Book Description

This brief and specialized book is designed for general non-major biology courses and includes coverage of animal tissues, homeostasis, anatomy and physiology of all major organ systems, and many human applications. ANIMAL STRUCTURE AND FUNCTION, Tenth Edition covers Unit VI from BIOLOGY: THE UNITY AND DIVERSITY OF LIFE, Tenth Edition.Research has given us a better understanding of the interconnectedness of molecular biology, structure, function, and evolution. In this Tenth Edition, Starr and Taggart take that important connection out of the research realm and actually interweave these insights into the text. These unifying biological concepts encourage student understanding instead of memorization. With this background, students are better prepared to understand the power of comparative molecular studies in clarifying evolutionary relationships. The accompanying improvements in the media package meet the high standards instructors and students have come to expect from the Starr and Taggart media package. Students automatically receive a new version of the complimentary Interactive Concepts in Biology Student CD-ROM (featuring nearly 800 interactions to clarify and reinforce text concepts), and four months free access to InfoTrac College Edition (featuring full text articles from 4,000 periodicals). Also available is ENGAGE ONLINE, which provides a rich online version of the text, plus animations and learning resources for every chapter. The instructor package includes a Multimedia Manager presentation tool with art and graphics from the text, as well as CNN Today video clips (294 in all)?now available digitally as well as on video. ... Read more

Book Description

A delightful treasury of observations and insights into the lives of all sorts of creatures -- from jackdaws and water-shrews to dogs, cats and even wolves -- this is a wonderfully written introduction to the world of our furred and feathered friends! ... Read more

Reviews (2)

A beautiful book for all who love nature
Confession - I'd never heard of Konrad Lorenz (even though he won the Nobel Prize in 1973), and I don't usually read books by Naturalists.

I was driving between business meetings during the day, when I happened to tune in to BBC Radio 4 (same as National Public Radio in the USA), and by accident caught a book reading of Chapter 10 regarding Dogs. Then on another day I caught Chapter 11 on Birds. Captivated, I actually pulled over so that I could hear the whole chapter & find out what the book was and who the Author was.

Then I ordered the book as a treat to myself for Christmas.

Fantastic! With some abridging 'on the fly', this book could even be read to/by a younger audience say down to 8 years old, who would enjoy, laugh & cry at some of the stories contained herein.

I wish my science teacher had read this to me when I was 8, rather than do some silly experiments with boring pond life (Chapter 2 would have taught me more about Pond Life)!

A must have book for everyone, anyone.
A rare 5 stars for this one, simply delightful, a joy to read. Lorenz is so full of love for his craft, yes I say craft because that is the way he treats his study of animal behaviour. Not an average scientist but rather somehow he has that rare ability to both love his work and be able to write about it to a lay audience with wonderful wit, charm, wisdom and grace. He's a little like Adolf Portmann except with more humour but the same love.

I mentioned that he writes this book for lay readers, not scientists, and unlike the contemporary crowd, who often write in a more condescending way he manages to get across the animals and their complex behaviour without ever at any stage making the reader think himself inadequate to the task. He writes as a human being experiencing the wonders of the natural world and does not artificially reduce it to ashes and leache the life out of it as others do. Here he actually makes people want to become naturalists or biologists. There is no finer writer in the sciences.

In the book, a little tome of 190 pages, he discusses a whole range of animals he studies notably, often from his own home where he keeps an entire managerie of ducks, geese, jackdaws, parrots, dogs, hamsters, water shrews etc etc. The whole house is alive with the raucous cries and crazy comings and goings of his companions. He gives much to the reader such as how to manage an aquarium properly, how to look after animals correctly so their lives are well lived and the book is chocka-block full of animal tales. The kind of tales myths and legends are grown from. I mean that the tales are often so remarkable, e.g. the intelligence shown by his pet raven or the story of two men carrying a canoe followed by several goslings, a large red dog and some ducklings. Its droll and humouress and full of joy. And, in it all the way through are his wondrous drawings portraying everything he tells of in the book.

A must have book for everyone, anyone. ... Read more

Book Description

The twenty-four true stories in this book show that animals have their own individual personalities, likes and dislikes—and, often, spiritual lessons to share. In fact, Dr. Ogden-Avrutik believes that animals can be spiritual gifts, put in our path to help us grow. Time after time, she and her human clients are granted surprising insights into the wisdom and emotional life of the animals they love. These heartwarming stories celebrate the loving bond between humans and their animal companions, and show what wonders are possible when we stop to listen to what our animal friends have to tell us. ... Read more

Book Description

Book Description

In Last Animals at theZoo, Colin Tudge argues that zoos have become an essential part of modernconservation strategy, and that the only real hope for saving many endangeredspecies is through creative use of zoos in combination with restoration ofnatural habitats. From the genetics of captive breeding to techniques ofbehavioral enrichment, Tudge examines all aspects of zoo conservation programs and explains how the precarious existence of so many animals can best be protected. ... Read more

Reviews (3)

Thought-provoking
In addition to providing an excellent overview of the role of modern zoos and of captive breeding programs, Tudge also begins the book with an overview of the ethics of conservation.Unfortunately, I did not find in that discussion an ethos that really worked for me, but the presentation did give me much food for thought - which after all is what I look for in a good book.

Conservation Makes Sense
This book showed amazing depth in its amount of pages. The author's ideas simply made sense. Conservation is presented from every angle, never simply glossed over. The topic is made interesting and easy to understand, with explanations simple yet in-depth. All perspectives are shown. While the author makes his views known, he gives you enough room to let you form your own opinion. This book is great!

