Once-lush grasslands, the source of precious food and water, are growing dry and bare. Rivers that used to flow year-round now run dry after the rains. Grazing animals want for food. What is causing this “desertification” of the earth, and how can we stop it? In The Grazing Revolution, biologist Allan Savory presents a solution that’s as radical as it is simple: huge herds of livestock, managed to mimic the behavior of the natural herds that once roamed grasslands centuries ago. Tracing his own story of discovery, Savory debunks common misconceptions and provides a vivid chronicle of the process by which he has seen scrubby wasteland revert to robust ecosystems. Our age-old agricultural practices are contributing greatly to the global climate change underway; Savory argues that by re-imagining these practices, we can reverse desertification and save the planet.

    Written while Abbey was working as a ranger at Arches National Park outside of Moab, Utah, Desert Solitaire is a rare view of one man’s quest to experience nature in its purest form.Through prose that is by turns passionate and poetic, Abbey reflects on the condition of our remaining wilderness and the future of a civilization that cannot reconcile itself to living in the natural world as well as his own internal struggle with morality. As the world continues its rapid development, Abbey’s cry to maintain the natural beauty of the West remains just as relevant today as when this book was written.

    Hatch charts, fly pattern recommendations, and important fishing strategies from Paul Weamer. This is the ideal reference for those just starting out or for those that want to have a more comprehensive view of the important insects.Understanding aquatic insect hatches is like being able to cast an entire fly line. Do you need to cast that far to catch fish? Of course not. But will being able to cast a long distance inhibit your ability to catch fish? Never. Knowing where, and how, insects live and emerge gives anglers yet another piece of the puzzle. I’ve never heard a fly fisherman exclaim, “I probably would have caught those rising fish if I just didn’t know so much about trout stream insects.”You still need to cast. You still need to present flies in such a manner that fish will accept them. But though no one has ever failed to catch a trout because they knew too much about aquatic insects, plenty of anglers have not caught as big a fish, or as many fish as they could have caught, because they failed to understand the importance of matching a hatch. This is particularly true when fishing for large, wild, selective trout—the ones we all really want to catch.In this book, I try to relieve some of the reticence about trout stream insects that makes many anglers feel inadequate and uneasy. Many excellent books provide very detailed information about specific hatches. But that’s not this book’s goal. This book is written for new anglers who want a basic understanding of aquatic insects or more seasoned fly fishers who want to take their skills to the next level; those who want to know not only if their flies will work but why they’ll work as well. I remember when I was first learning to fly fish, and I read about complicated Latin names or confusing stages of aquatic insect development. I was lost. It was as if the whole fly fishing world was born knowing about these things, and I was left out. This book’s aim is to provide basic aquatic insect knowledge that will not only help you to understand more about trout stream insects, but it will also help you catch more trout on your next fishing trip. It will help you to understand why you should tie one fly to your leader rather than another to imitate the hatches you encounter.Paul Weamer is a Fly Fisherman magazine contributing editor and the author or co-author of several fly fishing books. He is an accomplished photographer, specializing in aquatic insect macro photography, and has contributed photos to Fly Fisherman, The Catskill Regional Guide, and The Drake, as well as his own and several other writer’s books. Paul is a former licensed guide, working the Upper Delaware and Beaverkill Rivers for trout and smallmouth bass, and Cattaraugus, Elk, and Walnut Creeks for steelhead. He has owned or managed three highly regarded fly shops in New York and Pennsylvania and has been a production tier for numerous guides and shops, including the legendary Dette fly shop in Roscoe, New York. Paul is a contract fly designer for the Montana Fly Company and the inventor of the Weamer’s Truform, Comparachute, Alewife, Bucktail Body, and the Weamer Streamer series of flies.Paul is one of the founders of the Friends of the Upper Delaware River (FUDR), and is a current member of the Outdoor Writers Association of America. He was the 2009 co-winner of FUDR’s Upper Delaware “One Bug” tournament and winner of the 2011 Upper Delaware Council’s Recreation Award for his book about the river. Paul is a Simms Guide Ambassador and member of the product development staff for Simms and Orvis.

    Forest rangers had assembled nearly ten thousand men  —  college boys, day workers, immigrants from mining camps  —  to fight the fire. But no living person had seen anything like those flames, and neither the rangers nor anyone else knew how to subdue them.Egan narrates the struggles of the overmatched rangers against the implacable fire with unstoppable dramatic force. Equally dramatic is the larger story he tells of outsized president Teddy Roosevelt and his chief forester, Gifford Pinchot. Pioneering the notion of conservation, Roosevelt and Pinchot did nothing less than create the idea of public land as our national treasure, owned by and preserved for every citizen. The robber barons fought Roosevelt and Pinchot’s rangers, but the Big Burn saved the forests even as it destroyed them: the heroism shown by the rangers turned public opinion permanently in their favor and became the creation myth that drove the Forest Service, with consequences still felt in the way our national lands are protected  —  or not —  today.

