BiblioVault - Books about Wildlife refuges

Exploring Nature in Illinois

A Field Guide to the Prairie State

Michael Jeffords and Susan Post

University of Illinois Press, 2014

Loaded with full color photographs and evocative descriptions, Exploring Nature in Illinois provides a panorama of the state's overlooked natural diversity. Naturalists Michael Jeffords and Susan Post explore fifty preserves, forests, restoration areas, and parks, bringing an expert view to wildlife and landscapes and looking beyond the obvious to uncover the unexpected beauty of Illinois's wild places.

From the colorful variety of birds at War Bluff Valley Audubon Sanctuary to the exposed bedrock and cliff faces of Apple River Canyon, Exploring Nature in Illinois will inspire readers to explore wonders hidden from urban sprawl and cultivated farmland. Maps and descriptions help travelers access even hard-to-find sites while a wealth of detail and photography offers nature-lovers insights into the flora, fauna, and other aspects of vibrant settings and ecosystems. The authors also include diary entries describing their own impressions of and engagement with the sites.

A unique and much-needed reference, Exploring Nature in Illinois will entertain and enlighten hikers, cyclers, students and scouts, morning walkers, weekend drivers, and anyone else seeking to get back to nature in the Prairie State.

[more]

The National Wildlife Refuges

Coordinating A Conservation System Through Law

Robert L. Fischman

Island Press, 2003

The National Wildlife Refuges provides a comprehensive examination of the laws and policies governing management of the national wildlife refuges, offering for the first time a practical description and analysis of the management regime outlined in the 1997 National Wildlife Refuge System Improvement Act. The 1997 act is the first new statute governing a system of federal public lands enacted since the 1970s. The evolution of law governing the refuge system parallels broader trends in public land management and environmental protection, making the refuge system a valuable case study for those interested in environmental management, policy, and law. The book:

describes the National Wildlife Refuge System and its legal history
offers a detailed breakdown of the 1997 act, including its purpose, designated uses, comprehensive planning provisions, substantive management criteria, and public participation aspects
considers individual refuges and specific issues that apply to only certain refuges
discusses oil and gas development in refuges
offers observations about how well the refuge system law resolves historic tensions and achieves modern conservation goals

A separate chapter examines the special rules governing refuges in Alaska and considers the contentious debate over the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Appendixes offer a reference of acronyms and abbreviations, a chronology of the refuge system's development, key statutory provisions (including the full text of the 1997 act), and basic information about each national wildlife refuge.

With an approach to conservation that is increasingly prevalent around the world, the National Wildlife Refuge System is an important model for sustainable resource management, and the book's analyses of the refuge system's ecological management criteria, conflicts between primary and subsidiary uses, and tension between site-specific standards and uniform national goals all offer important lessons for environmental governance generally.

[more]

Pioneering Conservation in Alaska

Ken Ross

University Press of Colorado, 2006

A companion volume to Environmental Conflict in Alaska, Pioneering Conservation in Alaska chronicles the central land and wildlife issues and the growth of environmental conservation in Alaska during its Russian and territorial eras.

The Alaskan frontier tempted fur traders, whalers, salmon fishers, gold miners, hunters, and oilmen to take what they could without regard for long-term consequences. Wildlife species, ecosystems, and Native cultures suffered, sometimes irreparably. Damage to wildlife and lands drew the attention of environmentalists, including John Muir, who applied their influence to enact wildlife protection laws and set aside lands for conservation. Alaska served as a testing ground for emergent national resource policy in the United States, as environmental values of species and ecosystem sustainability replaced the unrestrained exploitation of Alaska's early frontier days.

Efforts of conservation leaders and the territory's isolation, small human population, and late development prevented widespread destruction and gave Americans a unique opportunity to protect some of the world's most pristine wilderness.

Enhanced by more than 100 photographs, Pioneering Conservation in Alaska illustrates the historical precedents for current natural resource disputes in Alaska and will fascinate readers interested in wildlife and conservation.

[more]

Where the Buffalo Roam

Restoring America's Great Plains

Anne Matthews

University of Chicago Press, 2002

In 1987 Frank and Deborah Popper proposed a bold solution to the decline of America's Great Plains: create a vast nature preserve by returning 139,000 square miles in ten states to prairie and reintroducing the buffalo that once roamed there. In Where the Buffalo Roam, Anne Matthews follows the Poppers from Montana to Texas as they try to sell their idea called the Buffalo Commons; in the process, she introduces us to the people who love these arid windswept lands.

This edition includes a new foreword by environmental historian Donald Worster. Matthews's new afterword describes how with growing support from Native Americans and private groups like the Nature Conservancy, the Poppers' dream of a Buffalo Commons is becoming a reality.

"An admirably crafted book, as poignant and entertaining as it is informative."—Seattle Times

"A priceless piece of Americana."—The Boston Globe

"Matthew's delightful account of the Poppers, their proposal and the controversy surrounding it does focus new attention on the region and its problems."—The Philadelphia Inquirer

"Bright, active, effective journalism. . . . An extremely savvy overlook of the dilemmas of the Great Plains."—Wallace Stegner

[more]

Wildlife Sanctuaries and the Audubon Society

Places to Hide and Seek

By John M. "Frosty" Anderson

University of Texas Press, 2000

National Audubon Society sanctuaries across the United States preserve the unique combinations of plants, climates, soils, and water that endangered birds and other animals require to survive. Their success stories include the recovery of the common and snowy egrets, wood storks, Everglade kites, puffins, and sandhill cranes, to name only a few.

In this book, Frosty Anderson describes the development of fifteen NAS sanctuaries from Maine to California and from the Texas coast to North Dakota. Drawn from the newsletter "Places to Hide and Seek," which he edited during his tenure as Director/Vice President of the Wildlife Sanctuary Department of the NAS, these profiles offer a personal, often humorous look at the daily and longer-term activities involved in protecting bird habitats. Collectively, they record an era in conservation history in which ordinary people, without benefit of Ph.Ds, became stewards of the habitats in which they had lived all their lives. It's a story worth preserving, and it's entertainingly told here by the man who knows it best.

[more]