Filled with great information on conservation breeding
If you ever wanted to know more about efforts to save endangered animals, this is the book to start with.It is easy to read, but does not shy away from discussing relevant aspects of genetics.Chapter 4, "The Theory of Conservation Breeding," is especially good in detailing the practical goals conservation breeders hope to achieve and also the many problems they face ... Read more

Book Description

A groundbreaking book that enables horse and rider to overcome athletic limitations through correct care and positive energy. ... Read more

Book Description

An Abrams favorite, now available in a new, fun format!

Stephen Green-Armytage's fabulous hit book--a look at the bizarre and beautiful world of exotic ornamental chickens first released in Fall 2000--is back in a delightful new edition that can be kept in your pocket! ... Read more

Reviews (13)

Extraordinary is absolutely correct!
If you have any interest in beautiful birds of any species, I suspect you will like this book. The photography is of the highest quality and Mr. Green-Armytage has a wonderful way of presenting the birds as special characters, not just standard poses. He has done a wonderful job of selecting a wide variety of lovely chickens from both British and American poultry shows. There is just enough text to whet one's interest in the breeds. Unfortunately, the index only has page numbers for the photos. Descriptions of the birds need to be hunted up on your own. But you bought it for the photos of lovely, strange and cute/funny birds.

Lisa and Jenna's Review
This book really gives you a feel of what Chickens are really about and made of! This writter has extrodanary pictures to explain the life of a chicken! We recomend this book to all who love chickens and everything about chickens!

all the pretty chickens
What's not to like? This book contains many lovely photographs of chickens. Chickens can be beautiful, too, you know. They are not just senseless creatures pecking in the dirt until their lives are one day summarily ended on the chopping block. They like to dress it up and step out on occasion, just like everybody else.

Now, this tome should not be read as some type of argument for a chicken eugenics, whereby the beautiful and unique are spared, while the homely, the overly-wattled, and the splay-footed are consigned to the workhouse, laying eggs for your McMuffin in silence and disgrace. Far from it. This book is a celebration of all chickens, for all chickens.

Vive la chicken.

note card size
Buyer beware - these note cards fold to 3"x5".

Owlbeards, Polish Frizzles, and Buff Orpingtons
Polish chickens (as displayed on the cover and interior of this book) are a strikingly unusual breed. According to the author, they may actually be Italian chickens, originating near the River Po. They are the avian equivalent of Old English Sheepdogs. Ice can form in their topknots in cold weather, and their crest feathers restrict vision, which causes them to be easily frightened. However, they see very well downward, which after all is the food direction for chickens.

I'm not precisely a poultry romantic, having once helped a friend clean out a chicken coop. But Stephen Green-Armytage's book, and yearly visits to the Poultry exhibit at the Michigan State Fair have convinced me that I am going to raise chickens some day. Just the thought of a flock of Owlbeards, Polish Frizzles, or Buff Orpingtons bobbing through my garden and gobbling up the cutworms and grasshoppers is enough to make me smile. I can always hire someone else to clean out the coop.

"Extraordinary Chickens" is not a how-to poultry manual. It is a book of beautiful photographs that grew out of an assignment the author undertook for "LIFE Magazine." There is also some explanatory text on a small but striking selection of the more than five hundred poultry breeds that have been recorded by poultry photographers such as Josef Wolters and Rudiger Wandelt. It certainly stands testament to the breeders'desire to develop chickens with an amazing variety of shapes, sizes, and colors. There are photographs of chickens with combs like red sea coral (Hamburgs) and Moose antlers (Sicilian Buttercups); chickens with tails that are twenty feet long (the Phoenix or Onagadori); and chickens that look like pheasants (Sumatras) or Bulldogs (Cornish game birds---at least from the front).

The author suggests attending a poultry show, if you find yourself intrigued by the photographs in this book---"In 1995, a show in Nuremberg, Germany, boasted a total of more than seventy thousand birds, a record that will probably be beaten before this book appears." California seems to be the hotbed of ornamental poultry in this country, although I can testify to the fact that Michigan has at least one yearly show.

If you think you might actually want to raise your own poultry, first read Chapter Nine of the totally fascinating "Encyclopedia of Country Living" by Carla Emery. It's got everything from "Good Recipes for Old Hens" to a section on roosters divided into "Crowing," "Fighting," and "Making Capons." ... Read more

Amazon.com

A search for the Pacific Northwest's fabled Bigfoot provides a jumping-off point for naturewriter Robert Michael Pyle's lyrical ruminations on wilderness, isolation, and the occasional triumphs ofmystery over so-called progress. Pyle's well-researched stomping ground is Washington State's DarkDivide in the Cascade Mountains--this rugged country of loggers and recreationists has been the scene formany sightings of the elusive man-beast. Pyle's route alternates between desolate clear-cuts and majesticancient forests, between the inroads of civilization and the dark recesses of the wild. But never does theauthor get too caught up in proving anything to himself or the reader; this search for Bigfoot has as much todo with locating the wild nature within each of us as it does with finding a legend. ... Read more

Reviews (16)

