Kategoria BISAC: Nature >> Environmental Conservation & Protection - General

Writing for the general, nonmathematician reader and using examples from throughout the environmental sciences, Pilkey and Pilkey-Jarvis show how unquestioned faith in mathematical models can blind us to the hard data and sound judgment of...

In Skeptical Environmentalism, Robert Kirkman raises doubts about the speculative tendencies elaborated in environmental ethics, deep ecology, social ecology, postmodern ecology, ecofeminism, and environmental pragmatism. Drawing on skeptical principles introduced by David Hume, Kirkman takes issue with key tenets of speculative environmentalism, namely that the natural world is fundamentally relational, that humans have a moral obligation to protect the order of nature, and that understanding the relationship between nature and humankind holds the key to solving the environmental crisis....

Buying land to conserve it is not a recent phenomenon. Buying Nature chronicles the evolution of land acquisition as a conservation strategy in the United States since the late 1700s. It goes beyond the usual focus on conservation successes to provide a critical assessment of both public and private land acquisition efforts.

The book shows that for more than 200 years, both private purchasers -- such as the Nature Conservancy and the Trust for Public Land -- and governmental agencies have acquired land for conservation. It documents trends of growing complexity in...

Every year, nations and corporations in the "global North" produce millions of tons of toxic waste. Too often this hazardous material -- inked to high rates of illness and death and widespread ecosystem damage -- is exported to poor communities of color around the world. In Resisting Global Toxics, David Naguib Pellow examines this practice and charts the emergence of transnational environmental justice movements to challenge and reverse it. Pellow argues that waste dumping across national boundaries from rich to poor communities is a form of transnational environmental inequality...

Although the environmental movement and the environmental justice movement would seem to be natural allies, their relationship over the years has often been characterized by conflict and division. The environmental justice movement has charged the mainstream environmental movement with racism and elitism and has criticized its activist agenda on the grounds that it values wilderness over people. Environmental justice advocates have called upon environmental organizations to act on environmental injustice and address racism and classism in their own hiring and organizational practices,...

According to available estimates, forests cover more than one quarter of the world's total area. About sixty percent of these forests are situated in tropical countries. However, these forests are disappearing at a very fast pace. Between 1980 and 1995, an area larger than Mexico had been deforested. This accelerated destruction of forests poses a serious threat to the environmental and economic well-being of the earth. Several studies have demonstrated that natural forests are the single most important repository of terrestrial biological diversity--of ecosystems, species, and genetic...

Blending scientific and legal expertise, Kunich proves that a devastating ecological crisis is imminent or even underway already, and that conservation law has yet to catch up with biological science. He challenges readers with a hotspots wager, arguing that he have vastly more to gain than lose by legally protecting biological hotspots, and that foregoing them in favor of the relatively minor and immediate returns arising from their devastation is both foolish and, ultimately, dangerous.

Legal thought lags behind modern science in focusing on and setting priorities for global...

In his "Ark of the Broken Covenant," Kunich showed that Earth's species are concentrated in 25 zones of ecological significance known as biodiversity hotspots, and maintained that we'd go a long way toward saving many species from extinction if we'd focus our protective laws and regulations on these zones. In "Killing Our Oceans" he extends this analysis to the extraordinary pockets of life in the oceans that are similarly threatened.

In his "Ark of the Broken Covenant," Kunich showed that Earth's species are concentrated in 25 zones of ecological significance known as biodiversity...

Environmentalists often predict an Apocalypse is coming: The earth will heat up like a greenhouse. We will run out of energy. Overpopulation will lead to starvation and war. Nuclear winter will kill all plants and animals. During the past fifty to one hundred years, Americans have heard many prophecies of doom, such as the Club of Rome report predicting the world economy would crash about the year 2020. These do not come as complete surprises without any warnings. Sometimes the United States simply ignores the threats, but other times it makes plans to prevent them. This provocative book...

In this compelling study, Rena Steinzor highlights the ways in which the government, over the past twenty years, has failed to protect children from harm caused by toxic chemicals. She believes these failures--under-funding, excessive and misguided use of cost/benefit analysis, distortion of science, and devolution of regulatory authority--have produced a situation in which harm that could be reduced or eliminated instead persists.

Steinzor states that, as a society, we are neglecting our children's health to an extent that we would find unthinkable as individual parents, primarily...

"Yosemite Valley in July of 1967 would have had to be seen to be believed. There was never an empty campsite in the valley; you had to create a space for yourself in a sea of cars, tents, and humanity.... The camp next to ours had fifty people in it, with rugs hung between the trees, incense burning, and a stereo set going full volume."

Scenes such as this will probably never be repeated in Yosemite or any other national park, yet the urgent problem remains of balancing the public's desire to visit the parks with the parks' need to be protected from too many people and cars and too...

Harvey details the first major clash between conservationists and developers after World War II, the successful fight to prevent the building of Echo Park Dam. The dam on the Green River was intended to create a recreational lake in northwest Colorado and generate hydroelectric power, but would have flooded picturesque Echo Park Valley and threatened Dinosaur National Monument, straddling the Utah-Colorado border near Wyoming.

In its infancy, the movement to protect wilderness areas in the United States was motivated less by perceived threats from industrial and agricultural activities than by concern over the impacts of automobile owners seeking recreational opportunities in wild areas. Countless commercial and government purveyors vigorously promoted the mystique of travel to breathtakingly scenic places, and roads and highways were built to facilitate such travel. By the early 1930s, New Deal public works programs brought these trends to a startling crescendo. The dilemma faced by stewards of the nation's...

The recent listing of Pacific salmon under the Endangered Species Act has led to substantial interest in the scientific basis for river restoration in the Pacific Northwest. Millions of dollars in state and federal funding have been programmed for habitat restoration efforts to stem the decline of salmon populations in the region. This volume addresses the need for a solid understanding of fluvial processes and aquatic ecology in order to predict both river and salmonid response to restoration projects.

In the Pacific Northwest, as in most regions of the United States, we are still...

Conservation was the first nationwide political movement in American history to grapple with environmental problems like waste, pollution, resource exhaustion, and sustainability. At its height, the conservation movement was a critical aspect of the broader reforms undertaken in the Progressive Era (1890-1910), as the rapidly industrializing nation struggled to protect human health, natural beauty, and "national efficiency." This highly effective Progressive Era movement was distinct from earlier conservation efforts and later environmentalist reforms.

Conservation in the...

Gaylord Nelson is known and respected throughout the world as a founding father of the modern environmental movement and creator of one of the most successful and influential public awareness campaigns ever undertaken on behalf of global stewardship: Earth Day.
Now in his eighties, Nelson delivers a timely and urgent message with the same eloquence with which he has articulated the nation s environmental ills through the decades. He details the planet s most critical concerns from species and habitat losses to global climate changes and population growth. In outlining his strategy for...