Wilderness Ecology PDF Download

Author: L. F. Ohmann
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Plant communities
Languages : en
Pages : 58

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Author: Charles Kay
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 376

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Book Description
Environmental law and philosophy assume the existence of a fundamental state of nature: Before the arrival of Columbus, the Americas were a wilderness untouched by human hand, teeming with wildlife and almost void of native peoples. In Wilderness and Political Ecology Charles Kay and Randy Simmons state that this "natural" view of pre-European America is scientifically unsupportable. This volume brings together scholars from a variety of fields as they seek to demonstrate that native people were originally more numerous than once thought and that they were not conservationists in the current sense of the term. Rather, native peoples took an active part in managing their surroundings and wrought changes so extensive that the anthropogenic environment has long been viewed as the natural state of the American ecosystem.

Author: Max Oelschlaeger
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 9780300053708
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 506

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Book Description
How has the concept of wild nature changed over the millennia? And what have been the environmental consequences? In this broad-ranging book Max Oelschlaeger argues that the idea of wilderness has reflected the evolving character of human existence from Paleolithic times to the present day. An intellectual history, it draws together evidence from philosophy, anthropology, theology, literature, ecology, cultural geography, and archaeology to provide a new scientifically and philosophically informed understanding of humankind's relationship to nature. Oelschlaeger begins by examining the culture of prehistoric hunter-gatherers, whose totems symbolized the idea of organic unity between humankind and wild nature, and idea that the author believes is essential to any attempt to define human potential. He next traces how the transformation of these hunter-gatherers into farmers led to a new awareness of distinctions between humankind and nature, and how Hellenism and Judeo-Christianity later introduced the unprecedented concept that nature was valueless until humanized. Oelschlaeger discusses the concept of wilderness in relation to the rise of classical science and modernism, and shows that opposition to "modernism" arose almost immediately from scientific, literary, and philosophical communities. He provides new and, in some cases, revisionist studies of the seminal American figures Thoreau, Muir, and Leopold, and he gives fresh readings of America's two prodigious wilderness poets Robinson Jeffers and Gary Snyder. He concludes with a searching look at the relationship of evolutionary thought to our postmodern effort to reconceptualize ourselves as civilized beings who remain, in some ways, natural animals.

Author: Paul Schullery
Publisher: Montana Historical Society
ISBN: 9780972152211
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 364

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Schullery's book details the ecological history of Yellowstone National Park.

Author: Miron L. Heinselman
Publisher: Minneapolis, Minn. : University of Minnesota Press
ISBN: 9780816628049
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 334

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Book Description
Contains fifty pages of information on fires in the area and twenty-nine pages on logging in the area.

Author: L. F. Ohmann
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Forest ecology
Languages : en
Pages : 36

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Author: Jerry F. Franklin
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Biotic communities
Languages : en
Pages : 26

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Author: Justin Pepper
Publisher: Island Press
ISBN: 1642832421
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 166

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Book Description
The Chicago metropolitan area is home to far more protected nature than most people realize. There's a critical factor of the Chicago Wilderness restoration effort that makes it unique. A grassroots volunteer community, thousands strong, works alongside agency staff to give nearby nature what it needs to thrive in an everchanging urban context. A Healthy Nature Handbook captures hard-earned ecological wisdom from this community in engaging and highly readable chapters, each including illustrated restoration sequences.

Author: Stephen M. Meyer
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262260980
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 113

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Book Description
A wake-up call that argues that although it may be too late to save biodiversity, we can take steps to save our ecosystems. With the extinction rate at 3000 species a year and accelerating, we can now predict that as many as half of the Earth's species will disappear within the next 100 years. The species that survive will be the ones that are most compatible with us: the weedy species—from mosquitoes to coyotes—that thrive in continually disturbed human-dominated environments. The End of the Wild is a wake-up call. Marshaling evidence from the last ten years of research on the environment, Stephen Meyer argues that nothing—not national or international laws, global bioreserves, local sustainability schemes, or "wildlands"—will change the course that has been set. Like it or not, we can no longer talk about conserving nature, only managing what is left. The race to save biodiversity is over. But that doesn't mean our work is over. The End of the Wild is also a call to action. Without intervention, the surviving ecosystems we depend on for a range of services—including water purification and flood and storm damage contro—could fail and the global spread of invasive species (pests, parasites, and disease-causing weedy species) could explode. If humanity is to survive, Meyer argues, we have no choice but to try to manage the fine details. We must move away from the current haphazard strategy of protecting species in isolation and create trans-regional "meta-reserves," designed to protect ecosystem functions rather than species-specific habitats.

Author: H. Ken Cordell
Publisher: Venture Publishing (PA)
ISBN:
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 332

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Book Description
"Gone are those of the 1950s and early 1960s who championed preserving wild lands and who influenced and saw the birth of the National Wilderness Preservation System (NWPS). Gone too are myriad eager managers and proponents of wild land protection of the late 1960s and 1970s who helped rear the fledgling Wilderness system and bring it into adolescence by adding management practices and policy interpretations. In this, the 40th year since the birth of the NWPS, this middle-age federal land system is surrounded by many new faces as its childhood friends have moved on to other callings, have retired, or are no longer with us. Needed in these new times is a clear, comprehensive articulation of the multiple values of Wilderness. The overall purpose of this book is to tell fully what we know about the range of values Americans hold toward the NWPS in a factual, wide-ranging, and science-based way. A multidisciplinary team of authors and researchers clarify the meaning of different types of Wilderness values and present replicable, science-based evidence of these values in this volume. The intended audience is all those new faces who can and do have power over the future of the U.S. National Wilderness Preservation System as well as all who seek to influence those who have this power. This book is also intended for teachers, students, and other inquisitive people involved in formal or informal learning and research programs. The authors intend this compilation to help better inform interested and engaged members of the general public about the values of their public Wilderness areas. After all, it is the American citizen who is ultimately responsible and can influence public policy in the greatest measure through their individual and collective voices and actions." -- Publisher.