Great books to read, keep on your shelf, or pass on to a friend. Not in any particular order. I’ll be adding to this page periodically.
1. Rewilding the World. Dispatches from the Conservation Revolution by Caroline Fraser. Picador Press 2009. This is a fantastic book on the the movement worldwide to save over 1/3 of the animals and plants from disappearing forever from our planet. Fraser visits Peace Parks, wildlife corridors, and Conservancies around the world, describing successes and failures and the hard work and hopes of wildlife restorations.
2. Botany in a Day. Their Patterns Method of Plant Identification. by Thomas J. Elpel. Hops Press 2008. Not exactly a day, but this book gives you a basic understanding of patterns in the basic plant families for quicker identification.
3. Mammal Tracks & Sign. A Guide to North American Species by Mark Elbroch. Stackpole Books 2003. I find this thick book one of the best tracking references around. Color pictures. Not just tracks, but also scat, urine, beds, feeding and other signs.
4. Animal Skulls A guide to North American Species by Mark Elbroch. Another definitive book by Elbroch. We have this one in our reference shelf with just a very few others in the BBHC laboratory.
5. Heads, Hides & Horns The Compleat Buffalo Book by Larry Barsness. TCU Press 1985. This book really turned my head around as to the extent of the herds of Bison in North America. A fantastic book tracing their history, impact, Native American uses, and finale demise.
6. Plenty-Coups Chief of the Crows. by Frank B. Linderman. Bison Books reprint 2002, originally published in 1930. Wow, I love this book. Frank Linderman was a friend of the Crows who took the time to interview Plenty-Coups (the chief spoke in Crow and sign language through a translator to Linderman) as well as a medicine woman named Pretty Shield, another book. Plenty Coups was born in the 1840′s and was their last chief. He grew up in the traditional ways and lead his people onto the reservation. His is a fascinating story and a glimpse of the old ways. Starting at page 31, when Plenty Coups was 9 years old, he describes his vision quest which blew my socks off because it was a prediction of all that was to come throughout his entire lifetime. A must read.
7. Wolfer. A Memoir by Carter Niemeyer. Bottlefly Press 2010. Get the real scoop on wolves, Wildlife Services, and wolf reintroduction from someone who spent his life working for Animal Damage Control and then helping with the wolf reintroduction from the beginning. I couldn’t put this book down from cover to cover. Carter went from just being a trapper of wolves to being their best advocate.
8. Prehistoric Hunters of the High Plains by George C. Frison. Academic Press 1991. This is the definitive work by the premier plains archaeologist. Its an academic read taking you back over 10,000 years in the Wyoming and Montana area, highlighting the most fruitful digs. It will give you a good feeling for the long history of indigenous peoples in this area.
9. Hiking with Grizzlies Lessons Learned by Tim Rubbert. Riverbend Publishing. If you read only one book about hiking in grizzly backcountry, this is it. Rubbert describes dozens of actual personal grizzly encounters and how he handled each situation. Rubbert is a grizzly aficionado and lives near Glacier National Park, where he travels into country to observe grizzlies.
10. Sacred Cows at the Public Trough by Nancy Ferguson. Maverick Publishing 1983. Although some of the data is old, this book will give you a vivid picture of why we need cattle off our public lands. Public grazing history, overgrazing, subsidies, stream pollution, predator control–all angles are covered in this book.
11. Movies A few movies I enjoy. Dersu Uzala; Skinwalkers; Little Big Man; American Mystery! Coyote Waits; A Thief of Time; The Only Good Indian; Walkabout; Thunderheart; The Bear and Two Brothers by Jean-Jacques Annaud; Lassie: Flight of the Cougar; Explore the Wildlife Kingdom-Cougar
12. The Abstract Wild by Jack Turner. University of Arizona 1996. An essential read; a passionate cry for the preservation of real wildness.
13. Advanced Bird Language. Reading the Concentric Rings of Nature by Jon Young. Eight Audio CD set available at www.WildernessAwareness.org. I also recommend the beginning basic 8 audio set ‘Seeing Through Native Eyes’. Advanced Bird Language has nothing to do with knowing your birds but everything to do with actually listening and understanding their language for tracking purposes. Jon explains that birds, like all animals, have a ‘baseline’ where they are not threatened. If you know that baseline that is common for all perching birds, then you can tell when they are in heightened states of sensitivity, ranging from moderate to downright fearful, like when a hawk or cat or weasel is in the neighborhood. This tape series implies practice, not just a listen through. Jon is a fabulous tracking teacher combining not just scats and tracks, but how to interpret animal movements and interaction through sign in the landscape.
