By turns funny, savage, poetic and heartbreaking, Safety in Bear Country follows Serena, a recent graduate from art school who thought she'd have it all figured out and be making a comfortable living as an artist, but instead finds herself dumped by her boyfriend and back in her parents' basement in the backwater town she couldn't wait to leave. The year is 1994: miserable and lost in the dark forest of her early twenties, Serena takes a job with her small town's main employer, an institution for people with developmental disabilities. When one of the residents dies in her care, Serena flees the trauma, ultimately embarking on a journey that pushes and pulls her between constraint and freedom, despair and hope. Set in small-town Ontario, Australia, northern British Columbia and Miami, Safety in Bear Country pulls the reader with gorgeous and inventive prose though a world of inequity, spirituality, activism and psychedelics as Serena labours to make sense of her place in the world.

Sea otters are good indicators of ocean health. In addition, they are a keystone species, offering a stabilizing effect on ecosystem, controlling sea urchin populations that would otherwise inflict damage to kelp forest ecosystems. The kelp forest ecosystem is crucial for marine organisms and contains coastal erosion. With the concerns about the imperiled status of sea otter populations in California, Aleutian Archipelago and coastal areas of Russia and Japan, the last several years have shown growth of interest culturally and politically in the status and preservation of sea otter populations. Sea Otter Conservation brings together the vast knowledge of well-respected leaders in the field, offering insight into the more than 100 years of conservation and research that have resulted in recovery from near extinction. This publication assesses the issues influencing prospects for continued conservation and recovery of the sea otter populations and provides insight into how to handle future global changes. - Covers scientific, cultural, economic and political components of sea otter conservation - Provides guidance on how to manage threats to the sea otter populations in the face of future global changes - Highlights the effects that interactions of coastal animals have with the marine ecosystem