front cover of Ignition
Ignition
What You Can Do to Fight Global Warming and Spark a Movement
Edited by Jonathan Isham and Sissel Waage
Island Press, 2007
The evidence is irrefutable: global warming is real. While the debate continues about just how much damage spiking temperatures will wreak, we know the threat to our homes, health, and even way of life is dire. So why isn’t America doing anything? Where is the national campaign to stop this catastrophe?
It may lie between the covers of this book. Ignition brings together some of the world’s finest thinkers and advocates to jump start the ultimate green revolution. Including celebrated writers like Bill McKibben and renowned scholars like Gus Speth, as well as young activists, the authors draw on direct experience in grassroots organization, education, law, and social leadership. Their approaches are various, from building coalitions to win political battles to rallying shareholders to change corporate behavior. But they share a belief that private fears about deadly heat waves and disastrous hurricanes can translate into powerful public action.
For anyone who feels compelled to do more than change their light bulbs or occasionally carpool, Ignition is an essential guide. Combining incisive essays with success stories and web resources, the book helps readers answer the most important question we all face: “What can I do?”
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Immersion
The Science and Mystery of Freshwater Mussels
Abbie Gascho Landis
Island Press, 2017
"This is nature writing at its best." —E.O. Wilson

"Eloquent treatise...Landis's book is as much call to action as paean to mesmerizing molluscs." —Nature

"Rich, accurate, and moving." —New Scientist

"A lyrical love letter to the imperiled freshwater mussel." —Science

Abbie Gascho Landis first fell for freshwater mussels while submerged in an Alabama creek, her pregnant belly squeezed into a wetsuit. After an hour of fruitless scanning, a mussel materialized from the rocks—a little spectaclecase, herself pregnant, filtering the river water through a delicate body while her gills bulged with offspring. In that moment of connection, Landis became a mussel groupie, obsessed with learning more about the creatures’ hidden lives. She isn’t the only fanatic; the shy mollusks, so vital to the health of rivers around the world, have a way of inspiring unusual devotion.

In Immersion, Landis brings readers to a hotbed of mussel diversity, the American Southeast, to seek mussels where they eat, procreate, and, too often, perish. Accompanied often by her husband, a mussel scientist, and her young children, she learned to see mussels on the creekbed, to tell a spectaclecase from a pigtoe, and to worry what vanishing mussels—70 percent of North American species are imperiled—will mean for humans and wildlife alike. In Immersion, Landis shares this journey, traveling from perilous river surveys to dry streambeds and into laboratories where endangered mussels are raised one precious life at a time.

Mussels have much to teach us about the health of our watersheds if we step into the creek and take a closer look at their lives. In the tradition of writers like Terry Tempest Williams and Sy Montgomery, Landis gracefully chronicles these untold stories with a veterinarian’s careful eye and the curiosity of a naturalist. In turns joyful and sobering, Immersion is an invitation to see rivers from a mussel’s perspective, a celebration of the wild lives visible to those who learn to search.
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In a Perfect Ocean
The State Of Fisheries And Ecosystems In The North Atlantic Ocean
Daniel Pauly and Jay Maclean
Island Press, 2002

Recent decades have been marked by the decline or collapse of one fishery after another around the world, from swordfish in the North Atlantic to orange roughy in the South Pacific. While the effects of a collapse on local economies and fishing-dependent communities have generated much discussion, little attention has been paid to its impacts on the overall health of the ocean's ecosystems.

In a Perfect Ocean: The State of Fisheries and Ecosystems in the North Atlantic Ocean presents the first empirical assessment of the status of ecosystems in the North Atlantic ocean. Drawing on a wide range of studies including original research conducted for this volume, the authors analyze 14 large marine ecosystems to provide an indisputable picture of an ocean whose ecology has been dramatically altered, resulting in a phenomenon described by the authors as "fishing down the food web." The book:

  • provides a snapshot of the past health of the North Atlantic and compares it to its present status
  • presents a rigorous scientific assessment based on the key criteria of fisheries catches, biomass, and trophic level
  • considers the factors that have led to the current situation
  • describes the policy options available for halting the decline
  • offers recommendations for restoring the North Atlantic
An original and powerful series of maps and charts illustrate where the effects of overfishing are the most pronounced and highlight the interactions among various factors contributing to the overall decline of the North Atlantic's ecosystems.

This is the first in a series of assessments by the world's leading marine scientists, entitled "The State of the World's Oceans." In a Perfect Ocean: The State of Fisheries and Ecosystems in the North Atlantic Ocean is a landmark study, the first of its kind to make a comprehensive, ecosystem-based assessment of the North Atlantic Ocean, and will be essential reading for policymakers at the state, national, and international level concerned with fisheries management, as well for scientists, researchers, and activists concerned with marine issues or fishing and the fisheries industry.