    These torchlight adventures have since inspired a generation of scientists, and his research is still considered useful today. In The Secret Life of Wombats, James Woodford pursues Nicholson's story and embarks on his own journey to uncover the true nature of our most intriguing marsupial."Woodford has done the research, he has read widely, spoken with the major wombat pundits and with the lay observers. He has travelled to gain direct experience of all species...I know more about wombats than I did, and retain some stark images which I hope never to lose." - Sunday Age.

    Fish and Wildlife Service. In August 1992, she accepted an assignment that forever changed--and endangered--her life. She posed as a big-game hunter in Alaska in order to infiltrate an international ring of poachers out to kill the biggest and best of that state's wildlife.A Hunt for Justice recounts her dramatic story--a story she was not legally permitted to write about until her retirement in 2004.

    Rude and brilliant. Read it and you will see the future.--William Kittredge.

    Ben Law's incredible sense of the land and his respect for age old traditions offers a wonderful insight into the life of Prickly Nut Wood.

    Helens in southwestern Washington State. Still, no one was prepared when a cataclysmic eruption blew the top off of the mountain, laying waste to hundreds of square miles of land and killing fifty-seven people. Steve Olson interweaves vivid personal stories with the history, science, and economic forces that influenced the fates and futures of those around the volcano. Eruption delivers a spellbinding narrative of an event that changed the course of volcanic science, and an epic tale of our fraught relationship with the natural world.

    David Owen traces all that water from the Colorado's headwaters to its parched terminus, once a verdant wetland but now a million-acre desert. He takes readers on an adventure downriver, along a labyrinth of waterways, reservoirs, power plants, farms, fracking sites, ghost towns, and RV parks, to the spot near the U.S.–Mexico border where the river runs dry. Water problems in the western United States can seem tantalizingly easy to solve: just turn off the fountains at the Bellagio, stop selling hay to China, ban golf, cut down the almond trees, and kill all the lawyers. But a closer look reveals a vast man-made ecosystem that is far more complex and more interesting than the headlines let on.The story Owen tells in Where the Water Goes is crucial to our future: how a patchwork of engineering marvels, byzantine legal agreements, aging infrastructure, and neighborly cooperation enables life to flourish in the desert, and the disastrous consequences we face when any part of this tenuous system fails.

    Houston’s ranch becomes her sanctuary, a place where she discovers how the natural world has mothered and healed her after a childhood of parental abuse and neglect.In a work as lucid and invigorating as mountain air, Deep Creek delivers Houston’s most profound meditations yet on how “to live simultaneously inside the wonder and the grief . . . to love the damaged world and do what I can to help it thrive.”

    Before humans ruled the earth, there were wolves. Once abundant in North America, these majestic creatures were hunted to near extinction in the lower 48 states by the 1920s. But in recent decades, conservationists have brought wolves back to the Rockies, igniting a battle over the very soul of the West.With novelistic detail, Nate Blakeslee tells the gripping story of one of these wolves, O-Six, a charismatic alpha female named for the year of her birth. Uncommonly powerful, with gray fur and faint black ovals around each eye, O-Six is a kind and merciful leader, a fiercely intelligent fighter, and a doting mother. She is beloved by wolf watchers, particularly renowned naturalist Rick McIntyre, and becomes something of a social media star, with followers around the world.But as she raises her pups and protects her pack, O-Six is challenged on all fronts: by hunters, who compete with wolves for the elk they both prize; by cattle ranchers who are losing livestock and have the ear of politicians; and by other Yellowstone wolves who are vying for control of the park’s stunningly beautiful Lamar Valley.These forces collide in American Wolf, a riveting multi-generational saga of hardship and triumph that tells a larger story about the ongoing cultural clash in the West—between those fighting for a vanishing way of life and those committed to restoring one of the country’s most iconic landscapes.

    More than 20 hikes, ranging from easy to difficult, are covered in depth, with trail descriptions, elevation charts, maps, and photos. Chapters on history, geology, ecology, and wildlife are included along with essential information on lodging, camping, outdoor adventures, and popular park activities in Yosemite Valley, Tuolumne Meadows, Wawona, and Hetch Hetchy. From the world-famous views of cliffs, waterfalls, polished granite domes, and giant sequoia groves to fine dining at the High Sierra Camp, this comprehensive travel companion allows anyone to access this fascinating park.

    In this narrative, readers experience The Great Hurricane of 1938, the most financially destructive storm on record.

    Worried that she was losing her passion for the scientific research she once loved, she was compelled to experience wildness again, to be guided by the sounds of birds and to follow the trails of animals.In March of 2012, she and her husband set off on a 4,000-mile wilderness journey from the Pacific rainforest to the Alaskan Arctic, traveling by rowboat, ski, foot, raft, and canoe. Together, they survived harrowing dangers while also experiencing incredible moments of joy and grace -- migrating birds silhouetted against the moon, the steamy breath of caribou, and the bond that comes from sharing such experiences.A unique blend of science, adventure, and personal narrative, The Sun is a Compass explores the bounds of the physical body and the tenuousness of life in the company of the creatures who make their homes in the wildest places left in North America. Inspiring and beautifully written, this love letter to nature is a lyrical testament to the resilience of the human spirit.Winner of the 2019 Banff Mountain Book Competition: Adventure Travel