front cover of Battle Against Extinction
Battle Against Extinction
Native Fish Management in the American West
Edited by W. L. Minckley and James E. Deacon; Foreword by Stewart L. Udall
University of Arizona Press, 1991
In 1962 the Green River was poisoned and its native fishes killed so that the new Flaming Gorge Reservoir could be stocked with non-native game fishes for sportsmen. This incident was representative of water management in the West, where dams and other projects have been built to serve human needs without consideration for the effects of water diversion or depletion on the ecosystem. Indeed, it took a Supreme Court decision in 1976 to save Devils Hole pupfish from habitat destruction at the hands of developers.
 
Nearly a third of the native fish fauna of North America lives in the arid West; this book traces their decline toward extinction as a result of human interference and the threat to their genetic diversity posed by decreases in their populations. What can be done to slow or end this tragedy? As the most comprehensive treatment ever attempted on the subject, Battle Against Extinction shows how conservation efforts have been or can be used to reverse these trends.
 
In covering fishes in arid lands west of the Mississippi Valley, the contributors provide a species-by-species appraisal of their status and potential for recovery, bringing together in one volume nearly all of the scattered literature on western fishes to produce a monumental work in conservation biology. They also ponder ethical considerations related to the issue, ask why conservation efforts have not proceeded at a proper pace, and suggest how native fish protection relates to other aspects of biodiversity planetwide. Their insights will allow scientific and public agencies to evaluate future management of these animal populations and will offer additional guidance for those active in water rights and conservation biology.

First published in 1991, Battle Against Extinction is now back in print and available as an open-access e-book thanks to the Desert Fishes Council.
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logo for University of Arizona Press
Battle Against Extinction
Native Fish Management in the American West
Edited by W. L. Minckley and James E. Deacon; Foreword by Stewart L. Udall
University of Arizona Press, 1991
In 1962 the Green River was poisoned and its native fishes killed so that the new Flaming Gorge Reservoir could be stocked with non-native game fishes for sportsmen. This incident was representative of water management in the West, where dams and other projects have been built to serve human needs without consideration for the effects of water diversion or depletion on the ecosystem. Indeed, it took a Supreme Court decision in 1976 to save Devils Hole pupfish from habitat destruction at the hands of developers.
 
Nearly a third of the native fish fauna of North America lives in the arid West; this book traces their decline toward extinction as a result of human interference and the threat to their genetic diversity posed by decreases in their populations. What can be done to slow or end this tragedy? As the most comprehensive treatment ever attempted on the subject, Battle Against Extinction shows how conservation efforts have been or can be used to reverse these trends.
 
In covering fishes in arid lands west of the Mississippi Valley, the contributors provide a species-by-species appraisal of their status and potential for recovery, bringing together in one volume nearly all of the scattered literature on western fishes to produce a monumental work in conservation biology. They also ponder ethical considerations related to the issue, ask why conservation efforts have not proceeded at a proper pace, and suggest how native fish protection relates to other aspects of biodiversity planetwide. Their insights will allow scientific and public agencies to evaluate future management of these animal populations and will offer additional guidance for those active in water rights and conservation biology.
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front cover of Crossroads
Crossroads
Environmental Priorities For The Future
Edited by Peter Borrelli
Island Press, 1988

The environmental movement today is at a critical crossroads. Crossroads: Environmental Priorities for the Future is an in-depth assessment of the movement's successes and failures, and also offers prescriptions for the future. It includes contributions from some of the country's top environmental leaders and activists, including Barry Commoner, Stewart Udall, William K. Reilly, Gus Speth, Jay Hair, Lois Gibbs, Michael Frome, Chuck Little, and William Futrell.

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front cover of The Forgotten Founders
The Forgotten Founders
Rethinking The History Of The Old West
Stewart L. Udall; Foreword by David M. Emmons
Island Press, 2002

"…an impressive new book… [The Forgotten Founders] is a gem that encompasses virtually every aspect of the development of our region." -ROCKY MOUNTAIN NEWS



"[Udall] offers a convincing argument that it wasn't the cavalry, fur traders, prospectors, gunslingers or railroad builders who tamed the West; it was 'courageous men and women who made treks into wilderness and created communities in virgin valleys.' Udall's spare prose adds impact to his words." -THE SEATTLE TIMES



"The West is so cluttered with misconceptions that it is hard to have a serious discussion about its history." --Wallace Stegner.



