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This book is a celebration of the return of the otter to Britain’s rivers and freshwater wetlands after a drastic decline in the last century. For more than two decades, award-winning photographer Laurie Campbell has documented these lithe, elusive predators on the River Tweed and its tributaries near his Berwickshire home. The resulting photographs create an intimate portrait of their lives through the changing seasons, including their riverside habitat and the other wildlife that shares it. Writer Anna Levin sets this work in the context of Laurie’s own life’s story as she accompanies him to the riverbank. Her notebooks offer a vivid glimpse of the photographer at work and of the otters that enchant them both. This beautiful book is lavishly illustrated throughout, divided into seasonal chapters and charts Laurie’s personal quest to capture these endearing creatures in their natural habitat. It also offers an insight into Laurie’s philosophy – to look closer to home, rather than further away to connect with our own natural environment.

This book by Nicola Chester is an accessible and lively account of an intriguing and much-loved animal that, surprisingly, is still endangered and rarely seen despite a recent resurgence that has seen it expand from the remote British countryside and into cities. Nicola’s charming, informed text brings this elusive and exciting mammal into sharper focus revealing what an otter is, and how they live, feed, play and breed. Nicola reflects on how otters exist in our imaginations culturally and how that has changed over the years. She also examines the many challenges otters have faced, exposing what brought them to the brink of extinction, and explores the challenges we face in trying to find and watch otters in the wild. Each Spotlight title is carefully designed to introduce readers to the lives and behaviour of Britain’s favourite birds and mammals.

A horrific true story of greed, corruption, depravity and ruthless criminal enterprise. Rademeyer takes the reader on his two-year-long investigation into a dangerous criminal underworld and the merciless syndicates that will stop at nothing to obtain their prize. It is a tale of greed, folly and corruption, and of an increasingly desperate battle to save the rhino – which has survived for more than fifty million years – from extinction. Killing for Profit is a compelling, meticulous and revelatory account of one of the world’s most secretive trades. It exposes the poachers, gangsters, con men, mercenaries, killers, gunrunners, diplomats, government officials and crime bosses behind the slaughter. And it follows the bloody trail from the front lines of the rhino wars in South Africa, Zimbabwe and Mozambique to the medicine markets of Vietnam and the lair of a wildlife-trafficking kingpin on the banks of the Mekong River in Laos.

The Giant panda is unique – and not just uniquely charming: it has no close relatives in the animal world. The iconic, instantly recognisable creature has symbolised wildlife conservation since it was adopted as a mascot. Yet despite having avoided extinction, a fate to which the species came perilously close, the population today is estimated at no more than 2000. This spectacular volume brings together the expertise of leading conservationists with an extraordinary collection of photographs from both the world-renowned Wolong research centre and the wilderness of Sichuan’s magnificent Qionglai mountain range, the panda’s natural habitat.

Reaktion Animal Series. Finds its subject in many surprising places and forms, in positions of both unusual prominence and arcane marginality: from Crucifixion scenes, Buddhist lore and Algonquin creation myths, to witch trials, treatises on logic, contemporary poetry and an art installation in a Dutch brothel. It is the principal subject of the first ever hunting treatise, ‘king of all venery’ for Renaissance theorists of the hunt; and it appears in the first known description of a still life painting, in the first signed and dated picture of a single animal, and in early medicine where it was credited with having the most curative properties of any ‘beaste’. The first monograph on the subject for thirty-five years, and richly illustrated, this book combines the most recent natural history with an eclectic account of the animal’s symbolic values. Packed with detail but accessibly written, the book will be of interest to art historians and literary critics; to those for and opposed to hunting; to anyone intrigued by the history of human/animal relationships; and, to both the general and the lagophile reader alike. Other titles in this animal series are available.

Reaktion Animal Series. This book makes use of wide-ranging sources from film and literature, to natural history description and exhibition, and asks whether the savagery of the rhino is a reality or a legacy of its mythic past. This book is aimed at interested readers and enthusiasts who want to learn about the culture, history and nature of this animal, as well as specialists, from art historians to conservation biologists, in the field. Other titles in this animal series are available.