Cougar Management Guidelines Cougar Management Guidelines Working Group 137 pages, softcover: $21.95 WildFutures, 2005. Wildlife managers and citizen activists alike will find this book useful. It collects current cougar research into a set of guidelines for managing these secretive and increasingly rare big cats. Full of charts and figures, the book explores topics such as […]
Books
Posted inOctober 3, 2005: Out of the Four Corners
Meloy’s last message — from bighorn country
Author Ellen Meloy died unexpectedly at her home in Bluff, Utah, last Nov. 4. The gifted writer, illustrator and environmentalist leaves behind an impressive canon of nature writing that includes Raven’s Exile, The Last Cheater’s Waltz and The Anthropology of Turquoise, a book short-listed for the Pulitzer Prize. Eating Stone, completed just before her death […]
Posted inSeptember 19, 2005: Squeezing Water from a Stone
An honest take on a tough land
In his debut novel, Ordinary Wolves, Seth Kantner has woven a world where hunger, death and beauty go hand-in-hand. The book is set almost entirely on Kantner’s native Alaskan tundra, but don’t expect naturalist hyperbole. There are no splendid sweeping landscapes, big animals are either food or a threat, and cold is a given. Consider […]
Posted inSeptember 19, 2005: Squeezing Water from a Stone
The grasslands — humanity’s big backyard
“We live in grasslands, and we live off them,” write biologists Carl and Jane Bock. “They are our backyards, in an evolutionary if no longer always in a literal sense.” For more than three decades, the Bocks have studied humanity’s backyard, mostly in the form of an 8,000-acre former cattle ranch in southeastern Arizona. On […]
Posted inSeptember 19, 2005: Squeezing Water from a Stone
The Boys of Winter
The Boys of Winter Charles Sanders257 pages, softcover: $19.95University Press of Colorado, 2005. Charles Sanders, an avid skier himself, tells the true stories of three champion skiers who joined the Army’s 10th Mountain Division during World War II. After training on the West’s snowy peaks, they went off to fight — and die — in […]
Posted inSeptember 19, 2005: Squeezing Water from a Stone
To Save the Wild Bison
To Save the Wild Bison Mary Ann Franke309 pages, hardcover: $29.95University of Oklahoma Press, 2005. Mary Ann Franke traces the controversial history of Yellowstone National Park’s bison, the only wild bison herd that’s persisted since pre-Columbus days. Praised as a potent restorer of biodiversity, the animals have also been persecuted as transmitters of disease; dozens […]
Posted inSeptember 19, 2005: Squeezing Water from a Stone
Wounded
Wounded Percival Everett 256 pages, hardcover: $23 Graywolf Press, 2005. Set in the Red Desert of Wyoming, this novel is a modern-day Western with a twist. John Hunt, a black horse trainer, gets pulled into the dark currents of hate crimes when an Indian friend’s cows are killed by racists and a friend’s gay son […]
Posted inSeptember 5, 2005: Rangeland Revival
The restoration will not be televised
In nature, there is neither right or wrong — only consequences. The truth of that is demonstrated in After the Fires: The Ecology of Change in Yellowstone National Park. The wildfires that swept Yellowstone in 1988 were the first prime-time forest fires, according to the book. Television viewers stared aghast at the raging flames and […]
Posted inSeptember 5, 2005: Rangeland Revival
Out of the video arcade and into the woods
For the first time in history, the bond between children and nature has been broken, writes child advocate and journalist Richard Louv in Last Child in the Woods. The culprits are many: Kids prefer to play inside where the electrical outlets are, instead of outdoors where the wild birds sing. Computers, TV and video games […]
Posted inSeptember 5, 2005: Rangeland Revival
Aliens in the Backyard: Plant and Animal Imports to America
Aliens in the Backyard: Plant and Animal Imports to America John Leland 248 pages, hardcover: $29.95 University of South Carolina Press, 2005. We know by now that exotic species often wreak havoc: Asian tiger mosquitoes spread West Nile virus, Australian eucalyptus trees increase California’s fire risk. But Leland shows us that they can bring benefits, […]
Posted inSeptember 5, 2005: Rangeland Revival
Maverick Autobiographies: Women Writers and the American West, 1900-1936
