Nature Conservation

There are more crows now than ever. Their abundance is both an indicator of ecological imbalance and a generous opportunity to connect with the animal world. Crow Planet reminds us that we do not need to head to faraway places to encounter "nature". Rather, even in the suburbs and cities where we live we are surrounded by wild life such as crows, and through observing them we can enhance our appreciation of the world's natural order.

Journalist Christopher Ketcham has been documenting the confluence of commercial exploitation and governmental misconduct in this region for over a decade. His revelatory book takes the listener on a journey across these last wild places, to see how capitalism is killing our great commons.

The insect world is a fascinating place. You may not think so. You may think insects are gross. Or scary. Or dangerous. But there’s so much more to insects than what meets the eye. Told through hilarious prose and packed full of jaw-dropping facts, Brenna Maloney’s first-person narrative presents the big picture on bugs. Insects play a critical role on our planet—as pollinators, garbage collectors, artistic muses, research partners, and even as “dinner.”

Author Kevin Grange—former paramedic and park ranger at Yellowstone and Grand Teton—comes face-to-face with North America’s most fearsome predator, Ursus Arctos. His quest takes him from his home in the Tetons to an eerie, mist-shrouded island of gigantic bruins; from the Bear Center at Washington State University—where scientists believe the secrets of hibernation might help treat diabetes, heart disease, and obesity in humans—to the dark underbelly of for-profit wildlife parks, illegal animal trade and black markets hawking bear bile.

We live in an age when humanity spends 90% of its time indoors, yet the nature around us—especially in America’s cities—has never been more vital. This distancing from nature has sparked crises in mental health, longevity, and hope for the next generation, while also heightening the risks we face from historic floods, heatwaves, and wildfires. Indeed, embracing nature holds untapped potential to strengthen and fortify our cities, suburbs, and towns, providing solutions spanning flood preparation, wildfire management, and promoting longevity.

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.

The world is changing at a relentless pace. How can we slow down and act from a place of respect for all living things? The Sacred Balance shows us how.

When Lawrence Anthony learned that the northern white rhino, living in the war-ravaged Congo, was on the very brink of extinction, he knew he had to act. If the world lost the sub-species, it would be the largest land mammal since the woolly mammoth to go extinct. In The Last Rhinos, Anthony recounts his attempts to save these remarkable animals. The demand for rhino horns in the Far East has turned poaching into a dangerous black market that threatens the lives of not just these rare beasts, but also the rangers who protect them.

Emma Gatewood told her family she was going on a walk and left her small Ohio hometown with a change of clothes and less than $200. The next anybody heard from her, this genteel, farm-reared, 67-year-old great-grandmother had walked 800 miles along the 2,050-mile Appalachian Trail. And in September 1955, atop Maine's Mount Katahdin, she sang the first verse of "America, the Beautiful" and proclaimed, "I said I'll do it, and I've done it."

In his best-selling first book, Jeremy Wade, the star of the hit TV series River Monsters, memorably recounted his adventures on six continents in pursuit of fish of staggering proportions and terrifying demeanor. Now "the greatest angling explorer of his generation" (Independent on Sunday) returns to delight listeners with a book of an entirely different sort, the book he was always destined to write - the distillation of a life spent fishing. Thoughtful and funny, brimming with wisdom and above all, adventure, these are pitch-perfect reflections....

Well-known nature and conservation writer Ted Williams is an avid fisherman who has devoted many years to writing about the sport and advocating the preservation of bodies of water and species of fish. Here, he brings together his love of angling with his profound sense of responsibility for the environment.

In the past two decades, our understanding of the navigational and physiological feats that enable birds to cross immense oceans, fly above the highest mountains, or remain in unbroken flight for months at a stretch has exploded. What we've learned of these key migrations is nothing short of extraordinary. This breathtaking work of nature writing also introduces listeners to those scientists, researchers, and bird lovers trying to preserve global migratory patterns in the face of climate change and other environmental challenges.

To catch a Florida Man, you have to become one, and that’s what Officer Jeff Babauta did. As his ponytailed, whiskey-soaked alter ego, he established Sunshine Alligator Farm. His goal? Infiltrate the shady world of illegal poachers in the Florida Everglades in order to protect the natural world. A head-spinning adventure soon unfolds.

When acclaimed naturalist Sy Montgomery and wildlife artist Matt Patterson arrive at Turtle Rescue League, they are greeted by hundreds of turtles recovering from injury and illness. Endangered by cars and highways, pollution and poachers, these turtles—with wounds so severe that even veterinarians would have dismissed them as fatal—are given a second chance at life. The League’s founders, Natasha and Alexxia, live by one motto: Never give up on a turtle.

This book looks at what happens to paper when you throw it in the trash, and then looks at alternative things that the listener could make with the paper instead of throwing it away.

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.

Growing up on the plains of Africa is anything but easy. Sahara faces lions, rogue male cheetah, and an encroaching human population. With space a valuable and limited resource, Sahara must fight tooth and nail to survive the harsh African wilderness. After a crippling lion attack, she is taken in by conservationists. Declaring her unfit to return to the wild, they send her off to a European zoo where she must learn to fit in. Unable to do so, she faces death. Fortunately, one conservationist is on her side. Together, they make a mad dash back to Africa where she is reunited with her ...

The world today is undergoing the most rapid environmental transformation in human history—from climate change to deforestation. Scientists, ethnobotanists, indigenous peoples, and collectives of all kinds are closely studying trees and their biology to understand how and why trees function individually and collectively in the ways they do. In Twelve Trees, Daniel Lewis, curator and historian at one of the world’s most renowned research libraries, travels the world to learn about these trees in their habitats.

Ten thousand years after humans figured out how to stop wandering and plant crops, veteran investigative journalist Mark Schapiro plunges into the struggle already underway for control of seeds, the ground-zero ingredient for our food. Three-quarters of the seed varieties on Earth in 1900 had become extinct by 2015. In Seeds of Resistance, Schapiro takes us onto the frontlines of a struggle over the seeds that remain, one that will determine the long-term security of our food supply in the face of unprecedented climate volatility. More than half of all commercially-traded seeds have fallen under the control of just three multinational agri-chemical companies....

Only those who love trees should cut them, writes forester Ethan Tapper. In How to Love a Forest, he asks what it means to live in a time in which ecosystems are in retreat and extinctions rattle the bones of the earth. How do we respond to the harmful legacies of the past? How do we use our species’ incredible power to heal rather than to harm? Tapper walks us through the fragile and resilient community that is a forest.