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In Praise of Nature
Edited by Stephanie Mills; Foreword by Tom Brokaw
Island Press, 1990

Five thought-provoking essays by Stephanie Mills are followed by reviews and excerpts of the ten most important pieces of related literature written by experts in the various fields. Reviewers include Peter Borrelli, David Brower, Ernest Callenbach, J. Baird Callicott, Lois Gibbs, and others. Following the essays is an annotated bibliography listing over 100 important environmental works.

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In Search of Nature
Edward O. Wilson
Island Press, 1996
"

Perhaps more than any other scientist of our century, Edward O. Wilson has scrutinized animals in their natural settings, tweezing out the dynamics of their social organization, their relationship with their environments, and their behavior, not only for what it tells us about the animals themselves, but for what it can tell us about human nature and our own behavior. He has brought the fascinating and sometimes surprising results of these studies to general readers through a remarkable collection of books, including The Diversity of Life, The Ants, On Human Nature, and Sociobiology. The grace and precision with which he writes of seemingly complex topics has earned him two Pulitzer prizes, and the admiration of scientists and general readers around the world.

In Search of Nature presents for the first time a collection of the seminal short writings of Edward O. Wilson, addressing in brief and eminently readable form the themes that have actively engaged this remarkable intellect throughout his career.

""The central theme of the essays is that wild nature and human nature are closely interwoven. I argue that the only way to make complete sense of either is by examining both closely and together as products of evolution.... Human behavior is seen not just as the product of recorded history, ten thousand years recent, but of deep history, the combined genetic and cultural changes that created humanity over hundreds of thousands of years. We need this longer view, I believe, not only to understand our species, but more firmly to secure its future.

The book is composed of three sections. ""Animal Nature, Human Nature"" ranges from serpents to sharks to sociality in ants. It asks how and why the universal aversion to snakes might have evolved in humans and primates, marvels at the diversity of the world's 350 species of shark and how their adaptive success has affected our conception of the world, and admonishes us to ""be careful of little lives""-to see in the construction of insect social systems ""another grand experiment in evolution for our delectation.

""The Patterns of Nature"" probes at the foundation of sociobiology, asking what is the underlying genetic basis of social behavior, and what that means for the future of the human species. Beginning with altruism and aggression, the two poles of behavior, these essays describe how science, like art, adds new information to the accumulated wisdom, establishing new patterns of explanation and inquiry. In ""The Bird of Paradise: The Hunter and the Poet,"" the analytic and synthetic impulses-exemplified in the sciences and the humanities-are called upon to give full definition to the human prospect.

""Nature's Abundance"" celebrates biodiversity, explaining its fundamental importance to the continued existence of humanity. From ""The Little Things That Run the World""-invertebrate species that make life possible for everyone and everything else-to the emergent belief of many scientists in the human species' possible innate affinity for other living things, known as biophilia, Wilson sets forth clear and compelling reasons why humans should concern themselves with species loss. ""Is Humanity Suicidal?"" compares the environmentalist's view with that of the exemptionalist, who holds that since humankind is transcendent in intelligence and spirit, our species must have been released from the iron laws of ecology that bind all other species. Not without optimism, Wilson concludes that we are smart enough and have time enough to avoid an environmental catastrophe of civilization-threatening dimensions-if we are willing both to redirect our science and technology and to reconsider our self-image as a species.

In Search of Nature is a lively and accessible introduction to the writings of one of the most brilliant scientists of the 20th century. Imaginatively illustrated by noted artist Laura Southworth, it is a book all readers will treasure."

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In the Dust of Kilimanjaro
David Western
Island Press, 1997

"Kilimanjaro slowly takes shape as the night sounds die, its glaciated peak tinged pink in the early light. A solitary wildebeest stares motionless as if mesmerized by the towering mass; a small caravan of giraffe drifts across the plain in solitary file, necks undulating to the slow rhythm of their gangling stride. There is an inexplicable deja vu about the African savannas, as if some subliminal memory is tweaked by the birthplace of our hominid lineage." --from In the Dust of Kilimanjaro

In the Dust of Kilimanjaro is the extraordinary story of one man's struggle to protect Kenya's wildlife. World-renowned conservationist David Western -- who grew up in Africa and whose life is intertwined with the lives of its animals and indigenous peoples -- presents a history of African wildlife conservation and an intimate glimpse into his life as a global spokesperson and one of Kenya's most prominent citizens.

