Showing titles in Environmentalists & Naturalists

From the icy oceans of our poles to remote coral islands, David Attenborough has filmed in every ocean habitat on planet earth. Now, with long-term collaborator Colin Butfield, he shares the story of our last great, critical wilderness, and the one which shapes the land we live on, regulates our climate and creates the air we breathe. Through one hundred years, eight unique ocean habitats, countless intriguing species - and through personal stories, history and cutting-edge science - Ocean uncovers the mystery, the wonder and the frailty of the most unexplored habitat on our planet.

Jim and Elaine Larison spent years studying, exploring, and living in wild places, making more than 30 environmental films, most for the National Geographic Society. These films won more than 40 international awards from leading environmental and broadcast organizations. This memoir tells the story behind the adventure and describes the rather substantial personal costs of this career.

David Attenborough discusses his life and achievements in this collection of BBC radio and TV interviews.

This is the true story of a Londoner who gives up his job as an estate agent in the city, moves to the wilds of Exmoor, starts a smallholding and becomes self-sufficient, with a few bumps along the way. Simon's journey from urbanite to self-sufficient smallholder is brimming with incidents - some funny and some tragic - leading him to question Mother Nature, himself, the food he eats and his role in it all.

Between 1970 and 1980, broadcaster Derek Jones invited a host of famous names to chat about their enthusiasm for nature and their encounters with animals. Delving into the BBC Sound Archive to select some of their favourite natural history recordings, they reveal their hitherto unknown passions – from birds and butterflies to the countryside and conservation.

Beatrix Potter's Gardening Life is the first work to explore the origins of Beatrix Potter's love of gardening and plants and show how this passion came to be reflected in her work.

On her 120-acre homestead high in the Colorado Rockies, beloved writer Pam Houston learns what it means to care for a piece of land and the creatures on it. Elk calves and bluebirds mark the changing seasons, winter temperatures drop to 35 below, and lightning sparks a 110,000-acre wildfire, threatening her century-old barn and all its inhabitants. Through her travels from the Gulf of Mexico to Alaska, she explores what ties her to the Earth, the ranch most of all.

Nature took on a new importance for thousands of people when the coronavirus pandemic arrived in Britain, providing solace in a time of great anxiety - not least because the crisis struck at the beginning of spring, the season of hope and renewal, and furthermore, in an extraordinary conjunction, the spring of 2020 turned out to be the loveliest spring ever recorded in Britain. Three nature writers, living like everyone else under lockdown, but walking out each day to exercise, resolved to record their experiences of the coronavirus spring, in widely contrasting parts of the country.

John and Elizabeth Gould sailed into Australia on a cold spring day in 1838 prepared for the most astonishing adventure of their lives. They had crossed three oceans from their London home to find the treasures of Australia's birdlife and showcase them to the outside world. Elizabeth had fallen pregnant for the seventh time at just 34, and there would be little rest for her in illustrating her husband's exquisite books that had made him England's celebrated 'Bird Man', and a force of nature in both science and publishing.

For six years Jim and Jamie Dutcher lived intimately with a pack of wolves, gaining their trust as no one has before. In this book the Dutchers reflect on the virtues they observed in wolf society and behavior. Each chapter exemplifies a principle, such as kindness, teamwork, playfulness, respect, curiosity, and compassion. Their heartfelt stories combine into a thought-provoking meditation on the values shared between the human and the animal world.

John Muir is regarded as the "father of America's national parks" and is a towering figure in the history of that country's involvement with ecology. This wonderful memoir pays tribute to a giant of ecology and is essential listening for lovers of natural history.

With temperatures rising and the risk of disasters growing, our world is increasingly vulnerable. Most people see disasters as freak, natural events that are unpredictable and unpreventable. But that simply isn’t the case - disasters are avoidable, but when they do strike, there are strategic ways to manage the fallout.

After a childhood marked by neglect, poverty, and periods of homelessness, with a mother who believed herself to be the reincarnation of the Virgin Mary, Carrot Quinn moved out on her own. She found a sense of belonging among straight-edge anarchists who taught her how to traverse the country by freight trains, sleep in fields under the stars, and feed herself by foraging in dumpsters. Her new life was one of thrilling adventure and freedom, but still she was haunted by the ghosts of her lonely and traumatic childhood.

The ice sheets and glaciers that currently cover one-tenth of the planet's land surface are today in grave peril. Locked up within them is a vast proportion of Earth's freshwater - but the ice is fast melting as our climate warms at an accelerating rate. High up in the Alps, Andes and Himalaya, once-indomitable glaciers are retreating, even dying; meanwhile, in Antarctica, thinning glaciers are releasing meltwater to sensitive marine foodwebs and may be unlocking vast quantities of methane stored for millions of years in the deep beneath the ice.

In A Bigger Picture, Vanessa Nakate exposes the shortcomings of our global discussions around climate change, which consistently envisage the environmental crisis as a problem for future generations. Such an image is only possible through the erasure of the voices of people living in the Global South, where environmental disasters are already having a devastating impact on communities, and especially on women. This is one of the great injustices of the climate crisis: those who have contributed the least to its creation are now suffering its consequences most severely.

In Origin Story, medical historian Howard Markel recounts the two-year period (1858 to 1860) of Darwin's writing of On the Origin of Species through its spectacular success and controversy. Simultaneously, Markel delves into the mysterious health symptoms Darwin developed, combing the literature to emerge with a cogent diagnosis of a case that has long fascinated medical historians.

Emmy Award - winning filmmaker, writer, and naturalist Joe Hutto has done it again. Touching the Wild is the enchanting story about one man who has lived with a herd of mule deer in the Wind River mountains of Wyoming for almost seven years. Why, you may ask, would a person choose to do such a thing? His response: how could you not? For Joe Hutto, close proximity to wild things is irresistible. In Illumination in the Flatwoods he unveiled the secret lives of the wild turkey to great critical acclaim.

Native woodland is one of the most valuable resources for biodiversity in Ireland’s wet climate. Yet Ireland has the lowest forest cover of any part of Europe, with the surviving native woodland covering a tiny area of the country. Ireland lost the majority of its ancient forest centuries ago, but now is when we need it most to help solve the climate crisis. This audiobook is a celebration of Ireland’s native woodlands blended with a personal account of learning to manage a single small wood over a typical year.

The Real RFK Jr. is an intimate biographical portrait examining the controversial activist's journey from anguish and addiction to becoming the country's leading environmental champion fighting government corruption, corporate greed, and a captured media. Written by his longtime colleague Dick Russell, the biography also exposes the misconceptions and explains the rationale behind Kennedy's campaign to protect public health.

In Erin Brockovich’s long-awaited book — her first to reckon with conditions on our planet — she makes clear why we are in the trouble we’re in, and how, in large and practical ways, we each can take actions to bring about change. She shows us what's at stake, and writes of the fraudulent science that disguises these issues, along with cancer clusters not being reported. She writes of the saga of PG&E that continues to this day, and of the communities and people she has worked with who have helped to make an impact.