Maverick Autobiographies: Women Writers and the American West, 1900-1936 Cathryn Halverson 230 pages, hardcover: $45 The University of Wisconsin Press, 2004. Probably you’ve never heard of the three Western women featured in this book. But if you’re not put off by literary criticism or footnotes, you’ll meet Mary MacLane, who lived in Butte, Mont., and […]
Posted inAugust 8, 2005: The Gangs of Zion
A refreshing take on Wal-Mart vs. The World
“Unless you’ve been residing in a national wildlife refuge, you probably hear a lot about Wal-Mart,” begins The United States of Wal-Mart, by Denver writer John Dicker. Being anti-Wal-Mart is so popular these days, it can be hard to separate the good criticism from the bad. But Dicker’s book clearly qualifies as good. It is […]
Posted inAugust 8, 2005: The Gangs of Zion
Crazy like a fox, or a fish, or a bat…
Field biologists are a rare breed. If you have any doubt about this, Jennifer Bové’s book, The Back Road to Crazy, will change your mind. Field biologists find pleasure in wading, chest-deep, against a fast current of sub-zero water before the sun has even considered rising — all to net and count tiny fish no […]
Posted inAugust 8, 2005: The Gangs of Zion
The Battle over Hetch Hetchy: America’s Most Controversial Dam and the Birth of Modern Environmentalism
The Battle over Hetch Hetchy: America’s Most Controversial Dam and the Birth of Modern Environmentalism by Robert W. Righter 277 pages, hardover $30: Oxford University press, 2005 Robert Righter, a history professor at Southern Methodist University, chronicles the damming of the Hetch Hetchy Valley in Yosemite National Park. Although the water needs of San Francisco […]
Posted inAugust 8, 2005: The Gangs of Zion
High Country
High Country by Willard Wyman, 160 Pages, hardcover $24.95: University of Oklahoma Press, September 2005. If by now you’ve tired of the summer-reading crop of spy thrillers and cheesy romances, try this Depression-era novel about a boy, Ty Hardin, who leaves the family ranch in Montana to become a mulepacker. After being wounded in World […]
Posted inJuly 25, 2005: The Many Faces of Richard Pombo
Pueblo Indian Agriculture
Pueblo Indian Agriculture James A. Vlasich, 384 pages, hardcover $34.95: University of New Mexico Press, 2005. James Vlasich explores the American Indian farms along New Mexico’s Rio Grande. The 19 pueblos there have endured — despite Spanish conquistadors, land and water disputes with Anglo settlers, and the vagaries of U.S. Indian policy. Now, the Body […]
Posted inJuly 25, 2005: The Many Faces of Richard Pombo
Complete History of New Mexico
Complete History of New Mexico Kevin McIlvoy, 174 pages, paperback $15: Graywolf Press, 2004. This collection of short stories from a Las Cruces-based writer is published by the independent Graywolf Press. Kevin McIlvoy’s stories are written from a variety of perspectives — from 11-year-old Chum telling the history of the state as he sees it, […]
Posted inJuly 25, 2005: The Many Faces of Richard Pombo
Tales of Colorado’s high-elevation tailings
In 1983, an anonymous caller warned Doc Smith that “his river would turn red.” Sure enough, the next day, the rancher and veterinarian watched toxic mining metals surge through the Arkansas River as it crossed his property. This wasn’t the first time: His grandfather had fought the effects of mining on his ranchlands and livestock […]
Posted inJuly 25, 2005: The Many Faces of Richard Pombo
Head games in the hot, hot desert
No matter how well-mapped the world seems to be, explorers remain intrepid. In The Way Out, Colorado writer Craig Childs writes about how he and his traveling companion, Dirk Vaughan, found their way through a desert on the Navajo Indian Reservation in southern Utah. Both Childs and Vaughan seem to crave the harsh truths of […]
Posted inJuly 25, 2005: The Many Faces of Richard Pombo
Outgrowing the Earth: The Food Security Challenge in an Age of Falling Water Tables and Rising Temperatures
Outgrowing the Earth: The Food Security Challenge in an Age of Falling Water Tables and Rising Temperatures Lester R. Brown, 272 pages, hardcover $27.95, paperback $15.95: W.W. Norton, 2005. Lester Brown, the environmental world’s leading prophet of doom, brings us his latest nonfiction disaster thriller. As world populations boom, farmers reach deeper and deeper underground […]