Arts & Photography
Audio CDs
Audiocassettes
Biographies & Memoirs
Business & Investing
Children's Books
Christianity
Comics & Graphic Novels
Computers & Internet
Cooking, Food & Wine
Entertainment
Gay & Lesbian
Health, Mind & Body
History
Home & Garden
Horror
Literature & Fiction
Mystery & Thrillers
Nonfiction
Outdoors & Nature
Parenting & Families
Professional & Technical
Reference
Religion & Spirituality
Romance
Science
Science Fiction & Fantasy
Sports
Teens
Travel
Women's Fiction
|
 |
Stinging Trees and Wait-a-Whiles : Confessions of a Rainforest Biologist |
List Price: $25.00
Your Price: $25.00 |
 |
|
|
|
| Product Info |
Reviews |
Description:
When Bill Laurance went to northern Australia in the mid-1980s, it was to study the teeming life of a classic rainforest. The problem was, the rainforest of Queensland, already limited in extent, was fast disappearing, logged and bladed into oblivion; even its legendary stinging trees, "a good hit [from which] can hurt for months," seemed in danger of becoming mere memories. Laurance's fieldwork became a running chronicle of what happens to the rainforest's creatures--tree kangaroos and vipers, redback spiders and pygmy possums, and countless other species that are little known outside the area--when once-unpeopled habitats are overrun. (One of the few species to benefit from the region's decline, Laurance observes, is the antechinus, a wolverine-like marsupial that thrives on disturbance.) Laurance soon realized, as he relates in his memoir, that he'd have to couple scientific information with activism in order to protect what little of the forest remained--activism that included recommending the area for a listing under the United Nations' World Heritage program, and that put him squarely at odds with the suspicious loggers who were his neighbors. Although confronted with death threats and an actual attempt on his life, Laurance pressed on, eventually winning over enough Queenslanders to launch a small but growing ecotourism industry. Well-written and often quite funny, Stinging Trees and Wait-a-Whiles will hearten any environmentalist and tropical traveler. --Gregory McNamee
|
|
|
|
