Showing 1–12 of 100 results
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Environmental History and Ecology of Moreton Bay: Portraits of Earth’s Great Ecosystem
Artist/Author: McPhee, Daryl$70.00 Add to cartAn interdisciplinary examination of the geologic, marine and human history of Moreton Bay.
The south-east Queensland region is currently experiencing the most rapid urbanisation in Australia. This growth in human population, industry and infrastructure puts pressure on the unique and diverse natural environment of Moreton Bay. Much loved by locals and holiday-goers, Moreton Bay is also an important biogeographic region because its coral reefs, seagrass beds, mangroves and saltmarshes provide a suitable environment for both tropical and temperate species. The bay supports a large number of species of global conservation significance, including marine turtles, dugongs, dolphins, whales and migratory shorebirds, which use the area for feeding or breeding.Environmental History and Ecology of Moreton Bay provides an interdisciplinary examination of Moreton Bay, increasing understanding of existing and emerging pressures on the region and how these may be mitigated and managed. With chapters on the bay’s human uses by Aboriginal peoples and later European settlers, its geology, water quality, marine habitats and animal communities, and commercial and recreational fisheries, Environmental History and Ecology of Moreton Bay will be of value to students in the marine sciences, environmental consultants, policy-makers and recreational fishers.
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Nature’s Allies: Eight Conservationists Who Changed Our World
Artist/Author: Larry A Nielsen (Author), Curt Meine (Foreword By)$40.00 Add to cartIt’s easy to feel small and powerless in the face of big environmental challenges. When climate change forces species to fight for their very survival and the planet s last places of wilderness are growing smaller and smaller, what can a single person do? But environmentalism s greatest change-makers started out living ordinary lives. In Nature’s Allies, Larry Nielsen uses the inspiring stories of conservation pioneers to show that through passion and perseverance we can each make a difference.In eight engaging biographies John Muir, Ding Darling, Aldo Leopold, Rachel Carson, Chico Mendes, Billy Frank Jr., Wangari Maathai, and Gro Harlem Brundtland we meet individuals who have little in common except that they all made a lasting mark on our world. -
Rivers: A Natural and not-so-Natural History
Artist/Author: Raven, Paul , Nigel Holmes$63.00 Add to cartThroughout British history rivers have been of profound economic, social and cultural importance – yet as we see with increasing frequency they have the potential to wreak great destruction. This book describes the natural and not-so-natural changes that have affected British rivers since the last ice age and looks at the many plants and animals that live along, above and within them. Detailed case studies of the Meon, Dee and Endrick illustrate the incredibly varied nature of our river ecosystems, and the natural and human factors that make each one different. Written by two widely respected river ecologists, the book looks not only at rivers as they were and are but also at how they can be managed and cared for. Full of interesting facts and stunning images, Rivers is essential reading for anyone professionally involved in rivers and for the naturalist, conservationist and layman alike. It is the one book you need to understand this singularly important and often contentious feature of the British landscape.
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Turning the Tide on Plastic: How Humanity (And You) Can Make Our Globe Clean Again
Artist/Author: Siegle, Lucy$30.00 Add to cart– Enough plastic is thrown away every year to circle the world 4 times
– More than 8 million tonnes of plastic enter the oceans each year
– 300 million tonnes of new plastic is produced every year
– An estimated 5 trillion pieces of plastic now litter the world’s oceans
– 38.5 million plastic bottles are used every day in the UK
– A million plastic bottles are used per minute around the world
– 500 million plastic straws are used per yearWithout big action, at the current rate, pieces of plastic will outnumber fish in the ocean by 2050. That is the legacy we are leaving our children and grandchildren. Plastic flows into our lives from every direction and most of it is not recycled. Instead it is incinerated or ends up in landfill, where it will sit for hundreds of years, or enters the world’s seas where it fragments into tiny pieces to become microplastics – the environmental scourge of our times.
Many of us had assumed that governments, brands and waste authorities were dealing with plastic on our behalf. But the impact of shows such as Blue Planet II along with national beach cleans and high-profile campaigns have resulted in a collective wake-up call. If there were plans and strategies, they have not worked as we imagined. It would be easy to feel despondent but instead we need to turn our anger and emotion into action, starting by making a big dent in our own enormous consumption.
Turning the Tide on Plastic is here just in time. Journalist, broadcaster and eco-lifestyle expert Lucy Siegle provides a powerful call to arms to end the plastic pandemic along with the tools we need to make decisive change. It is a clear-eyed, authoritative and accessible guide to help us to take decisive and effective personal action.