Beginning with his childhood adventures hunting in rural Tanganyika (now Tanzania), Western describes how and why the African continent came to hold such power over him. In lyrical prose, he recounts the years of solitary fieldwork in and around Amboseli National Park that led to his gradual awakening to what was happening to the animals and people there. His immersion in the culture and ecology of the region made him realize that without an integrated approach to conservation, one that involved people as well as animals, Kenya's most magnificent creatures would be lost forever.

His accounts of his friendships with the Maasai add a personal dimension to the book that gives the reader new appreciation for the centuries-old links between Africa's wildlife and people. Continued coexistence rather than segregation, he argues, offers the best hope for the world's wildlife. Western describes how his unique understanding of the potentially devastating problems in the region helped him pioneer a new approach to global wildlife conservation that balances the needs of people and wildlife without excluding one or the other.

More than an exceptional autobiography, In the Dust of Kilimanjaro is a riveting look at local and global efforts to preserve species and protect ecosystems. It is the definitive story of wildlife conservation in Africa with a strong and timely message about co-existence between humans and animals.

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In the Thick of It
My Life in the Sierra Club
Michael McCloskey
Island Press, 2005

In an age when many of the major environmental policies established over the past four decades are under siege, Michael McCloskey reminds us of better days. . .days when conservation initiatives were seen not as political lightning rods, but as opportunities to cope with disturbing threats to the quality of our environment.

In 1961, a young let's-get-it-done McCloskey was hired as the Sierra Club's first field representative for the Northwest. From there, for nearly forty years, he rose to guide the oldest and most powerful environmental organization in the world. He helped to pave the way for the original Wilderness Act in 1964, and as the club's conservation director worked to see it implemented. He successfully lobbied for the creation of new national parks and wilderness areas, the North Cascades and Redwood National Park among them. As executive director, he was present at the creation of Earthday in 1970, directed lobbying for the enactment of over one hundred environmental laws, and watched Sierra Club membership rise from about 70,000 to more than 500,000. In the nineties, he led the Sierra Club in mounting fights against attempts to undercut EPA regulations and against trade agreements that curtailed environmental programs.

His tenure was no walk in the park or smooth glide across a placid mountain lake. The large and very public Sierra Club was fraught with brush fires, seismic tremors, and pitched battles, both within and without. He survived the ouster of his mentor, the charismatic but controversial David Brower, succeeding him as the second executive director in the club's history, and put the Sierra Club back on firm financial footing. Under less than ideal political circumstances, McCloskey helped to keep the environmental agenda moving steadily forward, even in the face of Ronald Reagan's virulently pro-development Interior Secretary James Watt (whom he was instrumental in expelling from office).

In the Thick of It describes not only McCloskey's life as an environmental activist; it reveals the inner workings and politics of one of the nation's most influential environmental nonprofit organizations during an era of ground-breaking environmental legislation. In addition to sharing the details of battles exhilaratingly won and disappointingly lost on the environmental front, he demonstrates how it is indeed possible to turn idealism and hope into practical action that can make an impact at the national level. With this book McCloskey offers not only invaluable insight into the past, but also inspiration to carry into the future.

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Inclusive Transportation
A Manifesto for Repairing Divided Communities
Veronica O. Davis
Island Press, 2023
Transportation planners, engineers, and policymakers in the US face the monumental task of righting the wrongs of their predecessors while charting the course for the next generation. This task requires empathy while pushing against forces in the industry that are resistant to change. How do you change a system that was never designed to be equitable? How do you change a system that continues to divide communities and cede to the automobile?

In Inclusive Transportation: A Manifesto for Repairing Divided Communities, transportation expert Veronica O. Davis shines a light on the inequitable and often destructive practice of transportation planning and engineering. She calls for new thinking and more diverse leadership to create transportation networks that connect people to jobs, education, opportunities, and to each other.

Inclusive Transportation is a vision for change and a new era of transportation planning. Davis explains why centering people in transportation decisions requires a great shift in how transportation planners and engineers are trained, how they communicate, the kind of data they collect, and how they work as professional teams. She examines what “equity” means for a transportation project, which is central to changing how we approach and solve problems to create something safer, better, and more useful for all people.

Davis aims to disrupt the status quo of the transportation industry. She urges transportation professionals to reflect on past injustices and elevate current practice to do the hard work that results in more than an idea and a catchphrase.