Thoughtful, researched reflection on mystery of bigfoot.
Where Bigfoot Walks Crossing the Dark Divide By Robert Michael Pyle Houghton Mifflin Company, US$25.00 The thing with most books about Bigfoot, the North American counterpart of Yeti, is that they often reveal more about their authors' obsession with their illusive subject than the actual beast itself. Robert Michael Pyle's book Where Bigfoot Walks is an exception to this general rule because Mr. Pyle is not obsessed - he's fascinated. And as an ecologist his fascination takes in the whole landscape from boletus and ghost moth to the tantalizing possibility of a huge, hairy hominoid living in the forests of Western U.S. and Canada. Mr. Pyle's report is written around accounts of his numerous treks into the Dark Divide a rare and beleaguered remnant of virgin forest in Washington State, U.S. Rich in Bigfoot mythology and sitings the Dark Divide could be one of the last redoubts of the mythical monster. It is certainly one of the last holdouts of old growth timber in the American Pacific Northwest most of which has succumbed the devastating efficiency of clearcut logging. It's from this setting that Pyle reflects on the myth of Bigfoot and the possibilities of a real flesh and blood beast. His often lyrical ruminations range from Bigfoot's implications for "forest management" - what if putative animal's existence is proven and old growth timber is its natural habitat? - to whether the land could biologically support a large reclusive ape. He even considers the ethical problems of how any "specimens" should be collected. All this is mixed with anecdotal accounts of sitings and portraits of the colorful and eccentric gang of Bigfoot aficionados - from charlatans to credible researchers - who in Pyle's words "don't want to find Bigfoot - they want to be Bigfoot." Essentially this is a book in search of mystery. And with logging operations never out of earshot, jets constantly flying overhead and much of the Dark Divide's remote trails trashed by dirt bikes and trodden by backpackers the possibility of even the myth of Bigfoot surviving- let alone the actual animal - seem remote. Yet Mr. Pyle still finds places and moments of natural wonder in the Dark Divide that astonish him and he writes about them with grace and respect. He never finds Bigfoot but he hears haunting whistles and has one uncanny encounter with something that leaves huge tracks. By the end of Where Bigfoot Walks you can believe there may still be mysteries in the last of the great forests of North America of which Bigfoot may be one. According to Mr. Pyle it's a possibility our unnatural culture may need. JOHN BETTS

Beware the title
I'll make this brief, for the people interested in bigfoot/sasquatch, forget all about this book. Now the good point... for the people that enjoy a well written book on a long nature walk, you'll eat this up. Pile is very detailed in his descriptions of nature and you should really enjoy this book. Bigfoot followers... not so much.

Excellent writing, but doesn't live up to the hype.
As somewhat of a skeptic, but still keeping an open mind, I enjoy topics such a 'bigfoot' when they're written intelligently and with a base of reason. As for "Where Bigfoot Walks", I should've looked at other reviews of this book a bit more, but when Midwest book review stated things like "...fascinating study of Bigfoot legends and realities..." I gambled- and lost. For outdoor enthusiasts, this is a rich story of a man's travels through the wilderness. And I must hand it to Mr. Pyle, he really does write well. It almost seems as if he anticipated readers interested in bigfoot to get bored with it quickly, like when he goes on about hitching rides from Indians because he runs out of water- or something like that, but his timing is right and just as you're about to toss the book aside he throws in something interesting enough to get you to keep reading. In the end though, it's all rather anticlimactic, and not what I was looking for.

It's about where bigfoot walks, not bigfoot
If you're looking for stuff about bigfoot(s),look elsewhere. (Sanderson's and Green's books are the best.) This book is about a trek in bigfoot country, something I've always wanted to do. When I finally do it, I hope I have better luck than Pyle had. This book is OK if you're looking for a story about an uneventful walk in the woods.

more than bigfoot
If you are a "Bigfoot Believer", a "Cryptid Connoisseur", or looking for photographs of huge hominids emerging from UFO's with Greys looking on, this ain't your book. If you are a regular person who loves nature and is intrigued by a good tale of "What If", this IS your book and you'll love it. Pyle shares with us his love for the Northwest and his concerns for its future. Yes this is largely a symbolic book, with "Bigfoot" symbolizing all we love, and fear, of those far forest places dark and deep and why we are fascinated with them. There is also a tinge of sadness in the book; the ravages of thoughtless environmental damage, the childish quarrels of Bigfoot "Experts". But this is largely a love story, about one last Wild Place, and how such places Haunt our imaginations. You'll love this book. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

Wonderful Photographs, lively text
I got this book for Christmas, and enjoy it a lot. Appears to be well researched, nicely written (not dry like many books like this), and WONDERFUL photographs. This book will especially appeal to people interested in birds ... Read more

Book Description

This introduction to the science of range management couples the latest concepts and technology with proven traditional approaches. It combines fundamental topics, such as range plant physiology, range plant ecology, stocking-rate considerations, and grazing system selection, with the most recent research.The volume addresses rangeland and man, range management history, rangeland physical characteristics, description of rangeland types, plant physiology, ecology, inventory and monitoring, considerations concerning stocking rate, selection of grazing methods, methods of improving livestock distribution, range animal nutrition, range livestock production, wildlife management, manipulation of range vegetation, range management in developing countries, planning, technology, and the outlook for future.For Range Conservationist, Wildlife Biologist, Natural Resource Managers, Watershed Mangers and Foresters. ... Read more

Reviews (3)

A must read for all - especially those who don't care!
A book that is long overdue. I have always felt that mankind has undervalued animals for too long. I have always loved all of the creatures on this earth. One must be kind to all of creation. A must read for all churches, we could all use a dose of kindness. Please read and pass around this book!

must reading
Gary Kowalski is one of today's wisest and best writers about animal rights, about animals' place in this world and the reasons we should respect them. Animals have always been his teachers. InThe Souls of Animals, he admitted that his dog was his "spiritual guide," something not often heard from a man of the cloth. In this new book, Kowalski includes five chapters based on Biblical stories and then explains how they might be changed to better include many creatures' stories and perspectives.At the end of each, he rewrites these stories.He believes this retelling ofBiblical stories is essential if we are to turn around some of our truly appalling attitudes toward other creatures and their habitats. The Bible According to Noah contains timely, kind ideas, and is one of the year's most intellectually challenging nonfiction titles.