For most Americans, the "Wild West" popularized in movies and pulp novels -- a land of intrepid traders and explorers, warlike natives, and trigger-happy gunslingers -- has become the true history of the region. The story of the West's development is a singular chapter of history, but not, according to former Secretary of the Interior and native westerner Stewart L. Udall, for the reasons filmmakers and novelists would have us believe.


In The Forgotten Founders, Stewart Udall draws on his vast knowledge of and experience in the American West to make a compelling case that the key players in western settlement were the sturdy families who travelled great distances across forbidding terrain to establish communities there. He offers an illuminating and wide-ranging overview of western history and those who have written about it, challenging conventional wisdom on subjects ranging from Manifest Destiny to the importance of Eastern capitalists to the role of religion in westward settlement.


Stewart Udall argues that the overblown and ahistorical emphasis on a "wild west" has warped our sense of the past. For the mythical Wild West, Stewart Udall substitutes a compelling description of an Old West, the West before the arrival of the railroads, which was the home place for those he calls the "wagon people," the men and women who came, camped, settled, and stayed. He offers a portrait of the West not as a government creation or a corporate colony or a Hollywood set for feckless gold seekers and gun fighters but as primarily a land where brave and hardy people came to make a new life with their families. From Native Americans to Franciscan friars to Mormon pioneers, these were the true settlers, whose goals, according to Stewart Udall were "amity not conquest; stability, not strife; conservation, not waste; restraint, not aggression." The Forgotten Founders offers a provocative new look at one of the most important chapters of American history, rescuing the Old West and its pioneers from the margins of history where latter-day mythmakers have dumped them. For anyone interested in the authentic history of the American West, it is an important and exciting new work.

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The Wilderness from Chamberlain Farm
A Story Of Hope For The American Wild
Dean B. Bennett; Foreword by Stewart L. Udall
Island Press, 2001
Deep in the wildlands of northern Maine is a remote piece of land with a small point sheltering a shallow cove along the shore of an expansive lake. Used as a campsite by indigenous peoples for thousands of years, the land was cleared in the mid-1800s, developed into a lumber depot and named Chamberlain Farm. Following a period of neglect after a century of use by lumbermen, the area was turned into a rustic enclave for hunting and fishing enthusiasts. In recent years as civilization encroached, it became the focus of protection efforts by wilderness lovers who sought to ensure preservation and keep in it some semblance of its former wildness.In The Wilderness from Chamberlain Farm, historian Dean B. Bennett traces those transformations, bringing to life the people involved, their motivations, and the interconnected effects of their actions. Beginning 10,000 years ago with the retreat of the glaciers, Bennett offers an overview of the forces that shaped the land, and the visitors to and inhabitants of this place once known as Apmoojenegamook -- "lake that is crossed." We meet one of the first American owners of the property, David Pingree, and his agent E. S. Coe, who kept a tight rein on operations from the 1840s until the turn of the century. An acquaintance of Coe and visitor during that time was Henry David Thoreau, who passed through the area on one of his excursions in the Maine woods. We also are introduced to the indomitable Patty and Al Nugent, who staked a claim on the land and built a sporting camp with their own hands that has served as a haven for outdoorsmen from the 1930s to the present day. And we learn of the efforts of Senator Edmund S. Muskie and others to protect this wild river area, culminating in the creation of the Allagash Wilderness Waterway and its federal designation as the nation's first state-administered riverway in the National Wild and Scenic Rivers System.The dynamic history of the farm and its setting illuminate society's evolving perspective on the natural world around us. The Wilderness from Chamberlain Farm describes and explains the perspectives revealed by those attracted to the farm and its environment, and those who fought to protect the Allagash, offering a valuable lens through which to understand the changing relationship of people and the land.
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