A SCHOLARLY BOOK REPOSITORY
Combining science writing, environmental history, and first-hand accounts from a longtime resident, At the Glacier’s Edge offers a unique narrative natural history of Long Island. Betsy McCully tells the story of how the island was formed at the end of the last ice age, how its habitats evolved, and how humans in the last few hundred years have radically altered and degraded its landscape. Yet as she personally recounts the habitat losses and species declines she has witnessed over the past few decades, she describes the vital efforts that environmental activists are making to restore and reclaim this land—from replanting salt marshes, to preserving remaining grasslands and forests, to cleaning up the waters. At the Glacier’s Edge provides an in-depth look at the flora, fauna and geology that make Long Island so special.
Ecotourism and Sustainable Development, originally published in 1998, was among the first books on the subject. For years it has defined the debate on ecotourism: Is it possible for developing nations to benefit economically from tourism while simultaneously helping to preserve pristine environments? This long-awaited second edition provides new answers to this vital question.
Ecotourism and Sustainable Development is the most comprehensive overview of worldwide ecotourism available today, showing how both the concept and the reality have evolved over more than twenty-five years. Here Honey revisits six nations she profiled in the first edition—the Galapagos Islands, Costa Rica, Tanzania, Zanzibar, Kenya, and South Africa—and adds a fascinating new chapter on the United States. She examines the growth of ecotourism within each country’s tourism strategy, its political system, and its changing economic policies. Her useful case studies highlight the economic and cultural impacts of expanding tourism on indigenous populations as well as on ecosystems.
Honey is not a “travel writer.” She is an award-winning journalist and reporter who lived in East Africa and Central America for nearly twenty years. Since writing the first edition of this book, she has led the International Ecotourism Society and founded a new center to lead the way to responsible ecotourism. Her experience and her expertise resonate throughout this beautifully written and highly informative book.
Tourism is becoming one of the world's most important economic activities. There is hardly a place on earth, no matter how inaccessible, that has not been visited by some traveler seeking adventure, enlightenment, or simply change from the familiar world back home.
In this pathfinding book, David Zurick explores the fastest-growing segment of the travel industry—adventure travel. He raises important questions about what constitutes the travel experience and shows how the modern adventure industry has commercialized the very notion of adventure by packaging it as tours.
Drawing on two decades of personal travel, as well as the writings of others, Zurick unravels the paradox of adventure travel—that the very act of visiting remote places untouched by Western culture introduces that culture and begins irreversible changes. This first in-depth look at adventure travel opens new insights into the physical, philosophical, and spiritual attributes of the travel experience. Written in a lively style, the book is intended for everyone interested in travel and its effects on both travelers and the people and places they visit.
On the Tibetan Plateau, there are wild yaks with blood cells thinner than those of horses’ by half, enabling the endangered yaks to survive at 40 below zero and in the lowest oxygen levels of the mountaintops. But climate change is causing the snow patterns here to shift, and with the snows, the entire ecosystem. Food and water are vaporizing in this warming environment, and these beasts of ice and thin air are extraordinarily ill-equipped for the change. A journey into some of the most forbidding landscapes on earth, Joel Berger’s Extreme Conservation is an eye-opening, steely look at what it takes for animals like these to live at the edges of existence. But more than this, it is a revealing exploration of how climate change and people are affecting even the most far-flung niches of our planet.
Berger’s quest to understand these creatures’ struggles takes him to some of the most remote corners and peaks of the globe: across Arctic tundra and the frozen Chukchi Sea to study muskoxen, into the Bhutanese Himalayas to follow the rarely sighted takin, and through the Gobi Desert to track the proboscis-swinging saiga. Known as much for his rigorous, scientific methods of developing solutions to conservation challenges as for his penchant for donning moose and polar bear costumes to understand the mindsets of his subjects more closely, Berger is a guide par excellence. He is a scientist and storyteller who has made his life working with desert nomads, in zones that typically require Sherpas and oxygen canisters. Recounting animals as charismatic as their landscapes are extreme, Berger’s unforgettable tale carries us with humor and expertise to the ends of the earth and back. But as his adventures show, the more adapted a species has become to its particular ecological niche, the more devastating climate change can be. Life at the extremes is more challenging than ever, and the need for action, for solutions, has never been greater.
