Naturalist Ellen Meloy tracks a band of these majestic creatures through backcountry hikes, downriver floats, and travels across the Southwest. Alone in the wilderness, Meloy chronicles her communion with the bighorns and laments the growing severance of man from nature, a severance that she feels has left us spiritually hungry. Wry, quirky and perceptive, Eating Stone is a brillant and wholly original tribute to the natural world.

    In Feral Cities, Tristan Donovan digs below the urban gloss to uncover the wild creatures that we share our streets and homes with, and profiles the brave and fascinating people who try to manage them. Along the way readers will meet the wall-eating snails that are invading Miami, the boars that roam Berlin, and the monkey gangs of Cape Town. From feral chickens and carpet-roaming bugs to coyotes hanging out in sandwich shops and birds crashing into skyscrapers, Feral Cities takes readers on a journey through streets and neighborhoods that are far more alive than we often realize, shows how animals are adjusting to urban living, and asks what messages the wildlife in our metropolises have for us.

    Brenda Peterson, one of our best nature writers, brings the full complement of science, history, and memoir to the great battle being played out nationwide to save wild wolves.

    Now comes a new portable guide from David Sibley that every birder will want to carry into the field. Compact and comprehensive, this new guide features 650 bird species plus regional populations found east of the Rocky Mountains. Accounts include stunningly accurate illustrations more than 4,200 in total with descriptive caption text pointing out the most important field marks. Each entry contains new text concerning frequency, nesting, behavior, food and feeding, voice description, and key identification features. Accounts also include brand-new maps created from information contributed by 110 regional experts across the continent. The Sibley Field Guide to Birds of Eastern North America is an indispensable resource for all birders seeking an authoritative and portable guide to the birds of the East."

    Gustavus Cheyney Doane, a gifted but tormented cavalryman known as "the man who invented Wonderland"; the ambitious former vigilante leader Nathaniel Langford; scientist Ferdinand Hayden, who brought photographer William Henry Jackson and painter Thomas Moran to Yellowstone; and Gen. Phil Sheridan, Civil War hero and architect of the Indian Wars, who finally succeeded in having the new National Park placed under the protection of the US Cavalry.  George Black's Empire of Shadows is a groundbreaking historical account of the origins of America's majestic national landmark.

     The Soul of the Rhino is the spirited yet humble account of Mishra’s unique personal journey. Fresh out of university in the 1970s, Mishra embarks on his conservation work with the help of an ornery but steadfast elephant driver, the Nepalese royal family, and handfuls of  like-minded scientists whose aim is to protect the animal in the foothills of the Himalayas. Yet, in spite of decades spent creating nature reserves and moving rhinos to protected areas, arm-wrestling politicians, and raising awareness for the cause, Mishra is still fearful about the future of the Indian Rhino. To this day, Nepal is overrun by armed insurgents, political violence, and poachers who could kill off this magnificent creature for good.   Filled with candor and bittersweet humor, Mishra re-creates his journey on behalf of the rhino, an ugly yet enchanting, terrifying yet delicate creature. The first book of its kind to delve into the multi-layered political labyrinths of South Asian wildlife conservation, and one man’s endurance in the face of it all, The Soul of the Rhino is sure to win over yourheart and soul.

    The heat was unbearable, malaria would be a constant danger, her husband would have to be away for long stretches, there were no schools or nearby doctors for their three daughters, and of course the area teemed with wild animals. Yet for Kobie and her family, the seventeen years at South Africa's Kruger National Park were the most magical of their lives. Now, in The Wilderness Family, Kobie recounts the enchanting adventures and extraordinary encounters they experienced in this vast reserve where wildlife has right of way.Kobie and her husband Kobus were overwhelmed by the beauty of the Mahlangeni ranger station when they arrived with their little girls in the autumn of 1980. Golden sunshine glowed in the lush garden where fruit bats hung in the sausage trees; hippos basked in the glittering waters of the Letaba River; storks and herons perched along the shore. Kobie felt she had found heaven on earth--until she awoke that first night to find a python slithering silently across her bedroom floor. It was the perfect introduction to the wonders and terrors that awaited her.As the Krügers settled in, they became accustomed to living in the midst of ravishing splendor and daily surprises. A honey badger they nursed back to health rampaged affectionately through the house. Sneaky hyenas stole blankets and cook pots. Ordinarily placid elephants grew foul-tempered and violent in the summer heat. And one terrible day, the shadow of tragedy fell across the family when a lion attacked Kobus in the bush and nearly killed him.But nothing prepared the Krügers for the adventure of raising an orphaned lion cub. The cub was only a few days old and on the verge of death when they found him alone.  Leo, as the girls promptly named the cub, survived on loads of love and bottles of fat-enriched milk, and soon became an affectionate, rambunctious member of the family. At the heart of the book, Kobie recounts the unique bond that each of the Krügers forged with Leo and their sometimes hilarious endeavor to teach him to become a "real" lion and live with his own kind in the wild.Writing with deep affection and luminous prose, Kobie Krüger captures here the mystery of untamed Africa--its fathomless skies, soulful landscapes, and most of all, its astonishing array of animals. By turns funny and heart-breaking, engaging and suspenseful, The Wilderness Family is an unforgettable memoir of a woman, her family, and the amazing game reserve they called home for seventeen incredible years.

