Showing titles in Ecosystems & Habitats

Naturalist Joe Hutto’s latest adventures in wildlife observation take him to Wyoming’s Wind River Mountains. Hutto is living in a tent at 12,000 feet, where blizzards occur in July and where human wants become irrelevant—and human needs can become a matter of life and death—to study the Rocky Mountain bighorn sheep.

Uncover what lies at the deepest depths of our oceans... In ten brief and informative essays, marine biologist and TV science advisor Professor Jon Copley journeys to one of the most mysterious and fascinating environments on Earth, the deep sea. Discover what makes this unique habitat such a...

Start a peaceful revolution by planting an edible ecosystem and sharing the experience with your neighbors. Humans have always thrived in rich, diverse, edible ecosystems. Yet most cities and suburbs are blanketed by lawns, ornamentals, and a lack of biodiversity, let alone anything edible. It is within these sterile landscapes that seeds of an edible ecosystem lie. The Edible Ecosystem Solution is a comprehensive, practical guidebook that looks at underutilized spaces to reveal the many opportunities for landscape transformation.

A magnificent and empowering memoir about a woman spearheading a global initiative to heal the world's rainforests and the communities who depend on them. When Kinari Webb first travelled to Indonesian Borneo at 21, she was both awestruck by the beauty of her surroundings and heartbroken by the rainforest destruction she witnessed. As she got to know the local communities, she realised that their need to pay for expensive healthcare led directly to rampant logging, which in turn imperilled their health and safety further.

For over 50,000 years, the Great Hunt has shaped human existence, creating a vital spiritual reality where people, animals, and the land share intimate bonds. Author Larry Frolick takes the listener deep into one of the last refuges of hunting societies: Canada’s far north. Based on his experiences travelling with First Nations Elders in remote communities across the Northwest Territories, Yukon, and Nunavut, this vivid narrative combines accounts of daily life, unpublished archival records, First Nations' stories and Traditional Knowledge with personal observation....

This program is read by the author. “This is a great audiobook for nature lovers, carpenters, and people who dream of their hobby becoming their day job.”—AudioFile A memoir of the author's journey from an office job to restoring a cabin in the Pacific Northwest, based on his wildly...

The history and use of New Zealand's native plants A guide and gift book in equal measure, this treasure of a book pays homage to New Zealand's native plant species. The Meaning of Trees tells the story of plants and people in Aotearoa New Zealand. Beautifully illustrated with botanical drawings...

Leigh Calvez has spent a dozen years researching, observing, and probing the lives of the giants of the deep. Here, she relates the stories of nature's most remarkable creatures, including the familial orcas in the waters of Washington State and British Columbia; the migratory humpbacks; and the ancient, deep-diving blue whales, the largest animals on the planet. 

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.

Dr Sean Wensley is an award-winning vet and lifelong naturalist, advocating animal wellbeing around the world. Fusing keen scientific insight with tender meditations on the natural world, Through a Vet's Eyes reveals the injustices which animals experience every day and raises an important question: how can we choose a better life for animals?

This is a tale of human obsession, one intrepid tuna, the dedicated fisherman who caught and set her free, the promises and limits of ocean science and the big truth of how our insatiable appetite for bluefin transformed a cottage industry into a global dilemma. In 2004, an enigmatic charter...

Ocean Country is an adventure story, a call to action, and a poetic meditation on the state of the seas. But most importantly it is the story of finding true hope in the midst of one of the greatest crises to face humankind, the rapidly degrading state of our environment. After a near-drowning...

They are trees of life and trees of knowledge. They are wish-fulfillers, rain forest royalty, more precious than gold. They are the fig trees, and they have affected humanity in profound but little-known ways. Gods, Wasps and Stranglers tells their amazing story. Fig trees fed our prehuman ancestors, influenced diverse cultures, and played key roles in the dawn of civilization.

Skylarks are the heralds of our countryside. Their music is the quintessential sound of spring. The spirit of English pastoralism, they inspire poets, composers and farmers alike. History has seen us poeticise and musicise the bird, but also capture and eat them. We watch as they climb the sky, delight in their joyful singing, and yet, we harm them, too. The Soaring Life of the Lark explores the music and poetry; the breathtaking heights and struggle to survive of one of Britain's most iconic songbirds.

Part odyssey, part pilgrimage, this epic personal narrative follows the author’s exploration of coasts, islands, reefs, and the sea’s abyssal depths. Scientist and fisherman Carl Safina takes readers on a global journey of discovery, probing for truth about the world’s changing seas, deftly weaving adventure, science, and political analysis.

“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately.” And so it began. Henry David Thoreau, at 27, built a tiny, one-room cabin in the woods — on land owned by his friend, Ralph Waldo Emerson — and began his two-year experiment in frugality on the shore of Walden Pond. He wasn’t seeking isolation so much as simplicity, to “live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms.”

The Maine Woods is based on Henry David Thoreau’s lengthy experiences in the forests of Maine in the years 1846, 1853, and 1857. Thoreau describes the area in exquisite detail: the native people and their languages, the loggers and their labors, the rivers, the trees, the plants, and the birds. Experiencing all the joys of the woods, he padded in a canoe, climbed hills, and tried the local foods. The journey also makes him contemplative of his own weaknesses and strengths.

Sally Coulthard explores the miraculous world of the earthworm, the modest little creature without whom life as we know it would not be possible. For Charles Darwin - who estimated every acre of land contained 53,000 earthworms - the humble earthworm was the most important creature on the planet. And yet, most people know almost nothing about these little engineers of the earth. We take them for granted but, without the earthworm, the world's soil would be barren and our gardens, fields and farms wouldn't be able to grow the food and support the animals we need to survive.

Matt - grief-stricken after his beloved wife's death, he arrives on Seal Island desperate to hide from the world. Grace - the island's doctor believes she's left it too late to find love or have a family. Rose - lying in a coma at a hospital on Seal, a young woman fights for her life, recalling the journey that led to her accident.

Paleolake Flixton is an extinct lake in North Yorkshire. Human occupation of the site dates back thousands of years to prehistoric times. Over the millennia, the vast lake disappeared, turning to wetland and peaty fields. Today all that is left of it is a watermark. Wendy Pratt brings the listener on a pilgrimage around the ghost lake, to locations that have acted as journey markers in her own life.