Because this matters. When it comes to single-use plastics, we are habitual users, reaching out for plastic water bottles, disposable coffee cups, plastic straws and carrier bags multiple times a day. If only 12 of us adopt Lucy’s ‘reduce, rethink, refill, refuse’ approach, we could potentially ditch 3K-15K single items of plastic in a year. When we consider our power as influencers – whether at school, the hairdressers, at work or on the bus – we suddenly become part of something significant.
So now is the time to speak up, take action and demand the change you want to see in the ocean, in the supermarket aisles and on the streets. It’s time to turn the tide on plastic, and Turning the Tide on Plastic will show you how.
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Call of the Reed Warbler
Artist/Author: Massy. Charles$40.00 Add to cartIs it too late to regenerate the earth? Call of the Reed Warbler shows the way forward for the future of our food supply, our Australian landscape and our planet.This ground-breaking book will change the way we think of, farm and grow food. Author and radical farmer Charles Massy explores transformative and regenerative agriculture and the vital connection between our soil and our health. It is a story of how a grassroots revolution – a true underground insurgency – can save the planet, help turn climate change around, and build healthy people and healthy communities, pivoting significantly on our relationship with growing and consuming food.Using his personal experience as a touchstone – from an unknowing, chemical-using farmer with dead soils to a radical ecologist farmer carefully regenerating a 2000-hectare property to a state of natural health – Massy tells the real story behind industrial agriculture and the global profit-obsessed corporations driving it. He shows – through evocative stories – how innovative farmers are finding a new way and interweaves his own local landscape, its seasons and biological richness.At stake is not only a revolution in human health and our communities but the very survival of the planet. For farmer, backyard gardener, food buyer, health worker, policy maker and public leader alike, Call of the Reed Warbler offers a tangible path forward for the future of our food supply, our Australian landscape and our earth. It comprises a powerful and moving paean of hope. -
Rainforest Dispatches from Earth’s Most Vital Frontlines
Artist/Author: Juniper, Tony$33.00 Add to cartRainforests are key to the health of our world – they maintain the water and air cycles, store carbon, and have yielded countless numbers of medical drugs. We have already destroyed half their area. We need urgently to save the half that’s left. This book explains why – and how.
Rainforests are the lungs of our planet – regulators of the earth’s temperature and weather. They are also home to 50 per cent of the world’s animals and plants – which for centuries have been the source of many of our key medicines. And yet we’ve all heard of their systematic destruction; the raising of trees to make way for plantations of oil palms or cattle, the disenfranchisement of indigenous peoples, and the corruption that leads to illegal logging and pollution.
But this is the full story you’ve never heard: an in depth, wide-ranging, first-hand narrative that not only looks at the state of the world’s tropical rainforests today and the implications arising from their continuing decline, but also at what is being done, and can be done in future, to protect the forests and the 1.6 billion people that depend upon them. It is inspirational, too, in its descriptions of the rainforest’s remarkable birds and plants … and its indigenous people.
Rainforest is a personal story, drawing on the author’s many years’ experience at the frontline of the fight to save the rainforests, explaining the science and history of the campaigns, and what it has felt like to be there, amid the conflicts and dilemmas.
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Myth of Silent Spring: Rethinking the Origins of American Environmentalism
Artist/Author: Montrie, Chad$44.00 Add to cartSince its publication in 1962, Rachel Carson’s book Silent Spring has often been celebrated as the catalyst that sparked an American environmental movement. Yet environmental consciousness and environmental protest in some regions of the United States date back to the nineteenth century and the advent of industrial manufacturing and consequent growth of cities. As these changes transformed peoples’ lives, ordinary Americans came to recognize the connections between economic exploitation, social inequality, and environmental problems. In turn, as the modern age dawned, these Americans relied on labor unions, sportsmen’s clubs, racial and ethnic organizations, and community groups to respond accordingly. The Myth of Silent Spring tells this story. By challenging the canonical “suburbs and songbirds” interpretation associated with Carson and her work, this book gives readers a more accurate sense of the past and better prepares them for thinking and acting in the present.
