Showing titles in Ecosystems & Habitats

There is a saying in Russian jails. Ne ver ne boysya ne prosi: don't trust, don't fear, don't beg. Don't trust because life here will always disappoint you. Don't fear because whatever you're scared of, you are powerless to prevent it. And don't beg because nobody ever begged their way out of a Russian prison cell. The plan was to attach a Greenpeace pod to Gazprom's platform and launch a peaceful protest against oil being pumped from the icy waters of the Arctic.

By turns epic and intimate, Telling Our Way to the Sea is both a staggering revelation of unraveling ecosystems and a profound meditation on our changing relationships with nature - and with one another. When the biologists Aaron Hirsh and Veronica Volny, along with their friend Graham Burnett, a historian of science, lead twelve college students to a remote fishing village on the Sea of Cortez, they come upon a bay of dazzling beauty and richness.

From the majesty of Uluru and its surrounding deserts to the rugged grandeur of the Kimberley and Pilbara landscapes, the Australian Outback inspires a deep connection with the timeless wisdom of the natural world. It is a place where this wisdom reveals itself in many ways, each day, when the walkabout soul allows themselves to be seduced by the wonder of this ancient land, and its physical and spiritual magnificence. Walkabout to Wisdom, an evocative story of such a journey, reintroduces us to the essence and importance of this natural wisdom, and its inherent capacity to teach and heal.

In Tree Thieves, Lyndsie Bourgon takes us deep into the underbelly of the illegal timber market. As she traces three timber poaching cases, she introduces us to tree poachers, law enforcement, forensic wood specialists, the enigmatic residents of former logging communities, environmental activists, international timber cartels and Indigenous communities along the way.

Murray Morgan's classic history of the Olympic Peninsula, originally published in 1955, evokes a remote American wilderness "as large as the state of Massachusetts, more rugged than the Rockies, its lowlands blanketed by a cool jungle of fir and pine and cedar, its peaks bearing hundreds of miles of living ice that gave rise to swift rivers alive with giant salmon."

In this highly original work of lyrical reportage, Elizabeth Rush guides listeners through some of the places where this change has been most dramatic, from the Gulf Coast to Miami, and from New York City to the Bay Area. For many of the plants, animals, and humans in these places, the options are stark: retreat or perish in place. Weaving firsthand accounts from those facing this choice with profiles of wildlife biologists and other members of the communities both currently at risk and already displaced, Rising privileges the voices of those usually kept at the margins.

In seinen dreiundneunzig Lebensjahren hat David Attenborough einschneidende Veränderungen unserer natürlichen Lebensbedingungen miterlebt. Als er zur Welt kam, gab es noch auf allen Kontinenten Wildnis. Heute hingegen hat die Spezies Mensch sich vervierfacht, die entlegensten Winkel des Planeten erobert und drängt Fauna und Flora immer weiter zurück. Dadurch hat sich die Aussterberate im Vergleich zu ruhigeren erdgeschichtlichen Zeiten um das 100- bis 1000fache erhöht.

Politicians, ecologists, and government wildlife officials are fighting a desperate rearguard action to halt the onward reach of Asian carp, four troublesome fish now within a handful of miles from entering Lake Michigan. From aquaculture farms in Arkansas to the bayous of Louisiana; from marshlands in Indiana to labs in Minnesota; and from the Illinois River to the streets of Chicago where the last line of defense has been laid to keep Asian carp from reaching the Great Lakes, Overrun takes us on a firsthand journey into the heart of a crisis.

"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived." -Henry David Thoreau, Walden. This is a new audiobook of Thoreau's masterpiece, expertly read by Daniel Adam Day.

Inspired by her uncle, Lisa Samson has communed with trees since her childhood. Tragically, a disease from mainland Europe now poses a very serious threat to the ash tree's survival. Epitaph for the Ash explores how barren our landscape could become without the ash's familiar branches protruding from limestone scars and chalky cliff faces.

Die Wälder sind sein berufliches Zuhause, und die Arbeit mit Bäumen ist sein Leben. Bei geführten Waldwanderungen gibt der passionierte Förster und Autor Peter Wohlleben sein enormes Wissen über Bäume weiter. Seine Gebrauchsanweisung ist eine ebenso handfeste wie stimmungsvolle Entdeckungstour. Fundiert und unterhaltsam weist er ein in die wichtigsten Laub- und Nadelbaumarten: was sie kennzeichnet, welchen die Zukunft gehört, welche bei Gewitter wirklich Schutz bieten.