    That thirst will be quenched at least temporarily by the perusal of this 500-plus-page pictorial extravaganza from the folks at DK. Animal Life offers you a visitor's pass into every aspect of animal behavior, from family relationships and hunting strategies to courtship rituals and sex lives. In signature DK style, editor Charlotte Uhlenbroek presides over a rich compilation of texts, side panels, photographs, and other illustrations.

    In April 2003, wildlife biologist Karsten Heuer and filmmaker Leanne Allison embarked on a five-month research journey to follow the 2,000-mile migration of a herd of 120,000 Porcupine Caribou, from their winter range to their calving grounds in Alaska, and back again. From Old Crow, Yukon, the Heuers followed ancient paths and the primordial rhythms of the herd through Canada and over the border to the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in the United States. The couple travelled on foot and by ski through unforgiving landscapes; fording swift, deadly cold rivers, as well as encountering ravenous grizzlies who tracked them as prey. Having began the expedition as seasoned outdoor adventurers, Karsten and Leanne soon learned they would only be able to find and discern the intent of the herd by adopting the ancient ways of the area's indigenous people. Advised by a Gwich'in native in Old Crow at the start of their trip to "listen to dreams", Karsten and Leanne find they must shed the many insulating layers of pragmatism that distance them from the natural world. They discover a transformational truth in listening to the music of the earth, paying attention to the urgings within dreams, and in truly, beyond their expectations, being caribou.

    It was five feet long, with steel-blue scales, luminescent eyes and remarkable limb-like fins, unlike those of any fish she had ever seen. Determined to preserve her unusual find, she searched for days for a way to save it, but ended up with only the skin and a few bones.A charismatic amateur ichthyologist, J.L.B. Smith, saw a thumbnail sketch of the fish and was thunderstruck. He recognized it as a coelacanth (pronounced see-la-kanth), a creature known from fossils dating back 400 million years and thought to have died out with the dinosaurs. With its extraordinary limbs, the coelacanth was believed to be the first fish to crawl from the sea and evolve into reptiles, mammals and eventually mankind. The discovery was immediately dubbed the "greatest scientific find of the century." Smith devoted his life to the search for a complete specimen, afourteen-year odyssey that culminated in a dramatic act of international piracy. As the fame of the coelacanth spread, so did rumors and obsessions. Nations fought over it, multimillion-dollar expeditions were launched, and submarines hand-built to find it. In 1998, the rumors and the truth came together in a gripping climax, which brought the coelacanth back into the international limelight.A Fish Caught in Time is the entrancing story of the most rare and precious fish in the world--our own great uncle forty million times removed.

    This book shows how easy it is to fill our gardens with everything from foxes, frogs and mice, to butterflies, ladybirds and thousands of fascinating creepy-crawlies.

    In 1971 he was discovered on the remote Galapagos island of Pinta, from which tortoises had supposedly been exterminated by greedy whalers and seal hunters. He has been at the Charles Darwin Research Station on Santa Cruz island ever since, on the off-chance that scientific ingenuity will conjure up a way of reproducing him and resurrecting his species. Meanwhile a million tourists and dozens of baffled scientists have looked on as the celebrity reptile shows not a jot of interest in the female company provided. Today, Lonesome George has come to embody the mystery, complexity and fragility of the unique Galapagos archipelago. His story echoes the challenges of conservation worldwide; it is a story of Darwin, sexual dysfunction, adventure on the high seas, cloning, DNA fingerprinting and eco-tourism.

    Schultes chronicled his stay there in hundreds of remarkable photographs of the tribes and the land, evocative of the great documentary photographers such as Edward Sheriff Curtis. Published to coincide with a traveling exhibition to debut at the Govinda Gallery in Washington, D.C., The Lost Amazon is the first major publication to examine the work of Dr. Schultes, as seen through his photographs and field notes. With text by Schultes's protege and fellow explorer, Wade Davis, this impressive document takes armchair travelers where they've never gone before.

    The dolphin house was demolished, and its inhabitants swept from their tank into the Gulf of Mexico. After growing up in captivity, how could the eight bottlenose dolphins feed and protect themselves in the wild? And if they could survive, would their trainers ever see them again? This fascinating picture book—enriched with both beautiful color-wash illustrations and photographs taken by the trainers themselves—tells this dramatic, happy-ending story.

    Mushroom authority David Arora provides a beginner's checklist of the 70 most distinctive and common mushrooms, plus detailed chapters on terminology, classification, habitats, mushroom cookery, mushroom toxins, and the meanings of scientific mushroom names. Beginning and experienced mushroom hunters everywhere will find MUSHROOMS DEMYSTIFIED a delightful, informative, and indispensible companion.