Conservation Science

For listeners who enjoyed Finding the Mother Tree and The Hidden Life of Trees comes the first-ever book about a movement to restore biodiversity in our cities and towns by transforming empty lots, backyards, and degraded land into mini-forests. Author Hannah Lewis is the forest maker turning asphalt into ecosystems to save the planet, and she wants everyone to know they can do it too.

In The Soil Will Save Us, journalist and bestselling author Kristin Ohlson makes an elegantly argued, passionate case for "our great green hope"—a way in which we can not only heal the land but also turn atmospheric carbon into beneficial soil carbon—and potentially reverse global warming. Her discoveries and vivid storytelling will revolutionize the way we think about our food, our landscapes, our plants, and our relationship to Earth.

From world-renowned scientist Jane Goodall, as seen in the National Geographic documentary Jane, comes a fascinating examination of the critical role that trees and plants play in our world. Seeds of Hope takes us from Goodall's home in England to her home-away-from-home in Africa, deep inside...

With catastrophic global warming already baked into the climate system, today's children face a future entirely unlike that of their parents. Yet how can we maintain hope and make a difference in the face of overwhelming evidence of the climate crisis? Help is at hand. Written by Harriet Shugarman - the Climate Mama and trusted advisor to parents - How to Talk to Your Kids About Climate Change provides tools and strategies for parents to explain the climate emergency to their children and galvanize positive action.

Award-winning journalist Eugene Linden has written numerous critically acclaimed works on the environment. In The Ragged Edge of the World, Linden recounts his experiences in locales ranging from Vietnam to Antarctica, offering an intimate look at creatures and cultures struggling to adapt to globalization.

The most joyful emanation produced by a colony of bees is known as the "song of increase" - declaring that the hive is flourishing and the bees are happy in its abundance. Song of Increase takes us inside the world of the honeybee to glean the wisdom of these fascinating creatures with whom humanity has shared a sacred bond for millennia. Within these minutes is a bee-centric approach to living with honeybees, rather than advice for simply maximizing the products they provide.

From her days in second-wave feminist activism to her battle against the precursor to NAFTA to her indefatigable fight for social justice and water rights for all, Maude shares her stories and her expertise to inspire us and show us how we can do it too.

This classic is an essential handbook for anyone who studies, surfs, protects, or is fascinated by the ocean, with a wealth of information based on theory and statistics, but also anecdotal observation and personal experience. It brought to the general public understanding of the awesome and complex power of the waves. This revision from Kim McCoy updates the book's relevance in the time of climate change. One of the most significant effects of global warming will be sea-level rise. What will this mean to waves and beaches, and what effects are we already seeing?

Earth is embroiled in its sixth major extinction event—this time caused not by asteroids or volcanos, but by us. At bottom, preventing this sixth extinction is a spiritual and philosophical problem, for it is the assumptions defining us and our relation to earth that are driving the devastation. Those assumptions insist on a fundamental separation of human and earth that devalues earth and enables our exploitative relation to it.

Edward O. Wilson - winner of two Pulitzer prizes, champion of biodiversity, and Faculty Emeritus at Harvard University - is arguably one of the most important thinkers of the 20th century. Yet his celebrated career began not with an elite education but from an insatiable curiosity about the natural world and drive to explore its mysteries. Called "one of the finest scientific memoirs ever written" by the Los Angeles Times, Naturalist is a wise and personal account of Wilson's growth as a scientist and the evolution of the fields he helped define.

Darwin's theory of evolution is accepted by most educated Americans as simple fact. This easy acceptance, however, hides from us the many ways in which evolution - as an idea - shapes our thinking about a great many things. What if this idea is wrong? What if "evolution" is just a word that covers up scientific ignorance of how the wonders of the living world could have been created? Berkeley law professor Phillip Johnson looks at the evidence for Darwinistic evolution the way a lawyer would - with a cold dispassionate eye for logic and proof.

Lying in the remote hills of southwest Uganda, Bwindi Impenetrable Forest harbors elephants, chimpanzees, monkeys, and half the world’s population of endangered mountain gorillas. For two years, Thor Hanson called that forest home, working with local guides and trackers to develop an ecotourism program for the newly-formed Bwindi Impenetrable National Park. Thoroughly researched and beautifully told, Hanson’s story blends natural history with cultural insight to place the forest and the gorillas in the context of modern Africa.

Increasingly, cracks are appearing in the capacity of communities, ecosystems, and landscapes to provide the goods and services that sustain our planet's well-being. The response from most quarters has been for "more of the same" that created the situation in the first place: more control, more intensification, and greater efficiency. "Resilience thinking" offers a different way of understanding the world and a new approach to managing resources. It embraces human and natural systems as complex entities continually adapting through cycles of change.

In this inspiring manifesto, an internationally renowned ecologist makes a clear case for why protecting nature is our best health insurance, and why it makes economic sense.

The laws of thermodynamics drive everything that happens in the universe. From the sudden expansion of a cloud of gas to the cooling of hot metal - everything is moved or restrained by four simple laws. This powerful and compact introduction explains what these four laws are and how they work, using accessible language and virtually no mathematics.

For decades, it has been nearly universal dogma among environmentalists and health advocates that cattle and beef are public enemy number one. But is the matter really so clear? Hardly, argues environmental lawyer turned rancher Nicolette Hahn Niman in her new book, Defending Beef. The public has long been led to believe that livestock, especially cattle, erode soils, pollute air and water, damage riparian areas, and decimate wildlife populations. In Defending Beef, Hahn Niman argues that cattle are not inherently bad for either the Earth or our own nutritional health.

Over the past seventy years, McDonald's, Coca-Cola, Procter & Gamble, Unilever, and other consumer goods makers have harnessed single-use plastics to turbocharge their profits. They've poured billions of dollars into convincing us we need disposable diapers, cups, bags, bottles, shampoo in sachets, and plastic-packaged ultra-processed foods. We were never clamoring for any of these items, but this shift towards disposability has fundamentally transformed our daily habits.

With so many immediate and intensifying crises unfolding around us, how can therapists adapt to promote healing and growth? “As these intriguing essays make clear, some of the finest minds in the world are thinking through the problems and arriving at powerful answers." —Bill McKibben...

When Dark Emu was adopted by Australia like a new anthem, Bruce found himself at the centre of a national debate that often focussed on the wrong part of the story. But through all the noise came Black Duck Foods, a blueprint for traditional food growing and land management processes based on very old practices. Bruce Pascoe and Lyn Harwood invite us to imagine a different future for Australia, one where we can honour our relationship with nature and improve agriculture and forestry

A 2022 Los Angeles Times Book Prize Finalist in Science & Technology An Indigenous environmental scientist breaks down why western conservationism isn't working--and offers Indigenous models informed by case studies, personal stories, and family histories that center the voices of Latin American...