Science Ecology

From the author of The Secret Knowledge of Water and Atlas of a Lost World comes a deeply felt essay collection focusing upon a vivid series of desert icons - a sheet of virga over Monument Valley, white seashells in dry desert sand, boulders impossibly balanced. Craig Childs delves into the primacy of the land and the profound nature of the more-than-human.

“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately.” And so it began. Henry David Thoreau, at 27, built a tiny, one-room cabin in the woods — on land owned by his friend, Ralph Waldo Emerson — and began his two-year experiment in frugality on the shore of Walden Pond. He wasn’t seeking isolation so much as simplicity, to “live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms.”

Anyone who has ever gazed up at the sky or stared out of the window knows something about birds. In this fun, eye-opening and inspiring book, award-winning nature writer Simon Barnes paints a riveting picture of how birdwatching has framed his life and can help us all to a better understanding of our place on this planet. How to be a Bad Birdwatcher shows why birdwatching is not the preserve of twitchers, but one of the simplest, cheapest and most rewarding pastimes around.

What plants and animals call grassy flatlands home? Find out what lives in grassland habitats.

Embark on an extraordinary adventure into the captivating world of morel mushroom hunting with Morel Mushroom Hunting Cheats, Hacks, Hints, Tips, And Tricks Guide. This comprehensive guide is your key to discovering the hidden realms where these elusive treasures of the forest reside.

In this paradigm-shattering book, biologist Mark W. Moffett draws on findings in psychology, sociology, and anthropology to explain the social adaptations that bind societies. He explores how the tension between identity and anonymity defines how societies develop, function, and fail. Surpassing Guns, Germs, and Steel and Sapiens, The Human Swarm reveals how mankind created sprawling civilizations of unrivaled complexity - and what it will take to sustain them.

While examining the history of our planet and actively exploring our present environment, science journalist Michael Tennesen describes what life on Earth could look like after the next mass extinction.

James Herriot brings back familiar and much-loved friends, including his partner Siegfried and his most lucrative patient, the delightful Tricki Woo. There are some some new arrivals too, such as the abandoned and terrified mongrol Titch who finds the perfect home with a gruff grocer and feral kittens Olly and Ginny who live in James and wife Helen's back garden. Above all, the veterinary practise in Darrowby is enlivened by a marvelouslly eccentric assistant, Calum Buchanan, who arrives with a pet badger and proceeds to add dogs, owls and a monkey called Mortimer to his growing menagerie.

In the 1930s, the last wolves disappeared from Yellowstone National Park. Without them, elk herds overran the plains. Bears starved, rabbit families shrunk and birds flew away to new homes. Then plants and trees started to die off, too—even the flow of rivers was affected. Could the park be saved...by the wolves it had lost? After years of planning, in 1995 a team of experts was ready to find out. They carefully relocated 14 wolves from the Canadian Rockies to Yellowstone. This is the story of their homecoming.

Ancient trees stand as sentinels against all odds while Earth and its people have changed around them. Award-winning author Anthony D. Fredericks examines their awe-inspiring longevity and evolutionary intelligence, drawing on expert interviews, scientific research, and a remarkable reverence for the environment. Fredericks focuses on ten of the oldest trees in the United States and marvels at the complexity of roots, the determination of growth, and the wisdom of forests.

Many scientists believe that we are currently living through the Earth’s sixth mass extinction, with species disappearing at a rate not seen for tens of millions of years – a trend that will only accelerate as climate change and other pressures intensify. What does it mean to live in such a time? And what exactly do we lose when a species goes extinct? In Lost Wonders conservationist and science writer Tom Lathan tells the stories of ten species that have lived, died out and been declared extinct since the turn of the twenty-first century.

When twenty-two-year-old aspiring geologist Charles Darwin boarded HMS Beagle in 1831 with his microscopes and specimen bottles—invited by ship’s captain Robert FitzRoy who wanted a travel companion at least as much as a ship’s naturalist—he hardly thought he was embarking on what would become perhaps the most important and epoch-changing voyage in scientific history.

Conraad de Rosner is a pioneering game ranger, working with dogs to protect wildlife against poachers – both ‘bushmeat’ poachers, who use cruel snares to trap animals, and criminal syndicates killing for rhinoceros horn and capturing critically endangered pangolins, the most trafficked animal in the world. Con’s life – constantly at risk from poachers, wildlife and even his own fellow rangers – has been saved on numerous occasions by his devoted canine companions.

In 2005, the United States imported 12 billion dollars' worth of seafood, nearly double what we had imported 10 years earlier. During that same period, our seafood exports rose by a third. In American Catch, our foremost fish expert Paul Greenberg looks to New York oysters, gulf shrimp, and Alaskan salmon to reveal how it came to be that 91 percent of the seafood Americans eat is foreign.

Ever since innovations in agriculture vastly expanded production of the staples of food energy, our remarkable achievements in reshaping nature have brought about an overwhelming expansion in the life chances of billions of people. Yet every technological innovation has also empowered humans to exploit each other. Reinterpreting a history previously seen from a Euro-and-anthropocentric viewpoint, Amrith relates in brilliant prose, and on the largest canvas, a magisterial, mind-altering epic - vibrant with stories, characters, vivid images and rich archival resources.

Across the world, invasive species pose a danger to ecosystems. The UN Convention on Biological Diversity ranks them as a major threat to biodiversity on par with habitat loss, climate change, and pollution. Tackling this isn't easy, and no one knows this better than Hugh Warwick, a conservationist who loathes the idea of killing, harming, or even eating animals. Yet as an ecologist, he is acutely aware of the need, at times, to kill invasive species whose presence harms the wider environment.

In Sightlines, Kathleen Jamie reports from the field - from her native Scottish "byways and hills" to the frigid Arctic in 14 enthralling essays. She dissects whatever her gaze falls upon - vistas of cells beneath a hospital microscope, orcas rounding a headland, the aurora borealis lighting up the frozen sea. In so doing, she questions what, exactly, constitutes "nature", and upends the idea that it is always picturesque. Written with precision, subtlety, and wry humor, Sightlines urges the listener: "Keep looking, even when there's nothing much to see."

Coal mining in the UK dates back to Roman times, but in the 21st century, has practically disappeared. In this history, Jeremy Paxman charts our vital relationship with coal and all the extraordinary change it has fuelled. Told through the stories of real people, Paxman travels the regions of the UK where communities were built around coal, to the industrial revolution, to the beginnings of time and coal’s geological formation, to the great tragedies such as Aberfan, and to the picket lines of the miners’ strike.

Would you be prepared if you needed to survive in the wilderness? Survival expert Creek Stewart shares his cache of practical, easy-to-follow tricks to help you transform everyday items into valuable gear that can save your life. Survival Hacks takes you step-by-step through transforming simple objects like soda tabs and plant leaves into essential survival tools.

In The Marsh Builders, Sharon Levy delves into the intertwined histories of wetlands loss and water pollution. The book's springboard is the tale of a years-long citizen uprising in Humboldt County, California, which led to the creation of one of the first US wetlands designed to treat city sewage. The book explores the global roots of this local story: the cholera epidemics that plagued 19th-century Europe; the researchers who invented modern sewage treatment after bumbling across the insight that microbes break down pollutants in water; and more.