Inclusive Transportation is a call to action and a practical approach to reconnecting and shaping communities based on principles of justice and equity.
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Indian Country, God's Country
Native Americans And The National Parks
Philip Burnham
Island Press, 2000
The mythology of "gifted land" is strong in the Park Service, but some of our greatest parks were "gifted" by people who had little if any choice in the matter. Places like the Grand Canyon's south rim and Glacier had to be bought, finagled, borrowed -- or taken by force -- when Indian occupants and owners resisted the call to contribute to the public welfare. The story of national parks and Indians is, depending on perspective, a costly triumph of the public interest, or a bitter betrayal of America's native people.In Indian Country, God's Country historian Philip Burnham traces the complex relationship between Native Americans and the national parks, relating how Indians were removed, relocated, or otherwise kept at arm's length from lands that became some of our nation's most hallowed ground. Burnham focuses on five parks: Glacier, the Badlands, Mesa Verde, the Grand Canyon, and Death Valley. Based on archival research and extensive personal visits and interviews, he examines the beginnings of the national park system and early years of the National Park Service, along with later Congressional initiatives to mainstream American Indians and expand and refurbish the parks. The final chapters visit the parks as they are today, presenting the thoughts and insights of superintendents and rangers, tribal officials and archaeologists, ranchers, community leaders, curators, and elders. Burnham reports on hard-won compromises that have given tribes more autonomy and greater cultural recognition in recent years, while highlighting stubborn conflicts that continue to mark relations between tribes and the parks.Indian Country, God's Country offers a compelling -- and until now untold -- story that illustrates the changing role of the national parks in American society, the deep ties of Native Americans to the land, and the complicated mix of commerce, tourism, and environmental preservation that characterize the parks system. Anyone interested in Native American culture and history, the history of the American West, the national park system, or environmental history will find it a fascinating and engaging work.
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An Indomitable Beast
The Remarkable Journey of the Jaguar
Alan Rabinowitz
Island Press, 2014
The jaguar is one of the most mysterious and least-known big cats of the world. The largest cat in the Americas, it has survived an onslaught of environmental and human threats partly because of an evolutionary history unique among wild felines, but also because of a power and indomitable spirit so strong, the jaguar has shaped indigenous cultures and the beliefs of early civilizations on two continents.
 
In An Indomitable Beast: The Remarkable Journey of the Jaguar, big-cat expert Alan Rabinowitz shares his own personal journey to conserve a species that, despite its past resilience, is now on a slide toward extinction if something is not done to preserve the pathways it prowls through an ever-changing, ever-shifting landscape dominated by humans. Rabinowitz reveals how he learned from newly available genetic data that the jaguar was a single species connected genetically throughout its entire range from Mexico to Argentina, making it unique among all other large carnivores in the world. In a mix of personal discovery and scientific inquiry, he sweeps his readers deep into the realm of the jaguar, offering fascinating accounts from the field. Enhanced with maps, tables, and color plates, An Indomitable Beast brings important new research to life for scientists, anthropologists, and animal lovers alike.
 
This book is not only about jaguars, but also about tenacity and survival. From the jaguar we can learn better strategies for saving other species and also how to save ourselves when faced with immediate and long-term catastrophic changes to our environment.
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Industrialized Nature
Brute Force Technology and the Transformation of the Natural World
Paul R. Josephson
Island Press, 2002

The construction of the Three Gorges Dam on China's Yangtze River. The transformation of the Amazon into a site for huge cattle ranches and aluminum smelters. The development of Nevada's Yucca Mountain into a repository for nuclear waste. The extensive irrigation networks of the Grand Coulee and Kuibyshev Dams. On the face of it, these massive projects are wonders of engineering, financial prowess, and our seldom-questioned ability to modify nature to suit our immediate needs. For nearly a century we have relied increasingly on science and technology to harness natural forces, but at what environmental and social cost?

In Industrialized Nature, historian Paul R. Josephson provides an original examination of the ways in which science, engineering, policy, finance, and hubris have come together, often with unforeseen consequences, to perpetuate what he calls "brute-force technologies"—the large-scale systems created to manage water, forest, and fish resources. Throughout the twentieth century, nations with quite different political systems and economic orientations all pursued this same technological subjugation of nature. Josephson compares the Soviet Union's heavy-handed efforts at resource management to similar projects undertaken in the United States, Norway, Brazil, and China. He argues that brute-force technologies require brute-force politics to operate. He shows how irresponsible—or well-intentioned but misguided—large-scale manipulation of nature has resulted in resource loss and severe environmental degradation.

Josephson explores the ongoing industrialization of nature that is happening in our own backyards and around the world. Both a cautionary tale and a call to action, Industrialized Nature urges us to consider how to develop a future for succeeding generations that avoids the pitfalls of brute-force technologies.