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Where Corals Lie: A Natural and Cultural History
Artist/Author: Schick, J. Malcolm$80.00 Add to cartComing June 2018For millennia corals were a marine enigma confounding classification and occupying a space between the animal and vegetable kingdoms. Ultimately their animal and symbiotic natures were recognized, and they remain the focus of intense fascination and research. The danger to seafarers posed by unseen underwater coral reefs led to their association with death and interment that has figured in literature, poetry, music and film. The bright redness of precious Mediterranean coral was associated with blood, including coral’s gory origin in European and Indian mythology, and its place in religion. Corals have long been prized as jewellery and ornament, and were a feature of many Kunstkammer collections during the Renaissance. Seen as ‘rainforests of the sea’, coral reefs have become greenly emblematic of fragile marine biodiversity, warning of human-driven global climate change.This book uniquely treats the many manifestations of corals in biology and geology; how diverse corals came to figure in art, expeditionary accounts, medicine, folklore, geopolitics, and international trade; and corals as builders of islands and protectors of coastlines, and as building materials themselves. Exceptionally illustrated with a wide range of natural history images, underwater photographs and fine art, this book provides a unique resource for all interested in ocean environments and the cultures that have flourished there. -
Asia’s Wildlife: A Journey to the Forests of Hope
Artist/Author: Lai, Fanny, Bjorn Olesen$50.00 Add to cartCome on a year-long photographic journey to the most remote and biodiverse forests in eight different countries in Asia and learn about rarely seen, let alone photographed, endangered animal species.
Produced to raise funds and awareness of nature conservation through their Forest of Hope program; Asia’s Wildlife is a mesmerizing account of the expedition taken by Fanny Lai and photographer, Bjorn Olesen to observe, photograph, and describe Asia’s most distinctive animal species.
Over 190 images and illustrations feature 129 different animal species, of which 72 are national endemics including:
- Giant Cloud Rats
- The Majestic Philippine Eagle
- The critically endangered Helmeted Hornbill
- And many, many more fascinating creatures!
Ongoing conservation efforts to protect these precious forests are described as well as the real threats to the future.
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The Curious Life of Krill: A Conservation Story from the Bottom of the World
Artist/Author: Nicol, Stephen$40.00 Add to cartAn eminent krill scientist takes us on a journey through the dark, icy world of krill.
Krill. It’s a familiar word that conjures oceans, whales, and swimming crustaceans. Scientists say they are one of most abundant animals on the planet. But few can accurately describe krill or explain their ecological importance. Eminent krill scientist Stephen Nicol wants us to know more about these enigmatic creatures and how we can protect them as Antarctic ice melts. This engaging account takes us to the Southern Ocean to learn firsthand the difficulties and rewards of studying krill in their habitat. From his early education about the sex lives of krill in the Bay of Fundy to a krill tattoo gone awry, Nicol uses humor and personal stories to bring the biology and beauty of krill to life.
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Aliens Among Us: How Invasive Species Are Transforming the Planet—and Ourselves
Artist/Author: Anthony, Leslie$60.00 Add to cartA thoughtful, accessible look at the rapidly growing issue of invasive plants, animals, and microbes around the globe with a focus on the scientific issues and ecological, health, and other challenges. From award-winning adventure and science journalist comes an eye-opening exploration of a burgeoning environmental phenomenon and the science coalescing around it. Leslie Anthony leads readers on adventures physical and philosophical as he explores how and why invasive species are hijacking ecosystems around the globe. Weaving science, travel, history, and humor with diverse examples to chart and describe the phases of species invasion and human response, Anthony introduces field researchers and managers who seek to understand the biological, social, and economic aspects of this complex issue, and whose work collectively suggests the emergence of a global shadow economy centered on invasives.
With tales of pythons in the Everglades, Asian carp and lamprey in the Great Lakes, Japanese knotweed seemingly everywhere, and the invasive organisms we don’t see—pathogens and microbes such as the Zika virus—this book rivets attention on a new ecological reality. -
The Hawkesbury River: A Social and Natural History
Artist/Author: Boon, Paul I.$120.00 Add to cartA definitive account of the natural history of the Hawkesbury River and the pivotal role it has played in history.
The Hawkesbury River is the longest coastal river in New South Wales. A vital source of water and food, it has a long Aboriginal history and was critical for the survival of the early British colony at Sydney. The Hawkesbury’s weathered shores, cliffs and fertile plains have inspired generations of artists. It is surrounded by an unparalleled mosaic of national parks, including the second-oldest national park in Australia, Ku-ring-gai National Park. Although it lies only 35 km north of Sydney, to many today the Hawkesbury is a ‘hidden river’ – its historical and natural significance not understood or appreciated.
Until now, the Hawkesbury has lacked an up-to-date and comprehensive book describing how and when the river formed, how it functions ecologically, how it has influenced humans and their patterns of settlement and, in turn, how it has been affected by those settlements and their people. The Hawkesbury River: A Social and Natural History fills this gap. With chapters on the geography, geology, hydrology and ecology of the river through to discussion of its use by Aboriginal and European people and its role in transport, defence and culture, this highly readable and richly illustrated book paints a picture of a landscape worthy of protection and conservation. It will be of value to those who live, visit or work in the region, those interested in Australian environmental history, and professionals in biology, natural resource management and education.
