Merriam's turkey is a bird native to the southern Rocky Mountains and the Colorado Plateau, a subspecies that might seem at first blush an unlikely subject for intensive research. But as Harley Shaw well knows, no creature is exempt from the close scrutiny of biologists. Shaw is himself a research biologist perhaps best known for his book Soul among Lions. Although the wild turkey may be less charismatic than the puma, it offers an equal opportunity for Shaw to reflect on how we manage--or mismanage--wildlife. But while focusing on this big bird of the Southwest, his new book is...

J. Stokley Ligon's work in bird conservation, habitat protection, and wildlife legislation during the mid-twentieth century is well-documented in his own writing and the writing of others. But hovering in the background of Ligon's life story has always been the rumor of a trip he made alone as a young man in 1913 in which he covered much of New Mexico alone on horseback. Details of the trip had faded into history, and Ligon--a self-effacing man--had never published the story.

As it turns out, the trek was Ligon's first job with the US Biological Survey, and it did not go entirely...