Best of
Wildlife

2000

The Sibley Guide to Birds


David Allen Sibley - 2000
    Containing the renowned artist's superbly lucid and comprehensive text, this guide features more than 6,500 of his detailed paintings. Full color.

The Kenneth Anderson Omnibus: Volume 1: Tales from the Indian Jungle, Man-Eaters and Jungle Killers, The Call of the Man-Eater


Kenneth Anderson - 2000
    Beautifully written and informative.

Teewinot: A Year in the Teton Range


Jack Turner - 2000
    As a young man, he climbed the peaks of this singular range with basic climbing gear friends. Later in life, he led treks in India, Pakistan, Nepal, China, Tibet, and Peru, but he always returned to the mountains of his youth. He continues to climb the Tetons as a guide for Exum Mountain, Guides, the oldest and most prestigious guide service in America. Teewinot is his ode to forty years in the mountains that he loves. Like Thoreau and Muir, Turner has contemplated the essential nature of a landscape. Teewinot is a book about a mountain range, its austere temper, its seasons, its flora and fauna, a few of its climbs, its weather, and the glory of the wildness. It is also about a small group of guides and rangers, nomads who inhabit the range each summer and know the mountains as intimately as they will ever be known. It is also a remarkable account of what it is like to live and work in a national park. Teewinot has something for everyone: spellbinding accounts of classic climbs, awe at the beauty of nature, and passion for some of the environmental issues facing America today. In this series of recollections, one of America's most beautiful national parks comes alive with beauty, mystery, and power. The beauty, mystery, and power of the Grand Tetons come alive in Jack Turner's memoir of a year on America's most beautiful mountain range.

Nature's Spokesman: M. Krishnan and Indian Wildlife


M. Krishnan - 2000
    Krishnan (1913-86) was a naturalist known for his prose style, his learning, and his astonishingly wide range of interests. For nearly 60 years he wrote columns, essays, sketches, and jeremiads on the ecology and culture of the subcontinent. As a chronicler of the natural world Krishnan was unequalled, yet his work is to be found, for the most part, only in old and inaccessible newspapers and magazines. This collection showcases some of his finest essays, on large mammals, little creatures, nature in temples and folklore, nature's desecration and its conservation. It also contains a lovely cricket story and some essays on the history of Tamil poetry, and the editor provides a biographical introduction.

The Last Tasmanian Tiger: The History and Extinction of the Thylacine


Robert Paddle - 2000
    It argues that rural politicians, ineffective political action by scientists, and a deeper intellectual prejudice about the inferiority of marsupials actually resulted in the extinction of this once proud species. Hb ISBN (2000):0-521-78219-8

Elephant Memories: Thirteen Years in the Life of an Elephant Family


Cynthia Moss - 2000
    Her long-term research has revealed much of what we now know about these complex and intelligent animals. Here she chronicles the lives of the members of the T families led by matriarchs Teresia, Slit Ear, Torn Ear, Tania, and Tuskless. With a new afterword catching up on the families and covering current conservation issues, Moss's story will continue to fascinate animal lovers."One is soon swept away by this 'Babar' for adults. By the end, one even begins to feel an aversion for people. One wants to curse human civilization and cry out, 'Now God stand up for the elephants!'"—Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, New York Times"Moss speaks to the general reader, with charm as well as scientific authority. . . . [An] elegantly written and ingeniously structured account." —Raymond Sokolov, Wall Street Journal"Moss tells the story in a style so conversational . . . that I felt like a privileged visitor riding beside her in her rickety Land-Rover as she showed me around the park." —Sarah Blaffer Hrdy, New York Times Book Review"A prose-poem celebrating a species from which we could learn some moral as well as zoological lessons." —Chicago Tribune

The Africa Diaries: An Illustrated Memoir of Life in the Bush


Dereck Joubert - 2000
    Photographs of zebras, lions, hyenas, and elephants, supplement diary entries of a couple who journeyed to Johannesburg, South Africa, in 1978 to run a tourist lodge and have spent their lives living on the African savannah.

The Living Wild


Art Wolfe - 2000
    Recognizing the crucial interdependence between animal life and the environment, Wolfe focuses on this relationship. As he says, An animal . . . within its habitat is a vibrant representation of natural selection. The Living Wild offers breathtaking evidence of this. Wolfe traveled three years to capture these rare, soaring images, from Mongolia to Australia to Iceland and beyond. The result is a rich pictorial tour of a magnificent array of animals, from charismatic beasts like the giant panda and the lowland gorilla, to a stunning display of birds, to such unsung contributors to the ecology as insects. Complementing the images are essays by renowned conservationists, such as Jane Goodall, who document the increasingly tenuous state of earth's biodiversity and suggest ways to strengthen it.

Neither God Nor Devil: Rethinking Our Preception of Wolves


Eva-Lena Rehnmark - 2000
    Her watercolors and insightful text offer a passionate but clear-eyed view of this fascinating species whose ferocity has been exaggerated and misrepresented. After exploring real wol

To The Elephant Graveyard


Tarquin Hall - 2000
    Local forestry officials, powerless to stop the elephant, call in one of India's last licensed elephant hunters and issue a warrant for the rogue's destruction. Reading about the ensuing hunt in a Delhi newspaper, journalist Tarquin Hall flies to Assam to investigate. To the Elephant Graveyard is the compelling account of the search for a killer elephant in the northeast corner of India, and a vivid portrait of the Khasi tribe, who live intimately with the elephants. Though it seems a world of peaceful coexistence between man and beast, Hall begins to see that the elephants are suffering, having lost their natural habitat to the destruction of the forests and modernization. Hungry, confused, and with little forest left to hide in, herds of elephants are slowly adapting to domestication, but many are resolute and furious. Often spellbinding with excitement, like "a page-turning detective tale" (Publishers Weekly), To the Elephant Graveyard is also intimate and moving, as Hall magnificently takes us on a journey to a place whose ancient ways are fast disappearing with the ever-shrinking forest.

Bring ’Em Back Alive: The Best of Frank Buck


Frank Buck - 2000
    “Fans remember [Buck] as a devoted conservationist—Buck fretted often about the survival of rare species—and intrepid adventurer, whose deeds in Sumatra, Borneo, India and the Philippines wowed folks at home.” —Newsday. “Good, old-fashioned, movie-serial-type adventures in wild, exotic settings.” —Dallas Morning News. “All in all, this is an extremely entertaining book, illustrating a different time and written in a way that brings that time to life.” —Choice. “That this hardy Texan’s celebrity was earned is made evident in a new version of Bring ‘Em Back Alive, . . . a compilation of exciting and often chilling first-person adventures.” —East Texas Historical Association Journal. Frank Buck spent his life capturing alive every kind of animal, from birds to snakes to elephants. The intrepid Texas animal collector and jungle adventurer enthralled generations of readers and moviegoers with the stories of danger and daring collected here.

The Practical Mushroom Encyclopedia Identifying, Picking and cooking with Mushrooms


Peter Jordan - 2000