Showing results by publisher "--Tyson Hanks" in Ecosystems & Habitats

Anyone who has ever stood on the shores of Monterey Bay, watching the rolling ocean waves and frolicking otters, knows it is a unique place. But even residents on this idyllic California coast may not realize its full history. Monterey began as a natural paradise, but became the poster child for industrial devastation in John Steinbeck's Cannery Row, and is now one of the most celebrated shorelines in the world. It is a remarkable story of life, death, and revival - told here for the first time in all its stunning color and bleak grays.

In Tree Wisdom, Vincent teaches us what a year of healing among the trees can look like. Each lesson mirrors the wondrous way our tall timber friends have learned to thrive through the seasons. Each lesson is simple in nature, a push of the pause button, a chance to re-centre on what matters.

Most people think of New Jersey as a suburban-industrial corridor that runs between New York and Philadelphia. Yet in the low center of the state is a near wilderness, larger than most national parks, which has been known since the seventeenth century as the Pine Barrens.

For four years John Lewis-Stempel managed the wood. He coppiced the trees and raised cows and pigs who roamed free there. This is the diary of the last year, by which time he had come to know it from the bottom of its beech roots to the tip of its oaks and to know all the animals that lived there - the fox, the pheasants, the wood mice, the tawny owl - and where the best bluebells grew. For many fauna and flora, woods like Cockshutt are the last refuge. It proves a sanctuary for John, too.

On New Year’s Day 2012, Amy-Jane Beer’s beloved friend Kate set out with a group of others to kayak the River Rawthey in Cumbria. Kate never came home, and her death left her devoted family and friends bereft and unmoored. Returning to visit the Rawthey years later, Amy realises how much she misses the connection to the natural world she always felt when on or close to rivers, and so begins a new phase of exploration.

Author Stephen Harrigan spent months diving on the coral reefs of Grand Turk Island in the Caribbean. In this evocative account, he describes his many explorations, both personal and natural. Though he is there to learn about the history of the coral reef, Harrigan freely admits that his true motivation is to become, at least for a time, his “underwater self”.

Professor Richard Fortey has been a devoted field mycologist all his life. He has rejoiced in the exuberant variety and profusion of mushrooms since reading as a boy of nuns driven mad by ergot (a fungus). Drawing on decades of experience doing science in the woods and fields, Fortey starts with the perfect ‘fungus day’ – eating ceps in Piedmont. He introduces brown rotters and the white, earthstars and death caps; fungal annuals and perennials, dung lovers and parasites, even fungi that move through the trees like mycelial monkeys.

The world of wildlife is full of surprising and magical quirks - and Sue Perkins - comedian, broadcaster and Just a Minute host - is on a mission to discover them all. In this fantastic series, recorded at ZSL London Zoo and the Eden Project, she's joined by a diverse group of comedians and natural history experts for some entertaining sessions of 'Show and Tell'.

From the majesty of Uluru and its surrounding deserts to the rugged grandeur of the Kimberley and Pilbara landscapes, the Australian Outback inspires a deep connection with the timeless wisdom of the natural world. It is a place where this wisdom reveals itself in many ways, each day, when the walkabout soul allows themselves to be seduced by the wonder of this ancient land, and its physical and spiritual magnificence. Walkabout to Wisdom, an evocative story of such a journey, reintroduces us to the essence and importance of this natural wisdom, and its inherent capacity to teach and heal.

Over thousands of years, the Mississippi watershed was home to millions of Indigenous people who regarded "the great river" with awe and respect, adorning its banks with astonishing spiritual earthworks. But European settlers and American pioneers had a different vision: the river was a foe to conquer. In this landmark work of natural history, Boyce Upholt tells the epic story of human attempts to own and contain the Mississippi River, from Thomas Jefferson's expansionist land hunger through today's era of environmental concern

For centuries we’ve been sold a lie: that you need to own the land to care for it. Just 1% of the population own half of England, and this tiny landowning elite like to present themselves as the rightful custodians of the countryside. They’re even paid billions of pounds of public money to be good stewards. But what happens when they just don’t care?

During a difficult time, Karen Auvinen flees to a primitive cabin in the Rockies to live in solitude as a writer and to embrace all the beauty and brutality nature has to offer. When a fire incinerates every word she has ever written and all of her possessions - except for her beloved dog Elvis, her truck, and a few singed artifacts - Karen embarks on a heroic journey to reconcile her desire to be alone with her need for community.

Throughout history, trees have determined the tools we use, the boats we build, the stories we tell about the world and ourselves, the songs we sing, and some of our most important rituals. As such, our lives are intertwined with those of the trees and woodlands around us. In this journey deep into the woods, Wyl Menmuir travels the length and breadth of Britain and Ireland to meet the people who plant trees, the ecologists who study them, those who shape beautiful objects and tools from wood, and those who use them to help others.

The role of resident vet in the British Overseas Territories of the Falklands, St Helena, Tristan da Cunha, and Ascension encompasses the complexities of caring for the world’s oldest land animal—a 200-year-old giant tortoise—and MoD mascots at the Falklands airbase; pursuing mystery creatures and invasive microorganisms; relocating herds of reindeer; and rescuing animals in extraordinarily rugged landscapes, from subtropical cloud forests to volcanic cliff faces.

Author, filmmaker and conservationist Roger Deakin first came to fame with his best-selling book Waterlog, which brought wild swimming into the mainstream and pioneered the 'new nature writing' genre. Published posthumously, his second travelogue, Wildwood, and collected journals, Notes from Walnut Tree Farm, were also hailed as classics.

Dung beetles might sound dirty, but the ancient Egyptians believed their god took the form of a dung beetle to roll the morning sun across the sky every day. In this episode, we roll with dung beetles around the world as they push their precious dung—often in balls many times larger than they are—over Florida pastures, Armenian highlands, and the vast South African savanna.

Dogs are a familiar and comforting part of many of our lives. In this episode, we take a walk with a pet xoloitzcuintli, or Mexican hairless dog, as he greets his blocks by smell. Along the way, we learn the backstory of squirrels in U.S. cities and observe the very smart and clean neighborhood raccoon.

There is a growing crisis in our oceans as rates of infectious disease outbreaks are on the rise. A warmer world is a sicker world for humans and wild biota. Marine epidemics have caused mass die-offs of wildlife from the bottom to the top of the food chains, impacting the health of ocean ecosystems as well as lives on land. Fueled by a warming ocean and accelerated by sewage dumping, unregulated aquaculture, and drifting plastic, ocean outbreaks are sentinels of impending global environmental disaster.

The pond. Nothing in the countryside is more humble or more valuable. It’s the moorhen’s reedy home, the frog’s ancient breeding place, the kill zone of the beautiful dragonfly. More than a hundred rare and threatened fauna and flora depend on it. Written in gorgeous prose, Still Water tells the seasonal story of the wild animals and plants that live in and around the pond, from the mayfly larvae in the mud to the patrolling bats in the night sky above.

In this gripping historical memoir, journalist and famed redwood activist Greg King examines how investors and a growing U.S. economy drove the timber industry to cut down all but 4 percent of the original two-million-acre redwood ecosystem. King first examined redwood logging in the 1980s—as an award-winning reporter. What he found in the woods convinced him to leap the line of neutrality and become an activist dedicated to saving the very last ancient redwood groves remaining in private hands.