Book of the Year!
I encourage everyone to read this thoughtful, moving, and timely piece which inspired me to look at our world, and our impact on it, with Kowalski's fresh perspective. I grew up going to Sunday School, and have since lost touch with my faith and its relevance to my contemporary reality. This book will help everyone, regardless of their religious or political affiliations, regain perspective & respect of our place among our world's creatures. I have read and reread the passages in this book, in awe of Kowalski's common sense style and appeal. ... Read more

Book Description

The clearest recognition guides available. ... Read more

Book Description

What is it about Western society, ask the authors, that makes it possible for people to express great affection for animals as sentient creatures and simultaneously turn a blind eye to the most callous behavior toward them? Animals are sold as expensive commodities, used as food and clothing, killed as vermin, and hunted for sport. But they also are treated as members of the family, used as the cause célèbre of social movements, and made the subject of art, film, and poetry. Such contradictions motivate these unique ethnographers to venture into social worlds most people know about only in passing, such as veterinary clinics where companion animals are cared for, animal shelters where dogs and cats are "mercifully" euthanized, and primate labs where monkeys are kept for animal experimentation.

Arluke and Sanders are not distanced ethnographers. They worked in the clinics, shelters, and laboratories, cleaning cages, assisting in surgery, and participating in "sacrificing" animals for science or helping to provide them with an "easy death." In this book, the people who work with these animals and live through them talk to the authors about the strategies they adopt to cope with the stress of the job.

This fascinating book combines sociological analysis with ethnographic description to give us insight into the history and practice of how we as human beings construct animals, and by extrapolation, how we construct ourselves and others in relation to them. ... Read more

Reviews (3)

book review
REGARDING ANIMALS, Arnold Arluke and Clinton Sanders, Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1996, 218pp.

Regarding Animals, by Arnold Arluke and Clinton Sanders, explores the special symbiosis that exists between human animals and non-human animals. Theirs is a sociological exploration navigated by their skills in ethnography that ventures them into cultural frontiers seldom seen and therefore left uncharted by sociological experts. For Arluke and Sanders, fieldwork took place wherever human-animal interaction was likely to occur, "the pet store, circus, riding stables, and countless other settings where animals play a part" (p. 19). This interaction united them with "exotic tribes" they identified as "pet owners, veterinarians, animal trainers, slaughterhouse workers, mounted policemen, and any other group that works with or cares for animals..." (p. 19). Arluke and Sanders attempt to record what was happening in these places and to articulate the meanings that animals have for people. Traditional sociological ethnography was the framework utilized for the authors' research. Their job as sociologists was to identify some of the social forces that are behind the inconsistent treatment of animals and to show how they work. Their ultimate goal was to convincingly argue the merits of sociological analysis in popular and scholarly discussions about animals in Western cultures. The purpose of Regarding Animals is to dissect how humans regard animals in modern Western societies.

The book's format divides its discourse into two sections. Part one, "The Human-Animal Tribe," discusses a myriad of issues ranging from studying the social construction of animals to understanding ethnography to recognizing the existence of the non-human animal "mind." Particularly striking was Arluke and Sanders' rhetoric on social constructs. They regard the social construction of animals to be the meanings that animals have for cultures, and, consequently, determine them to be dependent upon the variables of place and time. Then, after a discussion of the criticisms of ethnography, the authors move on to the animal "mind," which can only be described as a modern paradigm drama. Arluke and Sanders testify to the "mind's" existence, and consequently refute conventional positivistic assumptions by reasoning that the animal "mind" is capable of more than just capricious, instinctual thought response.

In the next section, Living with Contradiction, ethnography plays a key role. The authors infiltrate the world of animal shelter workers, animal trainers, primate labs, and the history of Nazi Germany. The chapter entitled The Sociozoologic Scale was particularly compelling. The scale ranks animals "according to how well they seem to 'fit in' and play the roles they are expected to play in society" (p. 169). Arluke and Sanders deduce that society constructs good animals and bad animals. They discuss the latter as being characterized as freaks, vermin, and demons. Good animals, characterized as pets and tools, included minority groups that, according to the majority's perspective, seem to accept their subordinate role in society and are patronizingly treated like children. This same society has a tendency to treat pets and children very similarly. Therein, the authors infer that this is the reason why society finds it easy to dehumanize minorities like women, blacks, children, the elderly, and the mentally challenged to the status of animal when using descriptive language about them. The discussion on animals as valued tools was also very compelling. Here they recalled the infamous Tuskegee experiment where more than four hundred blacks were unknowingly infected with syphilis and subjected to forty years of suffering with no treatment. These people were dehumanized to the subhuman level of a tool or guinea pig.

The only fault of Regarding Animals lies in some of the excerpts used from interviews. The responses appear staged. And, although I am convinced that people would feel these things, I only question the lack of vernacular used by those respondents who talk about their pet.

Regarding Animals takes an informative yet critical look at society's relationship with animals. They expose the "constant paradox" (p. 4) defined as the consistent inconsistency of human's emotions toward animals, like advocating the vivisection of a dog as long as it was not their pet. Arluke and Sanders' fieldwork gives the reader access to places, like research laboratories and veterinary hospitals, that permit a broader understanding of our four legged friends that we worship and who sometimes worship us.