Take four emblematic American scenes: the Hall of Biodiversity at the American Museum of Natural History in New York; Disney’s Animal Kingdom theme park in Orlando; an ecotour of Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks; the film An Inconvenient Truth. Other than expressing a common interest in the environment, they seem quite dissimilar.
And yet, as Governing the Wild makes clear, these sites are all manifestations of green governmentality, each seeking to define and regulate our understanding, experience, and treatment of nature. Stephanie Rutherford shows how the museum presents a scientized assessment of global nature under threat; the Animal Kingdom demonstrates that a corporation can successfully organize a biopolitical project; the ecotour, operating as a school for a natural aesthetic sensibility, provides a visual grammar of pristine national nature; and the film offers a toehold on a moral way of encountering nature. But one very powerful force unites the disparate “truths” of nature produced through these sites, and that, Rutherford tells us, is their debt to nature’s commodification.
Rutherford’s analysis reveals how each site integrates nature, power, and profit to make the buying and selling of nature critical to our understanding and rescuing of it. The combination, she argues, renders other ways of encountering nature—particularly more radically environmental ways—unthinkable.
Michigan offers some of the most wonderfully diverse recreation opportunities in the country. The Michigan Eco-Traveler is for a new and growing breed of leisure traveler and adventurer—the individual seeking to experience the pleasant peninsulas responsibly by minimizing his or her eco-footprint. The book introduces readers to the importance of eco-friendly travel and highlights some of the best eco-conscience venues across the state that offer activities from golfing to skiing to sailing and much more. The book also examines environmental pressures on the state’s recreational resources, revealing the critical need for joining together in conservation practices, and offers travelers helpful tips for evaluating the sustainability of their own favorite recreational spots.
Whether you’re a weekend traveler, extreme adventurer, or family on vacation, The Michigan Eco-Traveler lights the way to a greener getaway. Naturalists, conservationists, and hospitality experts will find the book equally helpful in responding to the ever rising demand for sustainable recreation.
In The Nature of Spectacle, Jim Igoe embarks on multifaceted explorations of how we imagine nature and how nature shapes our imaginations. The book traces spectacular productions of imagined nature across time and space—from African nature tourism to transnational policy events to green consumer appeals in which the push of a virtual button appears to initiate a chain of events resulting in the protection of polar bears in the Arctic or jaguars in the Amazon rainforest. These explorations illuminate the often surprising intersections of consumerism, entertainment, and environmental policy. They show how these intersections figure in a strengthening and problematic policy consensus in which economic growth and ecosystem health are cast as mutually necessitating conditions. They also take seriously the potential of these intersections and how they may facilitate other alignments and imaginings that may become the basis of alternatives to our current socioecological predicaments.
The Other Jersey Shore takes readers on a personal tour of the New Jersey portion of the Delaware River and its surroundings. You will learn about the role that the river played in human history, including Washington’s four crossings of the Delaware during the Revolutionary War. And you will also learn about the ecological history of the river itself, once one of the most polluted waterways in the country and now one of the cleanest, providing drinking water for 17 million people. Michael Aaron Rockland, a long-time New Jersey resident, shows readers his very favorite spots along the Delaware, including the pristine waterfalls and wilderness in the Delaware Water Gap recreation area. Along the way, he shares engrossing stories and surprising facts about the river that literally defines western New Jersey.
Overtourism: Lessons for a Better Future charts a path toward tourism that is truly sustainable, focusing on the triple bottom line of people, planet, and prosperity. Bringing together tourism officials, city council members, travel journalists, consultants, scholars, and trade association members, this practical book explores overcrowding from a variety of perspectives. After examining the causes and effects of overtourism, it turns to management approaches in five distinct types of tourism destinations:
1. historic cities;
2. national parks and protected areas;
3. World Heritage Sites;
4. beaches and coastal communities; and
5. destinations governed by regional and national authorities.
While each location presents its own challenges, common mitigation strategies are emerging. Visitor education, traffic planning, and redirection to lesser-known sites are among the measures that can protect the economic benefit of tourism without overwhelming local communities.
