Showing titles in Environmentalists & Naturalists

For centuries, the Tower of London has been home to a group of famous avian residents: the ravens. Each year they are seen by millions of visitors, and they have become as integral a part of the Tower as its ancient stones themselves. But their role is even more important than that – legend has it that if the ravens should ever leave, the Tower will crumble into dust, and great harm will befall the kingdom.

In The Robin, Stephen Moss records a year of observing the robin both close to home and in the field to shed light on the hidden life of this apparently familiar bird. We follow its lifecycle from the time it enters the world as an egg, through its time as a nestling and juvenile, to the adult bird and ultimately, death.

Chana Cox was a brilliant woman who lived a remarkable and incredibly full life until her passing in March 2019 at 77 years old. In her honor, her children have begun to re-publish memorial editions of her books. The first of these publications is this, her most popular book. A River Went out of Eden tells the engrossing stories of her life and those around her, in the beautiful but unforgiving, Idaho wilderness area.

Mo Wilde made a quiet but radical pledge: to live only off free, foraged food for an entire year. In a world disconnected from its roots, eating wild food is both culinary and healing, social and political. Ultimately, it is an act of love and community. Using her expert knowledge of botany and mycology, Mo follows the seasons to find nutritious food from hundreds of species of plants, fungi and seaweeds, and in the process learns not just how to survive, but how to thrive. Nourishing her body and mind deepens her connection with the earth—a connection that we all hunger for.

Is it impossible to be lonely, or is loneliness an impossibly difficult thing? In the first part of this book, Chinle Miller wanders the desert and mountains with her dogs, exploring nature and an inner life of solitude, until an event happens that shakes her life to its core - her best friend and cousin Janie is killed by a grizzly in Alaska.

Ben Short has a successful career in advertising, a flat in a trendy part of London, a flashy motorbike. But after years of suffering with anxiety, he's a wreck. A drastic change is needed. For a time, he finds solace working with a forester, then as an apprentice to a Gypsy woodman, setting up home in a dilapidated wagon with just a rescue dog for company.

As a young boy, the author took part in collecting specimens for his father. Fifty years later, he was asked to join a team from the same institution studying the state of sea life in the Bahamian waters where he grew up, as measured against his father’s benchmark. The first of the sea changes presented in this eloquent book stems from climate change and is the drastic transformation of ocean life due to global warming - but there are more.

When Melody Horrill arrived at university she was a troubled and lost young woman, hiding behind a carefully crafted exterior. She had experienced a childhood of emotional and physical trauma mainly at the hands of her violent father that was as damaging as it was brutal. One day Melody volunteered to help her lecturer monitor pods of river dolphins nearby. There for the first time she encountered Jock, a solitary dolphin with a maimed fin, who lived apart from the highly social pods. Melody was to form a bond with Jock that gave her the key to freeing herself from the demons of her own past.

Simon Nye's TV series, The Durrells, is based loosely on Gerald Durrell's Corfu Trilogy and in particular his much-loved best seller, My Family and Other Animals. These books in turn are based somewhat loosely on actual events. The real-life Durrells went to Corfu at the urging of Lawrence Durrell, who was already living on the island with his wife, Nancy Myers. Their intent was to keep the family together as his mother, Louisa, was drinking heavily and recovering from a breakdown.

In 1990, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released its first Assessment Report. By then, award-winning urban planner Wendy Sarkissian had been singing the climate blues for years. Her colleagues dismiss her fears, so she abandons urban life for a solitary retreat to reconsider her professional and activist directions. With no bush skills, this terrified novice confronts many challenges during her harsh, year-long adventure in the Australian outback. As weeks pass, however, she discovers wellsprings of courage.

Eine deutsche Umweltschützerin entscheidet sich für die Liebe zu einem Massai – und für ein Leben in einer der patriarchalsten Kulturen der Welt. Auf einem Forschungsaufenthalt in Afrika begegnet die Biologin Stephanie Fuchs Sokoine, einem traditionell lebenden Massai. Die beiden verlieben sich, doch die Hürden sind groß, die ihrer Beziehung im Wege stehen. Schließlich geben sie ihrer Liebe eine Chance und Stephanie Fuchs zieht nach Tansania in Sokoines Dorf. Bald schon steht sie vor großen Herausforderungen: Sie muss ihren Platz in der traditionell lebenden Dorfgemeinschaft erst finden.

