Science Ecology

Before skyscrapers and smokestacks rose across the eastern U.S., elk, bison, wolves, and cougars roamed. Typically imagined as icons of the West, these large mammals are in fact native to what was once a kind of Eden—towering forests in the Northeast, rolling prairies in the Midwest, and cypress swamps in the Deep South. But, in mere decades, industrialization and unregulated hunting brought these emblems of the East to the precipice of extinction; by the 1950s, squirrels were one of the few wild mammals an easterner was likely to encounter.

Great Sierra Waters, the Eastern Slope is a definitive study of the Truckee River, but also includes the Owens and the East Walker. It's a serious fly-fishing book that shows you how to fish these rivers, what to use as far as fly patterns, and how to tie them for your greatest success.

Koalas regularly appeared in Australian biologist Danielle Clode's backyard, but it was only when a bushfire threatened that she truly paid them attention. In vivid, descriptive prose, Clode embarks on a delightful and surprising journey through evolutionary biology, natural history, and ecology to understand where these enigmatic animals came from and what their future may hold. She begins her search with the fossils of ancient giant koalas, delving into why the modern koala has become the lone survivor of a once-diverse family of uniquely Australian marsupials.

Ryan Goldberg came to birding unexpectedly, but as many first timers do after seeing their “spark” bird, he fell hard. Enamored by the incredible variety of species that pass through his hometown of New York City, and with the other passionate birders he meets, he embarks on a year of reporting on the natural wonders hiding amidst the skyscrapers. He learns that millions of birds migrate through the city each year–over 400 different species have been found in New York, way more than in Yellowstone National Park.

The first book to tackle this subject in detail, based on more than 50 interviews from seven countries, Living with Lynx will be of relevance to anyone with an interest in the future of nature, farming and the countryside. Personal, detailed, unflinching and engaging, it adds a great deal to this rapidly evolving debate.

On Natural Capital has descriptive copy which is not yet available from the Publisher.

In The Buck That Buries its Poo, naturalist Quinton Coetzee answers these and many other intriguing wildlife questions. He also dispels countless myths and elucidates some of the legends that surroundcreatures in the South African bush we thought we knew all about. For example, bats do not get tangled in people’s hair (because they are far too adept at flying) and elephants are not afraid of mice (but they do fear bees!).

Delving deep into an intricate web of unlikely heroes, power struggles, and living legends, Elephants in the Hourglass takes listeners on an extraordinary journey of discovery. In her nonfiction debut, Kim Frank blends personal narrative, vivid descriptions, and meticulous research as she illuminates the ways we seek to survive on our rapidly changing planet.

El planeta está cambiando. Las poblaciones también. Algunas se expanden sin control. Otras se desmoronan en silencio. ¿Cómo entender lo que está ocurriendo? ¿Y qué podemos hacer al respecto?

You don’t have to be an animal rights activist to take an interest in how we treat other creatures. All of us, with few exceptions, use animals in some way: for food, research, recreation, and companionship. In Britain, we eat around a billion chickens every year, while 60 percent of all mammals on Earth, by biomass, are now livestock.

Desde las junglas húmedas de Costa Rica hasta el fétido entorno de las zonas rebeldes del sur de Sudán, Carl Zimmer nos guía a través de un viaje por el universo de los parásitos, un mundo en el que habitamos sin ser conscientes. Así nos descubre no solo la forma de vida más exitosa del planeta, sino aquella que da forma a los ecosistemas y es el motor de la evolución. Zimmer nos muestra, pues, cuánto han evolucionado estos bichos, y relata la aterradora facilidad con que pueden devorar a quien los hospeda, e incluso controlar su conducta.

Most residents of the eastern United States never get to see an old-growth forest. They think perhaps these forests are too far away, or they dont know how to find them. Joan Maloof's Among the Ancients remedies this. In her intelligent, lyrical book, Maloof takes you to twenty-six forests--one in each state east of the Mississippi River and all open to the public. She tells you how to get there and what you will find when you arrive.

With science now recognizing animal consciousness, intelligence, emotion and even morality, there must come an awareness of our own moral responsibilities towards other beings. But there's another reason to consider animals' well-being—because it is intertwined with our own.

Britain is the home of the badger — there are more badgers per square kilometre in this country than in any other. And yet many of us have never seen one in the wild. They are enigmatic, nocturnal creatures who vanish into their labyrinthine underground setts at the first hint of a human. Here, Patrick Barkham follows in the footsteps of his badger-loving grandmother, to meet the feeders, farmers and scientists who know their way around Badgerlands: the mysterious world in which these distinctively striped creatures live out their lives.

Si la historia de la Tierra se redujera a un año, nuestra especie surgiría en los últimos treinta minutos. Pero la vida ha existido durante 3.700 millones de años, la mayor parte de la historia de nuestro planeta y más de una cuarta parte de la edad del universo. ¿Qué hicieron esos organismos durante todo este tiempo?

Vegan Entanglements: Dismantling Racial and Carceral Veganism invites over 15 activists, scholars, and journalists to grapple with some of the most topical issues facing the animal protection movement, specifically its historical dependence on the prison - and immigration - industrial complexes and the carceral logics that inform and normalize the violence of incarceration and deportation.

Why do birds have regional accents? Can horses learn maths? What do animals without eyes see? Questions such as these have fascinated scientists and animal lovers alike long before ethology – the study of animal behaviour – became recognised as a science in the 1970s. Now, as issues of conservation and welfare dominate the field, an understanding of how and why animals act the way they do has become even more critical. In Animal Behaviour, John A. Byers explains the mechanisms and motivations behind a range of animal movements.

In Why Whales Sing, bioacoustician and cognitive scientist Eduardo Mercado transforms our understanding of these enigmatic sounds and proposes a groundbreaking theory that challenges decades of established science.

What if saving our home planet starts with giving other species space to roam? How can we re-shape our human-built landscapes to serve both people and wildlife? These are the questions that Hillary Rosner attempts to answer in Roam, an urgent quest to figure out how to stitch our fragmented planet back together. It’s about the people trying to reconstruct landscapes where animals can once again move freely, as they did for millennia.

The Wild East explores the social, political, and environmental changes in the Great Smoky Mountains during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Although this national park is most often portrayed as a triumph of wilderness preservation, Margaret Lynn Brown concludes that the largest forested region in the eastern United States is actually a recreated wilderness—a product of restoration and even manipulation of the land.