, always robust, relentless with its love and desire for the human race to survive, and be sculpted by the coming hard times: to learn a magnificent humility, even so late in the game. Doug Peacock's mind is a marvel--there could be no more generous act than the writing of this book. It is a crowning achievement in a long career sent in service of beauty and the dignity of life."--Rick Bass, author of "Why I Came West "and "The Lives of Rocks"

Our climate is changing fast. The future is uncertain, probably fiery, and likely terrifying. Yet shifting weather patterns have threatened humans before, right here in North America, when people first colonized this continent. About 15,000 years ago, the weather began to warm, melting the huge glaciers of the Late Pleistocene. In this brand new landscape, humans managed to adapt to unfamiliar habitats and dangerous creatures in the midst of a wildly fluctuating climate. What was it like to live with huge pack-hunting lions, saber-toothed cats, dire wolves, and gigantic short-faced bears, to hunt now extinct horses, camels, and mammoth? Are there lessons for modern people lingering along this ancient trail?

The shifting weather patterns of today--what we call "global warming"--will far exceed anything our ancestors previously faced. Doug Peacock's latest narrative explores the full circle of climate change, from the death of the megafauna to the depletion of the ozone, in a deeply personal story that takes readers from Peacock's participation in an archeological dig for early Clovis remains in Livingston, MT, near his home, to the death of the local whitebark pine trees in the same region, as a result of changes in the migration pattern of pine beetles with the warming seasons.

Writer and adventurer Doug Peacock has spent the past fifty years wandering the earth's wildest places, studying grizzly bears and advocating for the preservation of wilderness. He is the author of "Grizzly Years"; "Baja"; and "Walking It Off "and co-author of "The Essential Grizzly." Peacock was named a 2007 Guggenheim Fellow, and a 2011 Lannan Fellow.

When he wrote The Monkey Wrench Gang in 1975, Edward Abbey became the spokesperson for a generation of Americans angered by the unthinking destruction of our natural heritage. Without consultation, Abbey based the central character of eco-guerilla George Washington Hayduke on his friend Doug Peacock. Since then Peacock has become an articulate environmental individualist writing about the West's abundant wildscapes. Abbey and Peacock had an at times stormy, almost father and son relationship that was peacefully resolved in Abbey's last days before his death in 1989. This rich recollection of their relationship and the dry places they explored are recalled in Peacock's honest and heartfelt style in this poignant memoir.

Winner of ForeWord Magazine's 2006 Gold Award for Nature Book of the Year The most comprehensive and compelling chronicle of human-grizzly-bear interactions ever written, In the Presence of Grizzlies (formerly published as The Essential Grizzly) examines the fragile bond between ourselves and the quintessential alpha predator. Doug and Andrea Peacock contend that the conservation of big, wild, sometimes dangerous animals is essential for the survival of our own species and for the sense of humility necessary for rational thought. They explore a wide range of human-grizzly encounters through interviews with biologists, mauling victims, hunters, and photographers. To these they add unique portraits-sketches of real grizzlies from the bear's viewpoint-and up-to-date commentary on such developments as the declassification of grizzlies as an endangered species. In the Presence of Grizzlies eclipses all existing books on bear behavior and bear attacks, providing readers with a twenty-first-century context for revisiting the original shudder of Homo sapiens-the bear in the cave of our genesis.