Meet Mya-Rose—otherwise known as 'Birdgirl'. Birder, environmentalist, diversity activist. To date she has seen over 5,000 different types of bird: half the world's species. Every single bird a treasure. Each sighting a small step in her family journey—a collective moment of joy and stillness amidst her mother's deepening mental health crisis. And each helping her to find her voice. Since she was young, she has visited every continent to pursue her passion, seeing first-hand the inequality and reckless destruction we are inflicting on our fragile planet.

It’s believed by many that crows are a symbol of bad luck and death, but by others, crows are the symbol of life, magic, and mysteries. They also symbolize intelligence, flexibility, and destiny. Grandma often told me superstitious stories and myths. Most of her perceived omens remained unexplainable myths, but she always insisted that if we didn’t pay attention, who knows what would’ve happened.

Penelope Lively has always been a keen gardener. This audiobook is partly a memoir of her own life in gardens: the large garden at home in Cairo where she spent most of her childhood, her grandmother's garden in a sloping Somerset field, then two successive Oxfordshire gardens of her own and the smaller urban garden in the North London home she lives in today. It's also a wise, engaging exploration of gardens in literature, from Paradise Lost to Alice in Wonderland.

Bob Irwin's extraordinary life as a wildlife pioneer, father to wildlife warrior Steve and founder of Australia Zoo, told in his own words. Bob Irwin grew up in the Dandenong Ranges, where his passion for wildlife was born. A near-death experience while working as a plumber made Bob realise he needed to follow his dreams, so he and his wife, Lyn, moved their young family to Queensland, where they opened a wildlife park on the Sunshine Coast. The Irwin children grew up in and around the Beerwah Reptile and Wildlife Park.

An extraordinary personal testament to the life and times of one of America's great naturalists and literary figures, written by Edward Waldo Emerson, son of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Thoreau's friend and mentor. It is perhaps the best short introduction to Thoreau's life and times. "To his lonely happiness the world will owe the best gifts he has left" - Edward Waldo Emerson. Henry Thoreau left society at the age of 28 to live for two years and two months in the woods by his own means. He did this in order that when it came time for him to die he would not discover "that he had not lived".

More than any other individual, James Stevenson-Hamilton can be credited with the creation of the Kruger National Park in South Africa. In 1902, when the South African War ended, Stevenson-Hamilton swapped his military career for the more uncertain calling of a game warden. Under his supervision the small, neglected and war-ravaged Sabi Game Reserve expanded in stature and size. By the time he retired in 1946, the Kruger National Park had become one of the great national parks of the world.

Hunting squirrels on an autumn morning, probing the woods, rifle in hand, Jackson reveals an attention to nature too often neglected. Following a bird dog into the damp and mysterious places where woodcock settle on their southbound migrations; chasing hounds on the trail of raccoons on a frosty winter night; stalking deer in a quiet corner of a small farm; fishing for carp in a creek, bass and bluegill in ponds, catfish in a murky river, and reef fish in the Gulf, Jackson reminds that we are stewards of not only resources but also a past that defines us as hunters and fishers.

Moving through the settings of her life - red rock canyons, aspen forests, mountains, and cities - Jana Richman probes the depths of her internal landscape and asks how we can find stillness in our noisy world. In essays both personal and profoundly universal, Richman eschews quick and easy answers for quiet reflections on the questions: In a culture demanding that every voice be heard, how do we make sense of the resulting roar? Where do we seek solace when the last quiet places are sacrificed to human hubris? How do we shed the angst thrust upon us to create lives of peace?

L'histoire fascinante d'un "Mowgli" d'aujourd'hui. Amoureux de la nature, Geoffroy Delorme n'a pas vingt ans quand il aperçoit, dans la forêt de Louviers en Normandie, un chevreuil curieux et joueur. Le jeune homme et l'animal s'apprivoisent. Geoffroy lui donne un nom, Daguet, et le chevreuil lui ouvre les portes de la forêt et du monde fascinant de ses semblables. Geoffroy s'installe parmi eux et son expérience immersive va durer sept ans.