Subcultures like pet owners, veterinary personnel, and breeders have always had a greater perspective of the dynamics of human-animal symbiosis. It is only within the crucible of academe that the "mind," social influence, and the pragmatics of animals have been omitted from discussions. Arnold Arluke and Clinton Sanders are determined to increase our knowledge and question our values regarding animals. This book is an asset to anyone interested in deconstructing myths we have made that separate us from the wet nosed companion nestled by our feet.

Wowser Bowser!
Golly gosh, this was the best book on animals I ever read. I immediately went out and bought a little parrot after reading it, who only says one thing: "I love jesus, I love jesus."

Factual, interesting and informative - a gripping read.
An excellent book covering many aspects of our interaction with non-human animals. Packed with information, interesting examples and a wonderfully useful bibliography, I couldn't put it down. A real shame there's not more books like this, as a student of human-animal interaction I could have done with reading something as comprehensive as this years ago. I particularly liked the application of symbolic interactionist theory to this area of study. ... Read more

Book Description

This second edition text focuses on the scientific aspects of the animal agriculture industry.New chapters on the beef, swine, sheep, horse, and small animal industries have been added for comprehensive coverage of all livestock animals.This textincludes background on the various segments of the livestock industry and includes basic principles of biology to help readers understand the process of producing animals for human utilization.Features such as objectives and activities help readers understand the material.A CD-ROM that includes a lab manual, teacher's resource guide, computerized test bank, and transparency masters isavailable to help instructors organize and plan lessons. ... Read more

Book Description

In the American West, the sky is wide and the mountains are grand. Everything is on a big scale - including the debate over livestock production on the nation's public lands.

For more than a century, ranching and its associated activities (such as the growing of irrigated feed crops) has been the major land use over most of the western states. While many Americans think of cowboys as heroes and the "Wild West" as a place for cattle roundups and rodeos, others see livestock as a scourge upon the land. What is most disturbing to some activists is that ranching activities occur not only on private property but also on public lands - more than 300 million acres of federal, state, and other publicly owned lands are used by private ranching operations. For the most part, the ranching operations pay very low fees to run their livestock on these lands, and also receive numerous government subsidies including range improvements, fencing, and predator control.

Welfare Ranching presents one side of the debate over public lands ranching, offering a graphic look at the negative consequences of livestock production in the arid West. The authors highlight changes in the region that they see as being caused by ranching, and examine what they feel are problems associated with using tax dollars to support environmentally questionable activities. Through photographs and essays, the book shows examples of overgrazing along with what the authors argue are more subtle signs that indicate large - scale ecological disruption. The authors also discuss changes that could be made to help solve some of these problems.

Welfare Ranching gives one view of the cultural and historical causes of the current situation and offers a vision of possible renewal. ... Read more

Reviews (10)

Grazing Public Lands - Decline in Habitat for Native Species
Welfare Ranching is a beautiful book, full of full-color photos and articles by dozens of scientists and concerned biological conservationists regarding the destruction of the American West by cattle ranchers.Wuerthner and Matteson point out that there are 525 million acres of land in the Western United States which are used for livestock grazing.That only eleven percent of U.S. cattle producers are in the west, but their grazing area equals twenty-five percent of the total land area of the lower 48 United States and most of that is public land.These lands are often over-grazed, degraded, and denuded of plants. The water sources are manipulated by the ranchers to provide water for their livestock, thereby removing the water from access by native plants and wildlife.The introduction of livestock into the arid lands of the American west is like introducing an exotic species into a community.The livestock completely undermine and degrade the ecosystem and their presence is linked to the decline in native bird and vegetation populations.It has been noted that by raising domestic animals which demand large quantities of water and forage in a place that is dry, and by favoring slow-moving, heavy, and more or less defenseless livestock in terrain that is rugged, vast, and inhabited by native predators, ranchers have put themselves in a position of constant warfare with the land. Nearly all public lands [in the Western U.S.] that have any forage potential for livestock are leased for grazing.This includes 90% of Bureau of Land Management land, 69% of U.S. Forest Service land and a surprising number of wildlife refuges and national parks.Three hundred million of these acres have the potential for large-scale ecosystem restoration by terminating domestic livestock production on public lands
Bird species need water and vegetation to survive, and many are threatened or driven into extinction by the ubiquitous livestock grazing which destroys their habitat.Birds generally do not respond to the presence of grazing livestock but to the impacts on vegetation as a result of grazing.Breeding Bird Survey data suggest that grassland birds as a group are showing greater population declines than any other avian assemblage in North America.Thisis attributable to habitat modifications including livestock grazing,fire suppression, prairie dog control, cultivations, and exotic grasses.
Livestock grazing harms native species and promotes alien plant growth.The hundreds of photos in the book, Welfare Ranching, document the denuded, degraded land and polluted, manipulated water sources which result from cattle grazing. Some ranchers suggest that since bison used to naturally live on the grasslands, cattle are a good modern day substitute, but cattle and bison are not similar animals.Bison moved around a lot, effectively grazing on plants only once before moving on, and bison also lived in drier areas and ate drier plants than cattle do; domestic cattle spend most of their time within 400 meters of water.Cattle ranchers also suggest that the grasslands need to be grazed by cattle in order to be healthy, but in a native grassland there is a wide variety of animals that naturally graze in a sustainable way, such as nematodes, grasshoppers, prairie dogs, pronghorn antelope, elk, and bison.
Livestock grazing is the most common land use in western North America.It is difficult to study in a controlled manner as there are not many large areas free of grazing because approximately 70% of the eleven western states is grazed.A study comparing Chaco Culture National Historic Park in northern New Mexico, one of the largest grazing exclosures in the American West, with six grazing sites, found that plant species richness was higher in the protected areas than in the grazed areas (Floyd et al. 2003).Recent paleo-ecological studies on the Colorado Plateau determined that the most severe vegetation changes of the last 5,400 years resulted from livestock grazing during the last two centuries (Cole et al. 1997).
It is apparent that many species of grassland birds, and neo-tropical migratory birds have declined drastically in the past few decades.Much of the research on this subject has found that the decline in bird species is correlated to the decline in habitat and vegetation which is directly linked to grazing livestock on the majority of land area in the western United States.Over half of the grazing is done on publicly owned lands which, due to the time-honored traditions in the West of allowing cattle ranchers full access to any lands they want, and because these ranchers and their grazing interests have been very important in the political and social life of the West for over a century, and because, until recently,grazing on public lands has been an accepted practice with no special attention paid to it, the question of closing off public lands to grazing has become a power struggle and a contentious issue between conservationists, ranchers, the government, and land managers.There is enough documented evidence that grazing has many deleterious effects on the land such as:damaging the soil, polluting the water supply, destroying native vegetation, encouraging alien species, and that ranchers and land managers have altered the ecosystem by:controlling fires, diverting the scarce water supply to cattle use only, and actively killing many native animal species that they consider inconvenient or dangerous to their interests.
It is obvious that livestock grazing on western lands is not a sustainable operation.It is environmentally damaging and causes great loss of biodiversity. It is sustained only through the political influence of cattle ranchers and the ignorance and indifference of the public.The great wave of new research which is being done by conservation biologists and environmentalists will help change this devastating scene in the future when students begin to inform themselves by reading these research papers, and when the popular media brings the desolation and waste to the notice of the people, that their land is being appropriated by private interests who are destroying the environment and profiting at the expense of thousands of plant and animal species each year.
Welfare Ranching, The Subsidized Destruction of the American West, brings these facts to the people in the form of a beautiful well-documented book full of great photographs.Most of the information in this book is taken from scientific articles and journals.How many of us spend our time reading dry scientific journals?If you would like to have a combination of fact and photos, in an interesting to read and understand format with articles published by well-known conservation biologists and others whose main concern is to save our lands and our native plants and animals, then Welfare Ranching is the book to have.