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Inside Passage
A Journey Beyond Borders
Richard Manning
Island Press, 2000
“This book is about an idea that rests at the junction of what we call wilderness and civilization. Simply, it is a call for rethinking, and more importantly, reconstructing, our relationship with nature.” --from Inside PassageProtecting land in parks, safe from human encroachment, has been a primary strategy of conservationists for the past century and a half. Yet drawing lines around an area and calling it wilderness does little to solve larger environmental problems. As author Richard Manning puts it in a knowingly provocative way: “Wilderness designation is not a victory, but acknowledgement of defeat.”In Inside Passage, Manning takes us on a thought-provoking tour of the lands along the Pacific Northwest's Inside Passage -- from southeast Alaska down through Puget Sound, and then on to the northern Oregon coast and the Columbia River system -- as he explores the dichotomy between “wilderness” and “civilization” and the often disastrous effects of industrialization.Through vivid description and conversations with people in the region, Manning brings new insights to the area's most pressing environmental concerns -- the salmon crisis, deforestation, hydroelectric dams, urban sprawl -- and examines various innovative ways they are being addressed. He details efforts to restore degraded ecosystems and to integrate economic development with environmental protection, and looks at powerful new tools such as Geographic Information Systems (GIS) that are increasingly being used to further conservation efforts.Throughout, Manning focuses on the hopeful possibility that we can redesign the human enterprise to a scale more appropriate to the nature that holds it, that rather than drawing borders around nature, we might instead start placing borders on human behavior. Perhaps, he suggests, we can begin to behave in all places as if all places matter to us as much as wilderness, and, in the process, claim all of nature as our own.Inside Passage is a wide-ranging and thoughtful exploration by a gifted writer, and an important work for anyone interested in the Pacific Northwest, or concerned about the future of our relationship to the natural world.
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Instream Flow Protection
Seeking A Balance In Western Water Use
David M. Gillilan and Thomas C. Brown
Island Press, 1997

Instream Flow Protection is a comprehensive overview of Western water use and the issues that surround it. The authors explain instream flow and its historical, political, and legal context; describe current instream flow laws and policies; and present methods of protecting instream flow. They provide numerous examples to illustrate their discussions, with case studies of major river systems including the Bitterroot, Clark's Fork, Colorado, Columbia, Mimbres, Mono Lake, Platte, Snake, and Wind.

Policymakers, land and water managers at local, state, and federal levels, attorneys, students and researchers of water issues, and anyone concerned with instream flow protection will find the book enormously valuable.

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Integrated Coastal and Ocean Management
Concepts And Practices
Biliana Cicin-Sain and Robert W. Knecht; Foreword by Gunnar Kullenberg
Island Press, 1998

Biliana Cicin-Sain and Robert W. Knecht are co-directors of the Center for the Study of Marine Policy at the University of Delaware in Newark, Delaware and co-authors of The Future of U.S. Ocean Policy (Island Press, 1998).

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Intelligent Tinkering
Bridging the Gap between Science and Practice
Robert J. Cabin
Island Press, 2011
Robert J. Cabin uses the restoration of tropical dry forestland in Hawaii as an in-depth case study to investigate the scientific, practical, and philosophical issues associated with performing ecological restoration in the messy real world.
 
Interweaving entertaining narratives of his own on-the-ground experiences as a practicing restorationist with reflections about his scientific training and background, Cabin explores the relationship between science and practice in ecological restoration. He observes that because restoration can be complex and value-driven, its implementation often turns out to be as much interdisciplinary art as hard science. 
Despite the often distinct cultures and methodologies of scientists and practitioners, Cabin shows how each has a vital role in effective restoration and offers suggestions for improving working relationships.
 
One approach he advocates is what he calls "intelligent tinkering," after the work of Aldo Leopold. In this model, practitioners employ the same kind of careful but informal trial-and-error strategy followed by such groups as indigenous peoples and hobbyist mechanics. Cabin illustrates the power of intelligent tinkering using examples from his own work and other restoration projects.
 
The gap between science and practice is not unique to ecological restoration; it is a widespread problem across all fields of applied science. Written in a clear and engaging style, Intelligent Tinkering offers an insightful look at the underlying causes of the problem, along with invaluable suggestions for addressing it.
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The Intergalactic Design Guide
Harnessing the Creative Potential of Social Design
Cheryl Heller
Island Press, 2018
“As homo sapiens’ entry in any intergalactic design competition, industrial civilization would be tossed out at the qualifying round.”
— David Orr, Earth in Mind
 
Design has built global brands, disrupted industries, and transformed our lives with technology. It has also contributed to the complex challenges we face today. In The Intergalactic Design Guide, business strategist and designer Cheryl Heller shows how social design can help address our most pressing challenges, from poverty to climate change.
 
Social design offers a new approach to navigate uncertainty, increase creativity, strengthen relationships, and develop our capacity to collaborate. Innovative leaders like Paul Farmer, Oprah Winfrey, and Marshall Ganz have instinctively practiced social design for decades. Heller has worked with many of these pioneers, observing patterns in their methods and translating them into an approach that can bring new creative energy to any organization. From disrupting the notion of “expert” by seeking meaningful input from many voices to guiding progress through open-ended questions instead of five-year plans, social design changes how humans relate to each other, with powerful positive impacts.
 
