Predators with Pouches provides a unique synthesis of current knowledge of the world’s carnivorous marsupials—from Patagonia to New Guinea and North America to Tasmania. Written by 63 experts in each field, the book covers a comprehensive range of disciplines including evolution and systematics, reproductive biology, physiology, ecology, behaviour and conservation. Predators with Pouches reveals the relationships between the American didelphids and the Australian dasyurids, and explores the r...

Most living carnivorous marsupials lead a secretive and solitary existence. From tiny insect eaters to the formidable Tasmanian Devil, Secret Lives of Carnivorous Marsupials offers rare insight into the history and habits of these creatures – from their discovery by intrepid explorers and scientists to their unique life cycles and incredible ways of hunting prey. Secret Lives of Carnivorous Marsupials provides a guide to the world’s 136 living species of carnivorous marsupials and is packe...

Across the world, cats are loved as pets or are kept or tolerated for their role in controlling some animal pests. But cats, both pets and feral, also kill many native animals and this toll can be enormous. Cats have been remarkably successful in Australia, spreading pervasively across the continent and many islands, occurring in all environments, and proving to be adept and adaptable hunters. A large proportion of Australia’s distinctive fauna is threatened and recent research highlights ...

Desert Channels is a book that combines art, science and history to explore the ‘impulse to conserve’ in the distinctive Desert Channels country of south-western Queensland. The region is the source of Australia’s major inland-flowing desert rivers. Some of Australia’s most interesting new conservation initiatives are in this region, including partnerships between private landholders, non-government conservation organisations that buy and manage land (including Bush Heritage Australia and the...

****“Science Friday” Summer Reading Pick****Discover magazine Top 5 Summer Reads****People magazine Best Summer Reads**“A lovely, big-hearted book…brimming with compassion and the tales of the many, many humans who devote their days to making animals well” (The New York Times).**Have you ever wondered if your dog might be a bit depressed? How about heartbroken or homesick? Animal Madness takes these questions seriously, expl...

Rat-kangaroos have not coped well with the impact of European settlement in Australia. Of the 11 species present in 1788, two are extinct, two are either mostly or totally restricted to offshore islands and the range of all other species has been much reduced. Habitat alienation, altered fire regimes, grazing, predation by introduced carnivores, competition from rabbits and timber harvesting have variously taken their toll on these little-seen animals. The rat-kangaroo was one of the first Au...

Explodes the myth that pre-settlement Australia was an untamed wilderness revealing the complex, country-wide systems of land management used by Aboriginal people. Across Australia, early Europeans commented again and again that the land looked like a park. With extensive grassy patches and pathways, open woodlands and abundant wildlife, it evoked a country estate in England. Bill Gammage has discovered this was because Aboriginal people managed the land in a far more systematic and scient...

The Weather Makers catapulted Tim Flannery’s name into global consciousness; now he is known as one of the world’s foremost experts on climate change. But he didn’t just come into his knowledge and interest overnight. With its selection of exhilarating essays and articles written over the past 25 years, An Explorer’s Notebook charts the evolution of a young scientist doing fieldwork in remote locations to the major thinker who has changed the way we all view our actions i...

The ecologist and author of Do We Need Pandas? "presents a stimulating challenge to our perceptions of nature" and non-native species (George Monbiot).You may be surprised to learn that camels evolved and lived for tens of millions of years in North America—and also that the leek, national symbol of Wales, was a Roman import to Britain, as were chickens, rabbits and pheasants. These classic examples highlight the issues of "native" and "invasive" species. ...

The internationally acclaimed author of The Weather Makers crafts a love letter to his native land and one of its most unique inhabitants: the kangaroo.Drawing on three decades of travel, research, and field work, Tim Flannery shows us how the destiny of the extraordinary kangaroo is inseparable from the environment that created it. Along the way he uses encounters with ancient aboriginal cultures, eccentric fossil hunters, farmers, scientists, kangaroo ad...

Australia is home to many animals and plants found nowhere else on earth, making Australians caretakers of a unique heritage in a land that tolerates few mistakes. Yet, in After the Future, Tim Flannery shows that this country is now on the brink of a new wave of extinctions, which threatens to leave our national parks as “marsupial ghost towns.” Why are species becoming extinct despite the tens of millions of dollars being spent to protect nature? And what more should be done?

The Victorian Bush: its ‘original and natural’ condition aggregates in a readable way extracts from logs, reports and diaries of Victorian explorers, early settlers, travellers and officials that describe the vegetation and fauna they encountered.The author analyses what he sees are the major ecological processes across south-eastern Australia, including the role of fire. Obviously Victoria today differs greatly from those nineteenth century landscapes. Some of these dif...