As tourism revives around the world, these innovations will guide government agencies, parks officials, site managers, civic groups, environmental NGOs, tourism operators, and others with a stake in protecting our most iconic places.
Mendoza explores the fraught intersection of the green economy with the New Left politics of the Néstor Kirchner and Cristina Fernández de Kirchner governments. Mendoza documents the strategies of capitalist development, national representation, and political rule embedded in the “green productivist” agenda pursued by Kirchner and Fernández. Mendoza shows how Andean Patagonian communities have responded to the challenges of community-based conservation, the fashioning of wilderness zones, and the drive to create place-based monopolies that allow ecotourism destinations to compete in the global consumer economy.
North America’s grasslands once stretched from southern Canada to northern Mexico, and across this considerable space different prairie types evolved to express the sum of their particular longitude and latitude, soils, landforms, and aspect. This prairie guide is your roadmap to what remains of this varied and majestic landscape.
Suzanne Winckler’s goal is to encourage travelers to get off the highways, out of their cars, and onto North America’s last remaining prairies. She makes this adventure as easy as possible by providing exact driving directions to the more than three hundred sites in her guide. She also includes information about size, management, phone numbers, and outstanding characteristics for every prairie site and provides readers with a thorough list of recommended readings and Web sites.
The scope of the guide is impressive. It encompasses prairies found within national grasslands, parks, forests, recreation areas, wildlife refuges, state parks, preserves, and natural areas and on numerous working ranches in Saskatchewan and Manitoba, the Dakotas, Minnesota, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, Oklahoma, and Texas. A series of maps locate the prairies both geographically and by name.
From “the largest restoration project within the historic range of tallgrass prairie” at Neal Smith National Wildlife Refuge in Iowa to Big Bend National Park in Texas, where “the Chisos Mountains, completely surrounded by the park, rise up majestically from the Chihuahuan Desert floor,” Winckler celebrates the dramatic expanses of untouched prairie, the crown jewels of prairie reconstruction and restoration, and the neglected remnants that deserve to be treasured.
Gathering together written accounts, postcards, photographs, advertisements, films, and oral histories as well as her own interpretations of these displays, Desmond gives us a vibrant account of U.S. tourism in Waikiki from 1900 to the present. She then juxtaposes cultural tourism with "animal tourism" in the United States, which takes place at zoos, aquariums, and animal theme parks. In each case, Desmond argues, the relationship between the viewer and the viewed is ultimately based on concepts of physical difference harking back to the nineteenth century.
Nearly three decades later, changes in recreation use run counter to what was initially expected. Instead of avoiding Prince William Sound, tourists and visitors flock there. Economic revitalization efforts have resulted in increased wilderness access as new commercial enterprises offer nature tourism in remote bays and fjords. This increased visitation has caused concerns that the wilderness may again be threatened—not by oil but rather by the very humans seeking those wilderness experiences.
In Sustaining Wildlands, scientists and managers, along with local community residents, address what has come to be a central paradox in public lands management: the need to accommodate increasing human use while reducing the environmental impact of those activities. This volume draws on diverse efforts and perspectives to dissect this paradox, offering an alternative approach where human use is central to sustaining wildlands and recovering a damaged ecosystem like Prince William Sound.
Contributors:
Brad A. Andres, Chris Beck, Nancy Bird, Dale J. Blahna, Harold Blehm, Sara Boario, Bridget A. Brown, Courtney Brown, Greg Brown, Milo Burcham, Kristin Carpenter, Ted Cooney, Patience Andersen Faulkner, Maryann Smith Fidel, Jessica B. Fraver, Jennifer Gessert, Randy Gimblett, Michael I. Goldstein, Samantha Greenwood, Lynn Highland, Marybeth Holleman, Shay Howlin, Tanya Iden, Robert M. Itami, Lisa Jaeger, Laura A. Kennedy, Spencer Lace, Nancy Lethcoe, Kate McLaughlin, Rosa H. Meehan, Christopher Monz, Karen A. Murphy, Lisa Oakley, Aaron J. Poe, Chandra B. Poe, Karin Preston, Jeremy Robida, Clare M. Ryan, Gerry Sanger, Bill Sherwonit, Lowell H. Suring, Paul Twardock, Sarah Warnock, and Sadie Youngstrom
Stretching across southern Mexico, northern Guatemala, and Belize, the Maya Forest, or Selva Maya, constitutes one of the last large blocks of tropical forest remaining in North and Central America. Home to Mayan-speaking people for more than 5,000 years, the region is also uncommonly rich in cultural and archaeological resources.