The Intergalactic Design Guide explains eleven common principles, a step-by-step process, and the essential skills for successful social design. Nine in-depth examples—from the CEO of the largest carpet manufacturer in the world to a young entrepreneur with a passion for reducing food waste—illustrate the social design process in action.
 
Social design is a new kind of creative leadership that generates both traditional and social value, and can change the way we all view our work. Whether you are launching a start-up or managing a global NGO, The Intergalactic Design Guide provides both inspiration and practical steps for designing a more resilient and fulfilling future.
 
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International Wildlife Trade
A Cites Sourcebook
Edited by Ginette Hemley; Foreword by Kathryn S. Fuller
Island Press, 1994

For more than two decades, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, known as CITES, has been one of the largest and most effective conservation agreements in the world. By regulating international commerce in certain species -- from African elephants and exotic birds to hardwoods and bulbs -- the treaty limits trade in species that are in genuine need of protection while allowing controlled trade in species that can withstand some level of exploitation.

In addition to explaining how CITES operates, this definitive reference includes:

  • the full text of the CITES treaty
  • CITES Appendices I, II, and III
  • a list of Parties as of March 1994
  • a list of reservations by Parties as of October 1993
Chapters address the status of highly threatened species such as elephants, rhinos, and tigers as well as other heavily exploited species including parrots, primates, and bears.

International Wildlife Trade provides a valuable overview of wildlife trade issues, and of the strengths and weaknesses of the current treaty.

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Intown Living
A Different American Dream
Ann Breen and Dick Rigby
Island Press, 2005
After decades of abandonment, cities across North America are experiencing a renaissance. A new generation is seeking greater excitement and diversity than the typical suburban subdivision offers and many people are instead looking to make their homes in lively urban environments.

In Intown Living, authors Ann Breen and Dick Rigby document this movement, arguing that if properly nurtured, it could help slow current patterns of sprawling development and help revitalize America's cities. They illustrate the many benefits of city living and offer strategies and encouragement for public officials and private developers to team up and expand central city housing opportunities.

The authors present in-depth studies of eight cities--Atlanta; Dallas; Houston; Memphis; Minneapolis; New Orleans; Portland, Oregon; and Vancouver, British Columbia--that are experiencing this type of renaissance, and consider common elements shared by the cities, as well as their differences.

Intown Living is an important new resource for a wide audience of professionals involved with urban design and planning. It will also be of interest to the many people concerned with historic preservation or smart growth, and for students and researchers involved with urban studies and related fields.
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An Introduction to Coastal Zone Management
Second Edition
Timothy Beatley, David J. Brower, and Anna K. Schwab
Island Press, 2002
An Introduction to Coastal Zone Management, Second Edition offers a comprehensive overview of coastal planning and management issues for students and professionals in the field. Since publication of the first edition in 1994, population growth and increasing development pressures on our coasts have made the need for forward-looking, creative, and sustainable visions for the future even greater. This completely updated and revised edition includes:
  • significantly updated data and statistics including discussions of population and growth trends, federal and state coastal expenditures, disaster assistance expenditures, and damage levels from hurricanes and coastal storms
  • updated legislative and programmatic material, including the Stafford Act and mitigation assistance programs, and changes in the Coastal Zone Management Act
  • expanded coverage of physical and biological attributes and conditions of the coastal zone
  • expanded and updated discussions of innovative local coastal management
  • new chapters on creative coastal design and development and lessons from coastal programs in other countries

An Introduction to Coastal Zone Management, Second Edition is the only available book that addresses the serious coastal trends and pressures in the U.S., assesses the current policy and planning framework, and puts forth a compelling vision for future management and sustainable coastal planning. It is an important resource for undergraduate and graduate students of coastal planning as well as for local and state officials, residents of coastal communities, environmental advocates, developers, and others concerned with coastal issues.

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Introduction to Restoration Ecology
Evelyn A. Howell, John A. Harrington, and Stephen B. Glass
Island Press, 2011
Restoration ecology is a young field that integrates theory and knowledge from a range of disciplines, including the biological, physical, and social sciences as well as the humanities. This new textbook, written for upper-division undergraduates and first-year graduate students, offers a real-life introduction to the field and an interdisciplinary overview of the theory behind it.
 
Developed by ecologists and landscape architects, each of whom has been involved in restoration research and practice for many years, the focus of the book is on providing a framework that can be used to guide restoration decisions anywhere on the globe, both now and in the future. The text is organized around a restoration process that has been tested and revised by the authors in their restoration ecology courses taught at the University of Wisconsin-Madison over the past thirty years.
 