Major Setback for Resource Coalition-Building
I found this book while browsing at Cody's in Berkeley last week. It's big. It's colorful. It's angry. And sadly, it's packed full of deception. The problem is that if you live in Staten Island, NY you won't know that you're being decieved unless you've spent a lot of time visiting Nevada's Great Basin and watching the seasons change.

Two examples (among many):
- Lots of close-in photos of range cattle in late-summer condition standing near a water tank with cowpies scattered all over the bone-dry vicinity and not a blade of grass in sight. The fact is that if you zoom-out about 50 yds. you'll see a major difference between the heavily-tracked barren ground surrounding the water trough and the grazing allotment outside of the perimeter. Ditto for a different time of year. The perception is that the entire range is bone-dry, overstocked, and full of cowpies. Not true. The stocking rate on that sort of range is 1 cow for every 250 acres. Lots of room for a cow, her calf, and a few of their cowpies.
- An aerial photo designed to discount the idea of ranching as a natural defense against urban sprawl is taken high above the Gallatin Valley in Montana - the source of urban sprawl would be Bozeman. The photo shows several thousand acres of ranches, mainly irrigated alfalfa farms. The point of the photo is, "well, obviously there's no sprawl here." The problem?Bozeman isn't even captured in the photo! So, the photo is a lie that would make even George Orwell blush.

I'm an environmental activist. I think there's no more important issue facing our time than preventing a head-on collision with ecological catastrophe. So, it disappoints me greatly when a book like this is bankrolled and released by someone like Doug Tompkins, co-founder of Esprit, especially after his success with "Fatal Harvest".

His credibility on this particular issue has been lost. More importantly, much of the hard work of building consensus among stakeholders in public lands coalitions has been vanquished because one green element decided to lie shamelessly to further its agenda of removing livestock from public lands. The hurt feelings and distrust will take years to mend, I'm afraid.

This book should remain on the shelf.

Not so great
This book is deceptive -- so readers be wary. A picture of a mountain meadow and something along the lines of: "This is the way it could be" and then a picture of a desert - "this is the way it is." The pictures are taken in two entirely different ecosystems! And yet the editors imply that if cows were not present, picture 2 would look like picture 1. Not true.

Some interesting writing. Too bad, though, that it was framed by deception.

