Conservation Science

There are few remaining frontiers on our planet. But perhaps the wildest, and least understood, are the world's oceans: too big to police, and under no clear international authority, these immense regions of treacherous water play host to rampant criminality and exploitation.

The incredible true story of the entrepreneur turned conservationist - the founder of the iconic company The North Face who used his fortune to protect more than 25 million acres of land from development and exploitation and “foster peace between people and wild nature”.

That man should have dominion “over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth” is a prophecy that has hardened into fact. So pervasive are human impacts on the planet that it’s said we live in a new geological epoch: the Anthropocene. The question we now face is: Can we change nature, this time in order to save it? Elizabeth Kolbert, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Sixth Extinction, takes a hard look at the new world we are creating.

What if Atlantis wasn't a myth but an early precursor to a new age of great flooding? Across the globe, scientists and civilians alike are noticing rapidly rising sea levels and higher and higher tides pushing more water directly into the places we live, from our most vibrant, historic cities to our last remaining traditional coastal villages. With each crack in the great ice sheets of the Arctic and Antarctica and each tick upward of Earth's thermometer, we are moving closer to the brink of broad disaster.

We've been "saving the planet" for decades...and environmental crises just get worse. All this hybrid driving and LEED building and carbon trading seems to accomplish little to nothing - and low-income communities continue to suffer the worst consequences. Why aren't we cleaning up the toxic messes and rolling back climate change? And why do so many Americans hate environmentalists? Jenny Price says Enough already! with this short, fun, fierce manifesto for an environmentalism that is hugely more effective, a whole lot fairer, and infinitely less righteous.

In The Soil Will Save Us, journalist and bestselling author Kristin Ohlson makes an elegantly argued, passionate case for "our great green hope"—a way in which we can not only heal the land but also turn atmospheric carbon into beneficial soil carbon—and potentially reverse global warming. Her discoveries and vivid storytelling will revolutionize the way we think about our food, our landscapes, our plants, and our relationship to Earth.

We live on a planet alive with song, music, and speech. David Haskell explores how these wonders came to be. In rain forests shimmering with insect sound and swamps pulsing with frog calls we learn about evolution’s creative powers. From birds in the Rocky Mountains and on the streets of Paris, we discover how animals learn their songs and adapt to new environments. Below the waves, we hear our kinship to beings as different as snapping shrimp, toadfish, and whales.

This classic is an essential handbook for anyone who studies, surfs, protects, or is fascinated by the ocean, with a wealth of information based on theory and statistics, but also anecdotal observation and personal experience. It brought to the general public understanding of the awesome and complex power of the waves. This revision from Kim McCoy updates the book's relevance in the time of climate change. One of the most significant effects of global warming will be sea-level rise. What will this mean to waves and beaches, and what effects are we already seeing?

If forests are the lungs of the planet, then animals migrating across oceans, streams, and mountains—eating, pooping, and dying along the way—are its heart and arteries, pumping nitrogen and phosphorus from deep-sea gorges up to mountain peaks, from the Arctic to the Caribbean. Without this conveyor belt of crucial, life-sustaining nutrients, the world would look very different.

The complex ecosystem of the Amazon covers an area about the size of the continental US. Approximately one of every four flowering plant species on earth resides in the Amazon. A single Amazonian river may contain more fish species than all the rivers in Europe combined. The rain forest, which contains approximately 390 billion trees, plays a vital role in stabilizing the global climate by absorbing massive amounts of carbon dioxide - or releasing it into the atmosphere if the trees are destroyed.

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.

Some 40 million miles of roadways encircle the earth, yet we tend to regard them only as infrastructure for human convenience. While roads are so ubiquitous they're practically invisible to us, wild animals experience them as entirely alien forces of death and disruption. In Crossings, environmental journalist Ben Goldfarb travels throughout the United States and around the world to investigate how roads have transformed our planet. A million animals are killed by cars each day in the US alone, but as the new science of road ecology shows, the harms of highways extend far beyond roadkill.

Drawing from ancestral knowledge, as well as her experience as an attorney and activist, Sherri Mitchell addresses some of the most crucial issues of our day—including indigenous land rights, environmental justice, and our collective human survival. Sharing the gifts she has received from the elders of her tribe, the Penobscot Nation, she asks us to look deeply into the illusions we have labeled as truth and which separate us from our higher mind and from one another.

In Food from the Radical Center, Gary Nabhan tells the stories of diverse communities who are getting their hands dirty and bringing back North America's unique fare: bison, sturgeon, camas lilies, ancient grains, turkeys, and more. These efforts have united people from the left and right, rural and urban, faith-based and science-based, in game-changing collaborations. Their successes are extraordinary by any measure, whether economic, ecological, or social.

The most joyful emanation produced by a colony of bees is known as the "song of increase" - declaring that the hive is flourishing and the bees are happy in its abundance. Song of Increase takes us inside the world of the honeybee to glean the wisdom of these fascinating creatures with whom humanity has shared a sacred bond for millennia. Within these minutes is a bee-centric approach to living with honeybees, rather than advice for simply maximizing the products they provide.

When empty nester Paula Whyman climbs to a peak in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, her plans for a backyard ecology project quickly morph into a massive endeavor. In Bad Naturalist, Whyman struggles with conflicting advice from experts, an influx of invasive species, delayed plans, and the occasional rattlesnake—but none of it dampens her irrepressible passion for protecting the land.

Winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 2004, Wangari Maathai has been fighting for environmental responsibility and democracy in her native Kenya for over 35 years. Unbowed recounts the incredible journey that culminated in her appointment to Parliament in 2002. Despite repeated jailings, beatings, and other obstacles along the way, Maathai created the Green Belt Movement and never relented in her goal to bring democracy to Kenya.

David Quammen's book, The Song of the Dodo, is a brilliant, stirring work, breathtaking in its scope, far-reaching in its message - a crucial book in precarious times, which radically alters the way in which we understand the natural world and our place in that world. It's also a book full of entertainment and wonders. In The Song of the Dodo, we follow Quammen's keen intellect through the ideas, theories, and experiments of prominent naturalists of the last two centuries.

High in the mountainous rain forests of Burma and India grow some of the world's last stands of mature, wild teak. For more than a thousand years, people here have worked with elephants to log these otherwise impassable forests and move people and goods (often illicitly) under cover of the forest canopy. In Giants of the Monsoon Forest, geographer Jacob Shell takes us deep into this strange elephant country to explore the lives of these extraordinarily intelligent creatures.

Nothing is harder to do these days than nothing. But in a world where our value is determined by our 24/7 data productivity...doing nothing may be our most important form of resistance. So argues artist and critic Jenny Odell in this field guide to doing nothing (at least as capitalism defines it). Odell sees our attention as the most precious - and overdrawn - resource we have.