Each chapter includes a series of "Food for Thought" questions that both help students review concepts and put them to work in solving conservation problems. The framework is designed to work with the uniqueness, uncertainty, messiness, and constraints inherent in any real-world restoration project.
 
Success in ecological restoration requires not only technical proficiency but also skill in the social, cultural, and political arenas. Introduction to Restoration Ecology can help students develop the skills they need to succeed in all of these areas and is a much-needed new resource.

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Invasive Alien Species
A New Synthesis
Edited by Harold A. Mooney, Richard N. Mack, Jeffrey A. McNeely, Laurie E. Neville, Peter Johan Schei, and Jeffrey K. Waage
Island Press, 2005

Invasive alien species are among today's most daunting environmental threats, costing billions of dollars in economic damages and wreaking havoc on ecosystems around the world. In 1997, a consortium of scientific organizations including SCOPE, IUCN, and CABI developed the Global Invasive Species Programme (GISP) with the explicit objective of providing new tools for understanding and coping with invasive alien species.

Invasive Alien Species is the final report of GISP's first phase of operation, 1997-2000, in which authorities from more than thirty countries worked to examine invasions as a worldwide environmental hazard. The book brings together the world's leading scientists and researchers involved with invasive alien species to offer a comprehensive summary and synthesis of the current state of knowledge on the subject.

Invasive alien species represent a critical threat to natural ecosystems and native biodiversity, as well as to human economic vitality and health. The knowledge gained to date in understanding and combating invasive alien species can form a useful basis on which to build strategies for controlling or minimizing the effects in the future. Invasive Alien Species is an essential reference for the international community of investigators concerned with biological invasions.


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Invasive Species in a Changing World
Edited by Harold A. Mooney and Richard J. Hobbs
Island Press, 2000
Changing patterns of global commerce are leading to the breakdown of biogeographic barriers that have historically kept the floras and faunas of different continents separate. Some introduced species not only take hold in their new foreign habitat but also become aggressive; these -- invasives -- can exact a serious toll on ecosystem diversity and processes. Global changes -- including changes in atmospheric composition, land use patterns,and fire regimes -- are likely to foster the success of invaders in coming decades.
Invasive Species in a Changing World brings together leading scientists from around the world -- including Carla M. D'Antonio, Jeffrey McNeely, Robert Sutherst, David Richardson, and others -- to examine the invasive species phenomenon and to consider the mutual interactions between global change and invasives that are likely to occur over the next century. Invasive Species in a Changing World: offers a comprehensive look at the status of freshwater, marine, and terrestrial ecosystems in relation to invasives; examines physical factors that will influence the future success ofinvading species; considers the tools available to track changing patterns and movements; looks at human dimensions including human health effects, and effects on crops; describes the problem in different parts of the world.
Contributors focus on the proposition that global change will exacerbate the invasive species problem, and set forth the idea that invasives are themselves a global change element that need to be considered in global change scenarios.
Invasive Species in a Changing World provides readers with the background and knowledge they need to begin developing strategies to combat the invasive species problem, and is essential reading for anyone concerned with the impact of invasive species on ecosystem health and functioning.
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Invasive Species
Vectors And Management Strategies
Edited by Gregory M. Ruiz and James T. Carlton
Island Press, 2003

Recent years have seen a steep rise in invasions of non-native species in virtually all major ecoregions on Earth. Along with this rise has come a realization that a rigorous scientific understanding of why, how, when, and where species are transported is the necessary foundation for managing biological invasions.

Invasive Species presents extensive information and new analyses on mechanisms of species transfer, or vectors, as the latest contribution from the Global Invasive Species Programme (GISP). Contributors assess invasion vectors and vector management in terrestrial, freshwater, and marine ecosystems for major taxonomic groups in a variety of regions around the world. The book:

  • examines invasion causes, routes, and vectors in space and time
  • highlights current approaches and challenges to preventing new invasions, both from a geographic and taxonomic point of view
  • explores strategies, benefits, and limitations of risk assessment
  • offers a synthesis of many facets of vector science and management
  • presents recommendations for action

Chapter authors review fungi, plants, invertebrates, and vertebrates, with geographic assessments covering New Zealand, Australia, South Africa, and the United States.

Although the full extent and cumulative impact of nonnative species can only be approximated, biological invasions are clearly a potent force of global change, contributing to a wide range of deleterious effects including disease outbreaks, habitat alteration and loss, declines of native species, increased frequency of fires, and shifts in nutrient cycling. Vectors are the delivery mechanisms, resulting in recent increases in rates of new invasions. Invasive Species brings together in a single volume new information from leading scientists around the world on approaches to controlling and managing invasion vectors. This volume is a timely and essential reference for scientists, researchers, policymakers, and anyone concerned with understanding biological invasions and developing effective responses to them.

