Environmental Ecology

The Adirondack region of New York's rural North Country forms the nation's largest State Park, with a territory as large as Vermont. Planning experts view the APA as a triumph of sustainability that balances human activity with the preservation of wild ecosystems. The truth isn't as pretty. The story of the APA, told here for the first time, is a complex, troubled tale of political dueling and communities pushed to the brink of violence.

An examination of the Scientific Revolution that shows how the mechanistic world view of modern science has sanctioned the exploitation of nature, unrestrained commercial expansion, and a new socioeconomic order that subordinates women.

Climate Change and the Road to Net-Zero is a story of how humanity has broken free from the shackles of poverty, suffering, and war and for the first time in human history, grown both population and prosperity. It’s also a story of how a single species has reconfigured the natural world, repurposed the Earth’s resources, and begun to reengineer the climate. The book uses these conflicting narratives to explore the science, economics, technology, and politics of climate change.

This book shows that the quantitative mathematical models policy makers and government administrators use to form environmental policies are seriously flawed. Based on unrealistic and sometimes false assumptions, these models often yield answers that support unwise policies. Writing for the general, nonmathematician reader, the authors begin with a riveting account of the extinction of the North Atlantic cod on the Grand Banks of Canada.

While politicians, entrepreneurs, and even school children could tell you that sustainability is an important and nearly universal value, many of them, and many of us, may struggle to define the term, let alone trace its history. What is sustainability? Is it always about the environment? What science do we need to fully grasp what it requires? What does sustainability mean for business? How can governments plan for a sustainable future?

Deep in the heart of the Amazon, the city of Rondon do Pará, Brazil, lived for decades in the shadow of land barons, or fazendeiros, who maintained control of the region through unscrupulous land grabs and egregious human rights violations. They razed and burned the jungle, expelled small-scale farmers and Indigenous tribes from their lands, and treated their farmhands as slaves—all with impunity.

The Pasagoula River is the largest unobstructed river in the continuous United States. Because of this lack of restraint, the river has been left to rise and fall naturally with the seasons, overflowing annually into the adjoining bottomland surrounded by some of the most ecologically diverse woodlands, in North America. Herman Murrah lived his entire life on the banks and in the swamp surrounding this river in southeast Mississippi. In this book, Herman's son Davy details the adventures that continue to inspire young conservationists in the fight to protect our remaining natural ecosystems.

As humans accelerate global warming while laying waste to the environment, animals and plants must flee to the margins: on scattered nature reserves, between major highways, or among urban sprawl. And when even these places become too hot and inhospitable, wildlife is left with only one path to survival: an often-formidable journey toward the poles as they race to find a new home in a warming world. Award-winning environmental journalist Benjamin von Brackel traces these awe-inspiring journeys and celebrates the remarkable resilience of species around the world.

The ocean sustains life on our planet, from absorbing carbon to regulating temperatures. But as we exhaust the resources on land, its reserves are increasingly dredged and extracted to fuel new industry. Today we are facing two urgent challenges at sea: massive environmental destruction, and spiraling inequality in the ocean economy. Chris Armstrong reveals how existing governing institutions are failing to respond to the most pressing problems of our time.

Nature on the brink? Maybe not. With so much bad news in the world, we forget how much environmental progress has been made. In a narrative that reaches from Native American tribal practices to public health and commercial hunting, Wild at Heart shows how western attitudes towards nature have changed dramatically in the last five hundred years. Humans can learn from the past, and our choices today will determine whether nature survives.

Six days after giving birth, a polar bear named Aurora got up and walked away from her den at the Columbus Zoo, leaving her tiny squealing cub to fend for herself. Hours later, Aurora still hadn’t returned. The cub was furless and blind, and with her temperature dropping dangerously, the zookeepers entrusted with her care felt they had no choice: They would have to raise one of the most dangerous predators in the world by hand. Over the next few weeks, a group of veterinarians and zookeepers worked around the clock to save the cub, whom they called Nora.

Why Elephants Cry is a fascinating frolic through the literature and evidence surrounding the use of unusual behavior of animals to measure and predict the environment. The role of animals, from the smallest ant to the biggest elephant, as predictors of environmental changes is framed around the climate crisis, which highlights the increasingly important part that animals will have to play in the future. Renowned biologist Professor John T. Hancock collects anecdotal stories and myths along with scientific evidence, demonstrating that observation of animals can be of tangible use.

In this brave and provocative work, former US Vice President Al Gore asserts that only a radical rethinking of our relationship with nature will save the Earth's ecology for future generations. Gore's analysis of where we've gone wrong ranges across politics, history, science, economics, psychology, and religion. He argues that only a worldwide mobilization can save us from disaster and presents a brilliant and comprehensive plan for action that encompasses not only the Earth's ecology, but also population trends, appropriate technology, and environmental education.

For centuries, the West has produced stories about the future in which humans use advanced science and technology to transform the Earth. Michael Rawson uses a wide range of works that include Francis Bacon's New Atlantis, the science fiction novels of Jules Verne, and even the speculations of think tanks like the RAND Corporation to reveal the environmental paradox at the heart of these narratives: the single-minded expectation of unlimited growth on a finite planet.

Where fresh water appears to be abundant and generally accessible, chronic pollution may be relatively ignored as a public issue. Yet there are those whose lives, livelihoods, and traditions are touched directly by the destructive albeit essential relationship between humans and water.

Although it is widely understood that energy and water are the world’s two most critical resources, their vital interconnections and vulnerabilities are less often recognized. This farsighted audiobook offers a new, holistic way of thinking about energy and water - a big picture approach that reveals the interdependence of the two resources, identifies the seriousness of the challenges, and lays out an optimistic approach with an array of solutions to ensure continuing sustainability.

Black Snake is the story of four leaders - LaDonna Allard, Jasilyn Charger, Lisa DeVille, and Kandi White - and their fight against the pipeline. It is the story of a new generation of environmental activists, galvanized at Standing Rock, becoming the protectors of America's natural resources.

It is the Winter Solstice and Sarah Sands is sitting by her father's bedside, bracing herself for loss. What her father needs to do, she thinks, is conserve his energy - to hibernate like a hedgehog. When the hedgehog curls up in its bed of leaves, its heart rate slows, its body temperature drops and for months there it remains, hardly breathing at all. A few days earlier, Sarah and her grandson had found a poorly hedgehog in the garden and taken it to the local hedgehog sanctuary. They named her Peggy, and her fate had become a matter of pressing concern.

Our world is changing, the climate is changing. Species that have long existed on our planet are disappearing and resources are becoming scarce. People are slowly realizing that development is not always good. We are exploiting our earth, but we should be looking after it, because we only have this one. Slowly, however, a rethink is taking place and people are trying to undo past mistakes. Attempts are being made to reduce CO₂ emissions, conserve the earth's resources and pay more attention to nature. But once we have become accustomed to a certain standard of living, it is difficult to give it up again or change our habits.

The once denuded Northeastern United States is now a region of trees. Nature Next Door argues that the growth of cities, the construction of parks, the transformation of farming, the boom in tourism, and changes in the timber industry have together brought about a return of Northeastern forests. Although historians and historical actors alike have seen urban and rural areas as distinct, they are in fact intertwined, and the dichotomies of farm and forest, agriculture and industry, and nature and culture break down when the focus is on the history of Northeastern woods.