One Picture Tells 1,000 Lies
I'm afraid that most readers will only look at the pictures and read the captions and headlines. That's the point. No one sits down and reads through a book like this, so the message is as broad, blatant, and one-sided as a billboard. It is meant to seduce anyone who gives it a superficial glance. Leaf through it casually and discover that cattle are bad for just about anything you care to name. Are they good for anything at all? No. This is propaganda at its best (or worst).
"Welfare Ranching" is filled with pictures that are captioned to manipulate, rather than instruct. For every lush "cattle-free" area shown in the book, a barren area-just as "free"-could easily be found. The same is true of pictures showing cows on dry, dusty land. The photos are carefully chosen to show a single perspective.
On page 275 is a photo captioned "Campground full of cow manure, Nevada." It shows a flattish clearing dotted with sage and grass and a few old, dry cow pies. In the background are tall brush and trees with the hint of a mountain in the distance. It could be Nevada. Someone might camp there, if they chose to. It could also be someone's back pasture. Page 45 is a full page picture of "Severely eroded land." OK. What eroded it? We are meant to believe it was cattle, but even the author won't stick that label on. A horrifying photo of a cow carcass in a river occupies page 193. It probably smells as bad as the deer carcasses I used to find in the creek behind my grandmother's Connecticut farm.
The footnotes are probably not meant to be read, either. Otherwise, why would the author cite himself so often? Can a serious, reasonable argument against cattle ranching can be made by someone whose reference is a book called "The Sexual Politics of Meat: A Feminist-Vegetarian Critical Theory?" The chapter on the health implications of meat consumption is written by the author of "The Vegetarian Way." The chapter on livestock raising from a global perspective is co-authored by an "environmental activist" advocate for wolf recovery and a math professor who authored "Judaism and Vegetarianism."
The "factual" parts of the book are a clever mixture of half-truths, excerpts out of context, skewed statistics and a grab-bag of factoids winkled out of scientific papers to fit the situation. For instance, on page 13 the author states that "ranching and associated activities provide very few jobs...most ranch operations...are not highly profitable...ranch families depend on [outside] jobs (to) help keep the ranch financially afloat." On page 15 the author argues that ranchers dominate Western politics because: "low salaries [of public office] rule out participation by people without other sources of income. Yet ranchers...having the financial latitude to engage in off-ranch pursuits-are able to hold office with less sacrifice than the work would require of others." The statement is made that "Vermont produces more beef than all the public lands in Nevada." USDA statistics show 500,000 head of cattle in Nevada in 2002, 285,000 in Vermont. Nevada has fewest cattle of any western state except Alaska.
Then there are all those questionable critters that cows are accused of threatening. There are snails the size of a pinhead, cave bugs and tiny fish. I couldn't help wondering how many insects and reptiles survived the sprawl of Phoenix or Seattle? Shouldn't we get those people "off the land" too? Abundant dinosaurs roamed where Los Angeles is now. Maybe we should try to "restore" them? There's more than a hint of wanting to "play God" in all this fervor over weeds and worms.
As for the cows, a "shift away from animal foods is not only an important individual choice, but also imperative for the well-being of humanity, and the ecological systems of the earth." (page 285)
"Welfare Ranching" is not simply a vegetarian tract. There is an underlying, more sinister agenda-The Wildlands Project. That includes a wide swath of land from the tip of South America to Northernmost Canada that is to be free of all human activity. The author of this extreme fantasy is Reed Noss, cited more than half a dozen times in the footnotes. Buried in the text are lines like this: "The majority of the West is directly or indirectly influenced by livestock production, either as rangeland, as cultivated land or pasture growing feed for livestock, or as delimited reserves of nature where naturally migrating wildlife are persecuted the instant they step outside the boundaries people have imposed on them." (page xiv) So, if you take away the rangeland, cultivated landand pasture, "migrating wildlife" will no longer have those boundaries.
In case anyone misses the point, in the next sentence the author adds the "hundreds of millions of acres of farmland in the Midwest" to the "total physical and ecological footprint of livestock production." When all that Midwest farmland is out of production, there will be room for all the westerners evicted from the Wildlands Project to live. (What they will eat might be a problem.)
"There is no single conservation opportunity for rewilding...300 million acres as ending livestock grazing on all public lands." (page 324). Rewilding is the agenda. Concluding with "Our Vision" the author says: "We dream of a landscape where bison, pronghorn antelope, wolves, and grizzlies are free to roam...in which landscape-scale ecological processes can operate with a minimum of human interference. The elimination of livestock production from our public lands will set us on that pathway."
It's not just a "pathway." The Wildlands Project calls for one half of the land area of the 48 states to be encompassed in core wilderness reserves and inner corridor zones (essentially extensions of core reserves) within the next few decades. What's left over is where people can live-within the boundaries set by the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity.

One sided wonder
Although it is refreshing to see the authors opinions right in the title, it is distressing to have that be the sum total of the facts to back up the opinion.If you are looking for a book to confirm your thoughts that the federal government is a good caretaker of the land, then this is it.If your experience with government agencies leads you to believe that they may not be the best guardians of the west, you may have issues this book.

I was disappointed that the editors have clearly tried to sell their opinion, rather than inform or enlighten.This book is as one sided as a new car brochure.There have been hundreds of studies that compare land that is used for grazing, with land where all grazing has been stopped, and none of these studies are mentioned in this book.To bad many people will take this book as a presentation of facts.

Dan Dagett's book Beyond the Rangeland Conflict is a far better balance of the facts, and one I would highly recommend.To buy this book is to encourage an elitist and imperial view of the west, and one that is based on glossy misrepresentations. ... Read more

Book Description

THE AVOCADO DRIVE ZOO is a warm and personal, yet humorous, recounting of how the members of the Hamner family have lived with and loved the animals in their lives. By the time they moved to Hollywood and settled into a lovely residence on Avocado Drive, their home was virtually a zoo. ... Read more

Reviews (5)

A heart warming story from a true animal lover.
As an animal lover I could relate to many of his pets.It is a book that would be enjoyed my many age groups.

