Synopses & Reviews
In this important book, biologist Jonathan S. Adams explains an exciting new approach to conservation. The main strategy behind it involves using the latest in conservation science along with the desires of local communities to protect the places where people live and work. In this way, each small success moves conservationists closer toward creating huge protected landscapes large enough to support animals like bison and wolves. Only with freedom to roam through and between these lands, using wilderness corridors, can such large animals flourish.
Adams provides numerous examples of how this new conservation is succeeding around the country: cooperative ranchers work together to preserve wilderness in Arizona; activists fight the encroachment of big business on the Florida Everglades; and a maverick scientist struggles to create safe passageways for pumas in Californias overpopulated Orange County. Each example proves the benefits of combining the latest scientific studies with practical community organizing and sound economic planning. Through these examples and important conservation history, Adams shows how we can realistically protect wildlands despite our growing numbers.
The Future of the Wild is a much needed, accessible book full of fascinating stories, unforgettable characters, and, ultimately, a powerful new vision for conservation in America.
Adams profiles ecologists and activists, as well as grassroots and national conservation organizations, in a seamless flow of readable prose to make his point that sustainable human activity and sustainable populations of wildlife must not be mutually exclusive.” Ted Levin, OnEarth
An engaging, well-written book with a real feel for wildlife, wild places and the fascinating cast of charactersscientists, environmentalists and rancherswhose idealism and dedication are contributing to a radically different kind of conservation.” Paul Evans, BBC Wildlife
Jonathan Adams lays out a bold road map for how to bind together the scattered remnants of this continents wild placesand for knitting up the mingled fates of the wild and human communities that inhabit them, envisioning a better, more sustainable future for both.” Scott Weidensaul, author of Return to Wild America
Jonathan S. Adams is a conservation biologist, writer, and program director with The Nature Conservancy. He is the coauthor of The Myth of Wild Africa: Conservation Without Illusion and the coeditor of Precious Heritage: The Status of Biodiversity in the United States. He lives with his wife and two children in the Maryland suburbs of Washington, D.C.
Review
"Visionary, optimistic, doable, and essential, Adams's approach is a pioneering 'guidebook to nature.'"
Review
Visionary, optimistic, doable, and essential, Adamss approach is a pioneering guidebook to nature.” Library Journal Starred
Synopsis
The grizzly bear, the northern spotted owl, the mountain lion, the sea otter-these are just a few of the species that, however large or small, tell us so much about how to conserve what's left of North America's wilderness.
In The Future of the Wild, conservationist Jonathan S. Adams uses stories about these species and others to show us how to think big. Only by saving large tracts of land and the wildlife corridors that connect them can we hope to save the widest variety of species in any ecosystem. And only by saving whole ecosystems, including human communities, can we hope to make significant strides in conservation. Individual parcels of land, acquired piecemeal, simply will not provide an adequate safeguard against endangerment-or worse, extinction. Even large national parks will not suffice, unless they are connected to the larger landscape.
Eloquently and accessibly, Adams weaves conservation history and biology with on-the-ground stories of successful, if unexpected, partnerships wherein sometimes opposing groups find common ground in their commitment to protect land and the animals that inhabit it. From Arizona ranchers using the latest scientific advances to create a "working wilderness," to farmers and conservationists in the Florida Everglades protecting endangered wetlands and the California Department of Transportation unpaving roads for use as mountain lion crossings, based on research into the animals' movements.
Adams proves that an effective conservation strategy is only possible if we use modern science, local community resources, and good economic sense. In The Future of the Wild, the vision Adams offers is clear and hopeful. It is up to environmentalists everywhere to heed his call and work to protect the wildness of the land around us.
About the Author
Jonathan S. Adams is a conservation biologist, writer, and program director with the Nature Conservancy. He is the coauthor of
The Myth of Wild Africa: Conservation Without Illusion and the coeditor of
Precious Heritage: The Status of Biodiversity in the United States. He lives with his wife and two children in the Maryland suburbs of Washington, D.C.
From the Trade Paperback edition.