Nature Conservation

Eye of the Albatross takes us soaring to locales where whales, sea turtles, penguins, and shearwaters flourish in their own quotidian rhythms. Carl Safina’s guide and inspiration is an albatross he calls Amelia, whose life and far-flung flights he describes in fascinating detail. Interwoven with recollections of whalers and famous explorers, Eye of the Albatross probes the unmistakable environmental impact of the encounters between man and marine life.

The biggest redwood trees are over 1,000 years old, rising more than 35 stories in what's left of the once-vast, ancient redwood forest. Believed to be impossible to ascend, these majestic giants have remained unexplored until recently, when a tiny group of daring botanists and amateur naturalists discovered a lost, dangerous, and hauntingly beautiful world high above California.

We have a system in crisis, but Annie Leonard shows us that this is not the way things have to be. It's within our power to stop the environmental damage, social injustice, and health hazards caused by polluting production and excessive consumption, and Leonard shows us how. Expansive, galvanizing, and sobering yet optimistic, The Story of Stuff transforms how we think about our lives and our relationship to the planet.

To catch a Florida Man, you have to become one, and that’s what Officer Jeff Babauta did. As his ponytailed, whiskey-soaked alter ego, he established Sunshine Alligator Farm. His goal? Infiltrate the shady world of illegal poachers in the Florida Everglades in order to protect the natural world. A head-spinning adventure soon unfolds.

The Shotgun Conservationist doesn’t teach us how to hunt, it explores why we should hunt. As public lands remain imperiled, factory farms pollute the earth and subject animals to inhumane conditions, and global uncertainty presses us all to be more self-sufficient, there has never been a better time to take up hunting. Writer, natural historian, and public speaker Brant MacDuff has done just that. An avid animal lover and raised as a non-hunter, MacDuff started his journey intending to investigate the claim that “hunting is conservation.”

A flock of rare, endangered birds takes wing in A Is for Albatross: ABCs of Endangered Birds. Listeners can gawk at an emperor goose, spy on an Uluguru bushshrike, peek at a piping plover, and more!

“One of the most important utopian novels of the twentieth century that still has very important lessons to teach us. It will always convey to perfection the wild optimism of that ….

Honey bees get all the press, but the fascinating story of North America's native bees - an endangered species essential to our ecosystems and food supplies - is just as crucial. Our Native Bees is the result of Paige Embry's yearlong quest to learn more about these forgotten, yet fundamental, creatures. Through interviews with farmers, gardeners, scientists, and bee experts, Embry explores the importance of native bees and focuses on why they play a key role in gardening and agriculture.

A lifelong acolyte of the natural world, Annie Proulx brings her witness and research to the subject of wetlands and the vitally important role they play in preserving the environment—by storing the carbon emissions that accelerate climate change. Fens, bogs, swamps, and marine estuaries are crucial to the earth’s survival, and in four illuminating parts, Proulx documents their systemic destruction in pursuit of profit. Proulx describes the fens of 16th-century England, Canada’s Hudson Bay lowlands, Russia’s Great Vasyugan Mire, and America’s Okeefenokee National Wildlife Refuge.

Since its inception, however, America’s public land system has been embroiled in controversy - caught in the push and pull between the desire to develop the valuable resources the land holds or conserve them. Alarmed by rising tensions over the use of these lands, hunter, angler, and outdoor enthusiast Mark Kenyon set out to explore the spaces involved in this heated debate, and learn firsthand how they came to be and what their future might hold.

Reissued on the 10th anniversary of its publication, this classic work on our environmental crisis features a new introduction by the author, reviewing both the progress and ground lost in the fight to save the Earth. This impassioned plea for radical and life-renewing change is today still considered a groundbreaking work in environmental studies. McKibben's argument that the survival of the globe is dependent on a fundamental, philosophical shift in the way we relate to nature is more relevant than ever.

A heady blend of international intrigue, social theory, botanical lore, and ecological study, The Cactus Hunters offers complex insight into species extinction, conservation, and more-than-human care.

Got a pair of old tights, an empty can or a plastic bottle that you plan to throw away? You can upcycle those old things and turn them into new items you can use! Upcycling is recycling in a better way! Learn how to make a decorative pencil holder, a draft dodger to keep the cold out, or turn plastic bottles into bowling pins. What things can you create to reduce the use of plastic and metal?

As brilliantly polemical and richly descriptive as it was when it was published almost three decades ago, this new version of An Unnatural Order is sure to excite a passionate debate about our role in either saving the ecosystems upon which all species (including our own) rely, or bringing it all to an end.

Increasingly, cracks are appearing in the capacity of communities, ecosystems, and landscapes to provide the goods and services that sustain our planet's well-being. The response from most quarters has been for "more of the same" that created the situation in the first place: more control, more intensification, and greater efficiency. "Resilience thinking" offers a different way of understanding the world and a new approach to managing resources. It embraces human and natural systems as complex entities continually adapting through cycles of change.

When acclaimed naturalist Sy Montgomery and wildlife artist Matt Patterson arrive at Turtle Rescue League, they are greeted by hundreds of turtles recovering from injury and illness. Endangered by cars and highways, pollution and poachers, these turtles—with wounds so severe that even veterinarians would have dismissed them as fatal—are given a second chance at life. The League’s founders, Natasha and Alexxia, live by one motto: Never give up on a turtle.

The Wanderer is the first book ever to chart a wolf's movement, almost to the day, for an extended period of time. Informed by unique access to research and field notes, award-winning author, photographer, and naturalist Tom Walker shares the story of Wolf 258, nicknamed "the Wanderer," part of a research project that studied wolves in Alaska's Yukon-Charley Rivers National Preserve for more than two decades.

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.

Roy was instrumental in returning the osprey, red kite and golden eagle to the British Isles, but the road to reintroduction isn’t an easy one. In what will surely be the seminal book on British reintroductions, Roy details the painstaking process of returning the Goldeneye to Scotland, one duckling at a time, the die-hard determination needed to make a dazzling success of the red kite reintroduction and the leap of faith we will all need to make to accept sharing our forests and skies with large carnivores again.

The conception and building of the Appalachian Trail is a story of unforgettable characters who explored it, defined it, and captured national attention by hiking it. From Grandma Gatewood—a mother of eleven who thru-hiked in canvas sneakers and a drawstring duffle—to Bill Bryson, author of the best-selling A Walk in the Woods, the AT has seized the American imagination like no other hiking path. The 2,000-mile-long hike from Georgia to Maine is not just a trail through the woods, but a set of ideas about nature etched in the forest floor.