Timber, Tourists, and Temples brings together the leading biologists, social scientists, and conservationists working in the region to present in a single volume information on the intricate social and political issues, and the complex scientifc and management problems to be resolved there. Following an introductory chapter that presents GIS and remote sensing data, the book: considers perspectives on managing forest resources and the forestry and conservation policies of each nation examines efforts by communities to manage their forest resources explains the connections between resource conservation and use by local people highlights research projects that integrate baseline biological research with impact assessments explains the need to involve local people in conservation effort
Timber, Tourists, and Temples explores methods of supporting the biological foundation of the Maya Forest and keeping alive that unique and diverse ecosystem. While many areas face similar development pressures, few have been studied as much or for as long as the Maya Forest. The wealth of information included in this pathbreaking work will be valuable not only for researchers involved with the Maya Forest but for anyone concerned with the protection, use, and management of tropical forest ecosystems throughout the world.
Based on extensive research in southern Africa with the Maloti-Drakensberg Transfrontier Conservation and Development Project, Büscher explains how the successful promotion of transfrontier conservation as a "win-win" solution happens not only in spite of troubling contradictions and problems, but indeed because of them. This is what he refers to as the "politics of neoliberal conservation," which receives its strength from effectively combining strategies of consensus, antipolitics, and marketing. Drawing on long-term, multilevel ethnographic research, Büscher argues that transfrontier conservation projects are not as concerned with on-the-ground development as they are purported to be. Instead, they are reframing environmental protection and sustainable development to fit an increasingly contradictory world order.
Winner of the 2022 Edward M. Bruner Book Award
Voluntourism and Multispecies Collaboration is a lively ethnographic exploration of the world of conservation voluntourism and its engagement with marine and terrestrial biodiversity on the Honduran Bay Island of Utila, located in the ecologically critical Mesoamerican Barrier Reef.
In this highly readable text, anthropologist Keri Vacanti Brondo provides a pioneering theoretical framework that conceptualizes conservation voluntourism as a green industry. Brondo argues that the volunteer tourism industry is the product of coloniality and capitalism that works to produce and sustain an economy of affect while generating inequalities and dispossession. Employing a decolonizing methodology based on landscape assemblage theory, Brondo offers “thinking-like-a-mangrove” to attend to alternative worldings in Utila beyond the hegemonic tourist spectacle–dominated world attached to the volunteer tourism industry. Readers journey through the mangroves and waters alongside voluntourists, iguanas, whale sharks, turtles, lionfish, and islanders to build valuable research experience in environmental management while engaging in affective labor and multispecies relations of care.
Conservation organizations benefit from the financial capital and labor associated with conservation tourism, an industry boosted by social media. This critical work asks us to consider the impacts of this new alternative tourism market, one that relies on the exchange of “affect” with other species. How are human socialities made through interactions with other species? What lives and dies in Utila’s affect economy? Why are some species killable? Who gets to decide?
In Ways to the West, Tim Sullivan embarks on a car-less road trip through the Intermountain West, exploring how the region is taking on what may be its greatest challenge: sustainable transportation. Combining personal travel narrative, historical research, and his professional expertise in urban planning, Sullivan takes a critical yet optimistic and often humorous look at how contemporary Western cities are making themselves more hospitable to a life less centered on the personal vehicle.
The modern West was built by the automobile, but so much driving has jeopardized the West’s mystic hold on the American future. At first, automobility heightened the things that made the West great, but love became dependence, and dependence became addiction. Via his travels by bicycle, bus, and train through Las Vegas, Phoenix, Denver, Boise, Salt Lake City, and Portland, Sullivan captures the modern transportation evolution taking place across the region and the resulting ways in which contemporary Western communities are reinterpreting classic American values like mobility, opportunity, adventure, and freedom.
Finding a West created, lost, and reclaimed, Ways to the West will be of great interest to anyone curious about sustainable transportation and the history, geography, and culture of the American West.
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