The book tells us what happen to Johnboy after he went to NY
Everyone who admires and loves Earl Hamner, will love this book. It is a real good insight to his life after he leaves the Mountain for New York City and then on to Hollywood California. Being an animal lover myself, Ijust love his stories about the different living animals that where intheir lives. It starts with his meeting Jane and it is their love ofanimals from there on in. How they both taught their children the samelove. Also He made the family of both seem so real I felt I knew them. Thehumor was quite effective and I found myself laughing out loud. Quitedifferent from his otherbooks. I know any fans of Earl Hamner will justadore this book. I am sure everyone will want to pass it on and afterreading it, they will want to search him out and have there own copy signedby Earl. You can find him in Schuyler Virginia at the Museum for "TheWaltons' Series" check the web site www.the-waltons.com Most Sincerelyand with Love Dorothy Phillips

Loved the Book
I am an animal lover and will probably give this book to my mother for Mothers Day.Mr. Hamner really knows how to tell a story.

A charming story of a family and their personal "Zoo"
With this book, Earl Hamner proves that he can write as entertainingly about his adult life as he has written in the past about his childhood. Hamner's life in Hollywood is a "howl" and I do mean"howl." Read it and you'll see!

Very entertaining, and quite original!
Mr. Hamner writes about his family and their love of animals in a way that is entertaining and heartwarming. It is hard to imagine that the setting for this book is the great urban sprawl of Los Angeles. Mr. Hamners waywith words is also a big plus. I hope that you look it up in your bookstoreor library, as I believe you will enjoyreading "The Avocodo DriveZoo." ... Read more

Book Description

Though women have long felt kinship with animals, in the past, they seldom participated in the study of them. Now, as more women make animals the subject of their investigations, significant new ideas are emerging--based on the premise that animals are honored co-sharers of the earth. This unprecedented anthology features original stories, essays, meditations, and poems by a vast array of women nature writers and field scientists, including:

DIANE ACKERMAN - VIRGINIA COYLE - GRETEL EHRLICH - DIAN FOSSEY - TESS GALLAGHER - JANE GOODALL - TEMPLE GRANDIN - SUSAN GRIFFIN - JOY HARJO - BARBARA KINGSOLVER - URSULA LE GUIN - DENISE LEVERTOV - LINDA McCARRISTON - SUSAN CHERNAK McELROY - RIGOBERTA MENCH - CYNTHIA MOSS - KATHERINE PAYNE - MARGE PIERCY - PATTIANN ROGERS - LINDA TELLINGTON-JONES - HAUNANI-KAY TRASK - GILLIAN VAN HOUTEN - TERRY TEMPEST WILLIAMS ... Read more

Reviews (3)

Excellent parallel to Peterson's "Living by Water".
I have always resonated with the way Brenda Peterson writes about her connection between our natural world and people. I found poignant parallels between the experiences described in "Bond" and Peterson's previous "Living by Water". God, how I wish I could talk to her. This latest book by Peterson (et al.) has struck a chord in me , and I feel this book is an important read for all women. Highly recommended.

The compassionate connection between women and animals
A beautiful, moving anthology of stories about the bond between humans (in this book, specifically female) and animals. I especially loved the story of Isabel the cat and what her human companion learned from her about play and healing. I recently found an interview on this site with the author of the story, Brenda Peterson (who is also a co-editor of Intimate Nature). To find the interview, go to Browse Subjects, then Non-fiction, then Non-fiction by Subject, then Women's Studies. Look down the page until you find "What Animals Can Teach Us." Then "read more..." about Intimate Nature!

Explores a connection surpassed only by motherhood...
As a scientist studying wolves, as the owner of several pets, as someone who loves nature and wildlife, and as a woman...this book spoke to me. It offers a vivid reminder of the very unique, emotional and primal bond that women share with animals. Narratives, interspersed with poetry, are organized loosley into several sections, focusing on diverse aspects of this bond. In one section, women who had made this communality part of their careers- studying animals in the field- share their insights as to how their work and their lives have been affected by what they study. Other sections explore the more common bond between womenand their pets, or the wildlife they find around them, and how this supplements and supports the lives they have created for themselves. The book has all the hallmarks of an epic work of fiction- humor, love, tragedy, revelation, loss- and yet never for a moment do you forget that these are real women speaking. Intimate Nature is not only about the unique bond between women and animals, but the bond we share as women as well. ... Read more

Amazon.com

Once revered as semidivine beings and collaborators in the hard work of transporting goods and materials, Thailand's elephants have fallen on hard times. With the destruction of their forested habitats, a consequent nationwide ban on hardwood logging, and the decline of traditional agriculture in the rapidly urbanizing country, their numbers have declined from tens of thousands just a decade ago to only a few thousand today. Many of the surviving elephants have been put to work in traveling circuses or used for black-market labor, subject to overwork and all manner of abuse.

Vitaly Komar and Alexander Melamid, Russian expatriates who have been working together for more than 30 years, have a knack, writes art curator Mia Fineman, for "transforming the solemn rituals of high art into high comedy." It was with the utmost seriousness, however, that the two, on reading of the elephants' plight, traveled to Thailand and established the Thai Elephant Art School, through whose offices elephants create pop-art masterpieces with palette, brush, and trunk. (Elephants, it seems, have a well-known gift for the visual arts and, in the Thai case, adore the work of Vasily Kandinsky.) Sold to collectors on the world market, pachyderm-painted pieces generated $75,000 at a single early auction, the proceeds of which were used to establish and maintain sanctuaries throughout Thailand.

Illustrated with elephantine artwork and more than 100 photographs documenting Komar and Melamid's project, this book makes a wonderfully offbeat gift, and one of a very good cause. --Gregory McNamee ... Read more

Reviews (1)

Dissapointing
Beautiful photography and interesting text, but I was interested in the actual art as painted by the elephants, but there is very little of that. Mostly pictures of jungles. If you like that you will like the book. If you want to see the acutual artwork you will be very dissapointed. ... Read more