14. The Light in High Places by Joe Hutto. Skyhorse Publishing 2009. Hutto is a great writer. His prose is elegant, flush with feeling and a love for Wyoming and the Wind River Mountains. Hutto is a biologist who works with John Mionczynski (a Wyoming legend) studying the Whiskey Mountain Big Horn Sheep of the Wind Rivers. He has spent several summers living in a tent on Middle Mountain (around 12,000′+), alone, painstakingly measuring the pH of rainfall, getting to know the ewes and rams by sight, watching sickly lambs not make it through the summer. Why are the sheep having such a hard time? You’ll be very surprised at his answers. An incredible and beautiful read, I hated for the book to end.
15. Restoring a Presence. American Indians and Yellowstone National Park by Peter Nabokov and Lawrence Loendorf. U of Oklahoma Press. 2004. Ancient Visions. Petroglyphs and Pictographs of the Wind River and Bighorn Country, Wyoming and Montana by Julie E. Francis and Lawrence L. Loendorf. U of Utah Press. 2002. Mountain Spirit. The Sheep Eater Indians of Yellowstone by Lawrence L. Loendorf & Nancy Medaris Stone. U of Utah Press 2006. These three books, each co-authored by Larry Loendorf, will provide an excellent overview of the original inhabitants of the Yellowstone area and surrounds. I refer to them often.
16. NEW! Behavior of North American Mammals by Mark Elbroch and Kurt Rinehart. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. 2011. You can’t go wrong with any of Elbroch’s books. This new one, in hardcover only, goes beyond tracks and signs to give you the latest info and insight into our mammals on this continent.
17. Yellowstone Bears in the Wild by James C. Halfpenny. Riverbend Publishing. 2007. Halfpenny is a premier tracker, world famous, who resides in Gardiner, MT. This book has not only beautiful photos, but is very informative relative to Bear biology, plus some great sidebar stories. Highly recommended if you want to really dig into bears!
You put me to shame, all I am reading is a bunch of mystery/crime novels, and rereading Chuck’s book on Red-tailed hawks.
Chuck has a book? I want to read that too. These are so far the best of what I’ve read non-fiction that have helped me gain some insight and knowledge. This is my ‘A’ list so to speak.
Chuck has written two books about birds. One on Golden Eagles, and the other on Red Tailed Hawks.
Here is his Golden Eagle one:
http://www.amazon.com/Golden-Eagle-Sovereign-Charles-Preston/dp/1558687955/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1310365852&sr=1-1
Here is his red-tailed hawk book:
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=charles+Preston+red-tailed+hawks&x=23&y=17
If you want to borrow my Golden Eagle and Red-tailed hawk books that Chuck wrote, let me know….I know that you will treat them with the greatest respect, and, well Koda, won’t have them for a snack…..I especially love the Golden Eagle book, which is hardbound with little personal memoirs that Chuck has added at the beginning of each chapter.
My review of the book on amazon:
Golden Eagle: Sovereign of the Skies is more than a non-fiction information book on golden eagles; it is also a work of art. From the first sentence of the book’s prologue, Dr. Preston’s descriptive way of writing captivated my interest. Describing a co-worker as having an “elfish grin”, or the sky behind him as taking on the “glow akin to a distant, raging wildfire,” added a special touch that painted images and sounds in my mind. Dr. Preston begins each chapter with an experience from his past, allowing the reader a small glimpse into who he is, and why he became the person he is today. These create a more personal feeling to the book that one does not usually receive when reading this type of nonfiction book. This is a wonderful, entertaining way to setup the background for the subject to be covered in each chapter. Along with information about the bird’s origin, hunting methods, prey, reproduction, and winter habits, the last two chapters also cover two other interesting, and important aspects of the subject. These last chapters discuss the cultural influences the golden eagle has had on humanity, and the dangers our ever-expanding society has on the survival of the eagle. Gary Leppart’s beautiful photographs further enhance the book. I highly recommend this book to any bird lover, even if you have some knowledge about golden eagles.
This is so cool. I didn’t know you had a site!