Which is worse, cows or condos? Can the public lands be "saved" if the private lands are paved? What does the future hold for the West's vaunted open lands, its ever more precious water, and its fire-prone forests? Is ranching a doomed mythas its critics chargeor the key to real conservation? The Western range is America's most legendary landscape. It is also among its most threatened and most fiercely contested. More than 400 million acres of the West are used to raise livestock: half of the land privately owned and half of it public. In recent decades, the private lands have been rapidly converting to residential development, both around booming cities and in remote, scenic, "exurban" areas. The public half of the range has become mired in political battles and lawsuits between environmentalists, ranchers, and public agencies. In Working Wilderness Nathan Sayre examines an unusual alliance that has worked for ten years to answer these questions and preserve the wide open range: The Malpai Borderlands Group. 50 color & b/w photos.

Working the Wilderness: Early Leaders for Wild Lands tells true stories about four men and one woman who established how to work in and be in the wilderness. They were guides for protection of wilderness and for the protectors who followed them. Their lives were immersed in service ƒƒ‚ƒƒ‚‚‚ƒƒ‚‚ƒ‚‚"ƒƒ‚ƒƒ‚‚‚ƒƒ‚‚ƒ‚‚€ƒƒ‚ƒƒ‚‚‚ƒƒ‚‚ƒ‚‚" to wild land and the American People. They worked for the U.S. Forest Service, centered in the vast Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness of Idaho and Montana. Three were active before and after the Wilderness Act of 1964. The younger two came in at the beginning of the modern wilderness era. They all adapted skills of the pioneers to the new land designation. Their stories celebrate heroes for the enduring resource of wilderness and point to the future to keep their legacies thriving.

The personal diaries of one of America’s best-loved naturalists, revealing his difficult and inspiring path to finding his voice and becoming a writer Few writers are as renowned for their eloquence about the natural world, its power and fragility, as Sigurd F. Olson (1899–1982). Before he could give expression to The Singing Wilderness, however, he had to find his own voice. It is this struggle, the painstaking and often simply painful process of becoming the writer and conservationist now familiar to us, that Olson documented in the journal entries gathered here. Written mostly during the years from 1930 to 1941, Olson’s journals describe the dreams and frustrations of an aspiring writer honing his skills, pursuing recognition, and facing doubt while following the academic career that allowed him to live and work even as it consumed so much of his time. But even as he speaks with immediacy and intensity about the conditions of his apprenticeship, Olson can be seen developing the singular way of observing and depicting the natural world that would bring him fame—and also, more significantly, alert others to the urgent need to understand and protect that world. Author of Olson’s definitive biography, editor David Backes brings a deep knowledge of the writer to these journals, providing critical context, commentary, and insights along the way. When Olson wrote, in the spring of 1941, “What I am afraid of now is that the world will blow up just as I am getting it organized to suit me,” he could hardly have known how right he would prove to be. It is propitious that at our present moment, when the world seems once more balanced on the precipice, we have the words of Sigurd F. Olson to remind us of what matters—and of the hard work and the wonder that such a reckoning requires.

Whether you are an avid outdoors person or would simply like some survival knowledge just in case you need it, The Complete Wilderness Training Book teaches you all the skills necessary for living off the land -- even in the most adverse conditions. Illustrated with more than 950 color photographs and illustrations, including many step-by-step sequences, The Complete Wilderness Training Book offers an unparalleled understanding of the outdoors. It contains hundreds of specific techniques for staying warm and dry, obtaining food and water, traveling and getting help, including making a foliage bed, testing plants for poison, making a compass, splinting a broken arm, and surviving a blizzard. During his 16 years in the British Army, Hugh McManners served as a paratrooper and combat-survival instructor. Here he shares with you the knowledge that has meant the difference between life and death for him on a number of occasions.

Winner of the 2022 Rachel Carson Environment Book Award * Winner of the 2022 Science in Society Journalism Award (Books) * Finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize “Thoughtful, insightful, and wise, Wild Souls is a landmark work.”--Ed Yong, author of An Immense World "Fascinating . . . hands-on philosophy, put to test in the real world . . . Marris believes that our idea of wildness--our obsession with purity--is misguided. No animal remains untouched by human hands . . . the science isn't the hard part. The real challenge is the ethics, the act of imagining our appropriate place in that world." --Outside Magazine From an acclaimed environmental writer, a groundbreaking and provocative new vision for our relationships with--and responsibilities toward--the planet's wild animals. Protecting wild animals and preserving the environment are two ideals so seemingly compatible as to be almost inseparable. But in fact, between animal welfare and conservation science there exists a space of underexamined and unresolved tension: wildness itself. When is it right to capture or feed wild animals for the good of their species? How do we balance the rights of introduced species with those already established within an ecosystem? Can hunting be ecological? Are any animals truly wild on a planet that humans have so thoroughly changed? No clear guidelines yet exist to help us resolve such questions. Transporting readers into the field with scientists tackling these profound challenges, Emma Marris tells the affecting and inspiring stories of animals around the globe--from Peruvian monkeys to Australian bilbies, rare Hawai'ian birds to majestic Oregon wolves. And she offers a companionable tour of the philosophical ideas that may steer our search for sustainability and justice in the non-human world. Revealing just how intertwined animal life and human life really are, Wild Souls will change the way we think about nature-and our place within it.

"EARLY LEADERS FOR WILD LANDS tells true stories about four men and one woman who established how to work in and be in the wilderness. They were guides for protection of wilderness and for the protectors who followed them. Their lives were immersed in service -- to wild land and the American people. They worked for the U.S. Forest Service, centered in the vast Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness of Idaho and Montana. Three were active before and after the Wilderness Act of 1964. The younger two came in at the beginning of the modern wilderness era. They all adapted skills of the pioneers to the new land designation. Their stories celebrate heroes for the enduring resource of wilderness and point to the future to keep their legacies thriving"--