The world’s first national park, Yellowstone is a symbol of nature’s enduring majesty and the paradigm of protected areas across the globe. But Yellowstone is constantly changing. How we understand and respond to events that are putting species under stress, say the authors of Yellowstone’s Wildlife in Transition, will determine the future of ecosystems that were millions of years in the making. With a foreword by the renowned naturalist E. O. Wilson, this is the most comprehensiv...

Thorough, detailed, and scientifically up-to-date, Prairies: A Natural History provides a comprehensive nontechnical guide to the biology and ecology of the prairies, or the Great Plains grasslands of North America, offering a view of the past, a vision for the future, and a clear focus on the present. With a total area of more than 3.5 million square kilometers (500,000 in Canada and the remainder in the United States), the prairies occupy the heartland of the co...

Light from Ancient Campfires is the first book in twenty years to gather together a comprehensive prehistoric archaeological record of the Northern Plains First Nations. In this important examination of the region's earliest inhabitants, author Trevor R. Peck reviews the many changes of interpretation that have occurred in relevant literature published during the last two decades. Beginning with the earliest archaeological evidence for people in Alberta, Light from Ancient Campfires covers...

How long should a leaf live? When should blueberries ripen? And what should a clever moose eat? Questions like these may seem simple or downright strange—yet they form the backbone of natural history, a discipline that fostered some of our most important scientific theories, from natural selection to glaciation. Through careful, patient observations of the organisms that live in an area, their distributions, and how they interact with other species, we gain a more complete picture...

Donald R. Prothero's science books combine leading research with first-person narratives of discovery, injecting warmth and familiarity into a profession that has much to offer nonspecialists. Bringing his trademark style and wit to an increasingly relevant subject of concern, Prothero links the climate changes that have occurred over the past 200 million years to their effects on plants and animals. In particular, he contrasts the extinctions that ended the Cretaceous period, which wiped ...

For decades, conservation and research initiatives in tropical forests have focused almost exclusively on old-growth forests because scientists believed that these “pristine” ecosystems housed superior levels of biodiversity. With Second Growth, Robin L. Chazdon reveals those assumptions to be largely false, bringing to the fore the previously overlooked counterpart to old-growth forest: second growth.Even as human activities result in extensive fragmentation and deforesta...

For over 350 million years, thousands of species of amphibians have lived on earth, but since the 1990s they have been disappearing at an alarming rate, in many cases quite suddenly and mysteriously. What is causing these extinctions? What role do human actions play in them? What do they tell us about the overall state of biodiversity on the planet? In Extinction in Our Times, James Collins and Martha Crump explore these pressing questions and many others as they document the firs...

The northern pike—sometimes affectionately known as the “aquatic wolf”—is one of the most sought after and mythologized fishes in Minnesota, but until now there have been few books devoted to the history and ecological management of the species. Based on pioneering research carried out in Minnesota by leading pike specialist Rodney B. Pierce, Northern Pike Ecology, Conservation, and Management History is the most complete collection of information to date on the species, for every...

Long considered an icon of the wild, wolves capture our imagination and spark controversy. Humans are the adult wolf’s only true natural predator; its return to the old-growth forests and wild coastlines of the Pacific Northwest renews age-old questions about the value of wildlands and wildlife.As the vivid stories unfold in this riveting and timely book, wolves emerge as smart, complex players uniquely adapted to the vast interdependent ecosystem of this stunning region. Observing...

Biological invasions are one of the strongest drivers of global environmental change, and invasive species are now often in the public discourse. At the same time, economists have begun to take a real interest in determining how invasive species interact with economic systems, and how invaders should be controlled to optimize societal wealth. Although the work from ecologists and economists have both greatly expanded our understanding of the drivers and impacts of invasions, little integra...

In 1969 I started a graduate study of mountain reedbuck in South Africa. One day earlier this year I looked at the calendar and realized 50 years had passed. I thought I might try to see how the conclusions I reached in my Ph.D. dissertation held up to the passage of time. Mountain reedbuck live in small groups on marginal lands in southern Africa, East Africa, and a small area in West Africa. The males have short horns so I figured they would not be attractive to trophy hunters. They occu...

Wetlands and riparian areas between the Rocky Mountains and the Sierra Nevada are incredibly diverse and valuable habitats. More than 80 percent of the wildlife species in this intermountain region depend on these wetlands—which account for less than 2 percent of the land area—for their survival. At the same time, the wetlands also serve the water needs of ranchers and farmers, recreationists, vacation communities, and cities. It is no exaggeration to call water the "liquid gold" of the We...