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Investing in Natural Capital
The Ecological Economics Approach To Sustainability
Edited by AnnMari Jansson, Monica Hammer, Carl Folke, and Robert Costanza
Island Press, 1994

Investing in Natural Capital presents the results of a workshop held following the second biannual conference of the International Society for Ecological Economics. It focuses on the relation of human development to natural capital, and the relation of natural capital to environmental processes.

Because we are capable of understanding our impact on the environment and the importance of managing it sustainably, humans play a special role in our ecosystem. The book emphasizes the essential connections between natural ecosystems and human socioeconomic systems, and the importance of insuring that both remain resilient. Specific chapters deal with methodology, case material, and policy questions, and offer a thorough exploration of this provocative and important alternative to conventional economics.

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Investing in Nature
Case Studies of Land Conservation in Collaboration with Business
William Ginn
Island Press, 2005

In 2004, U.S. consumers spent $5.2 billion purchasing bottled water while the government only invested 5 percent of that amount to purchase critical watersheds, parks, and wildlife refuges-systems vital to clean water and healthy environments. How can we reverse the direction of such powerful economic forces?

A group of dedicated business-people-turned-environmental-entrepreneurs is pioneering a new set of tools for land conservation deals and other market-based strategies. These pragmatic visionaries have already used these methods to protect millions of acres of land and to transform the practices of entire industries. They are transforming the very nature of conservation by making it profitable.


Drawing on his vast experience in both business and land conservation at The Nature Conservancy (TNC), William Ginn offers a practical guide to these innovative methods and a road map to the most effective way to implement them. From conservation investment banking, to emerging markets for nature's goods and services, to new tax incentives that encourage companies to do the "right" thing, Ginn goes beyond the theories to present real-world applications and strategies. And, just as importantly, he looks at the lessons learned from what has not worked, including his own failed efforts in Papua New Guinea and TNC's controversial compatible development approach in Virginia. In an era of dwindling public resources and scarce charitable dollars, these tools reveal a new, and perhaps the only, pathway to achieving biodiversity goals and protecting our lands.

Conservation professionals, students of land conservation, and entrepreneurs interested in green business will find Ginn's tales of high-finance deals involving vast tracts of pristine land both informative and exciting. More than just talk, Investing in Nature will teach you how to think big about land conservation.

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Invisible No More
Voices from Native America
Edited by Raymond Foxworth and Steve Dubb
Island Press, 2023
For too long, Native American people in the United States have been stereotyped as vestiges of the past, invisible citizens in their own land obliged to remind others, “We are still here!” Yet today, Native leaders are at the center of social change, challenging philanthropic organizations that have historically excluded Native people, and fighting for economic and environmental justice.

Edited by Raymond Foxworth of First Nations Development Institute and Steve Dubb of The Nonprofit Quarterly, Invisible No More is a groundbreaking collection of stories by Native American leaders, many of them women, who are leading the way through cultural grounding and nation-building in the areas of community, environmental justice, and economic justice. Authors in the collection come from over a dozen Native nations, including communities in Alaska and Hawaiʻi. Chapters are grouped by themes of challenging philanthropy, protecting community resources, environmental justice, and economic justice. While telling their stories, authors excavate the history and ongoing effects of genocide and colonialism, reminding readers how philanthropic wealth often stems from the theft of Native land and resources, as well as how major national parks such as Yosemite were “conserved” by forcibly expelling Native residents. At the same time, the authors detail ways that readers might imagine the world differently, presenting stories of Native community building that offer benefits for all. Accepting this invitation to reset assumptions can be at once profound and pragmatic. For instance, wildfires in large measure result from recent Western land mismanagement; Native techniques practiced for thousands of years can help manage fire for everyone’s benefit.

In a world facing a mounting climate crisis and record economic inequality, Invisible No More exposes the deep wounds of a racist past while offering a powerful call to care for one another and the planet. Indigenous communities have much to offer, not the least of which are solutions gleaned from cultural knowledge developed over generations.
 
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Islands at the Edge of Time
A Journey To America's Barrier Islands
Gunnar Hansen
Island Press, 1993

Islands at the Edge of Time is the story of one man's captivating journey along America's barrier islands from Boca Chica, Texas, to the Outer Banks of North Carolina. Weaving in and out along the coastlines of Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, South Carolina, and North Carolina, poet and naturalist Gunnar Hansen perceives barrier islands not as sand but as expressions in time of the processes that make them. Along the way he treats the reader to absorbing accounts of those who call these islands home -- their lives often lived in isolation and at the extreme edges of existence -- and examines how the culture and history of these people are shaped by the physical character of their surroundings.

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