Imminent Domains: Reckoning with the Anthropocene invites listeners to join a contemplation of survival—our own, and that of the elements that surround us. Using research, lyric prose, and first-hand experiences, Alessandra Naccarato addresses fundamental questions about our modern relationship to nature amidst depictions of landscapes undergoing dramatic transformation. Naccarato offers not blanket answers about our future, but rather myriad ways to find our own, individual response to an imminent question.

In this book, Frid tackles the big questions: Who, or what, represents our essential selves, and what stories might allow us to shift the collective psyche of industrial civilization in time to avert the worst of the climate and biodiversity crises? In seeking the answers, he draws from a deep well of personal experience and that of indigenous colleagues, finding a glimmer of hope in indigenous cultures that, despite the ravishes of colonialism, have for thousands of years developed intentional and socially complex practices for resource management that epitomize sustainability.

Straight out of Joshua Tree, California, Desert Oracle is “The Voice of the Desert”: a field guide to the strange tales, singing sand dunes, sagebrush trails, artists and aliens, authors and oddballs, ghost towns and modern legends, musicians and mystics, scorpions and saguaros, out there in the sand. Desert Oracle is your companion at a roadside diner, around a campfire, in your tent or cabin (or high-rise apartment or suburban living room) as the wind and the coyotes howl outside at night.

A connection to nature is vital to our wellbeing. The sound of birds, the smell of tree oils, the effects of natural sunlight. Studies have shown that patients who can observe a natural scene through a hospital window recover faster, and lockdown proved that when most other aspects of life falls away, nature still feels like a necessity, not a luxury. But the majority of the world’s population lives in some form of urban environment, and by 2050, two thirds of humanity – nearly 7 billion people – are expected to live in towns and cities.

In 1795 the interior of Africa was still a great unexplored mystery to the Western world. Mungo Park, an experienced explorer, approached the Royal Society, which was raising funds to mount an expedition deep into the interior to find the source of the Niger. They adopted Mungo as their agent, and thus he started off on adventure that would send him into the unknown.

Tropische Wälder in der Antarktis. Ein Wasserfall von unvorstellbarer Größe, der das trockene Mittelmeerbecken mit Leben füllt. Eine Python, die in der kenianischen Savanne frühe Verwandte des Menschen auf Bäume jagt. Die Vergangenheit ist lebendig – und sie hinterlässt Spuren. Der Paläontologe Thomas Halliday entziffert sie origineller denn je. Anschaulich lässt er verlorene Welten wiederaufleben, erklärt, wie Ökosysteme entstehen und verschwinden, wie alte Spezies durch neue verdrängt werden, wie Lebewesen wandern, sich anpassen und entwickeln.

"So weit das Licht reicht" ist Naturbuch, poetisches Memoir und Coming-of-Age-Geschichte in einem – ein faszinierender Tauchgang von der Oberfläche bis zum Meeresgrund. Nicht zuletzt ist es ein Plädoyer für neue Sichtweisen auf unsere Welt und die erstaunlichen Kreaturen, die sie beherbergt. Eine besondere Faszination geht von den geheimnisvollsten Kreaturen der Tiefsee aus, die verborgen vor den Augen der Welt ein Dasein fernab vom Sonnenlicht fristen.

In The Book of Tides, William Thomson took the listener on a mesmerising journey round the coast of Britain. Now he sets out with his surfboard and tidal compass to encounter the waters of the world, charting his most extraordinary sights and experiences. These include the whirlpools of the Arctic circle, the world's biggest ever surfed wave off Portugal, the strongest whirlpool in Norway and, in Australia, the most dangerous rapids known to us.

The once denuded Northeastern United States is now a region of trees. Nature Next Door argues that the growth of cities, the construction of parks, the transformation of farming, the boom in tourism, and changes in the timber industry have together brought about a return of Northeastern forests. Although historians and historical actors alike have seen urban and rural areas as distinct, they are in fact intertwined, and the dichotomies of farm and forest, agriculture and industry, and nature and culture break down when the focus is on the history of Northeastern woods.