Bill Streever

Bill Streever, a biologist, is the award winning and bestselling nature writer behind In Oceans Deep, Cold, Heat, and And Soon I Heard a Roaring Wind. Mary Roach, writing for The New York Times Book Review, called his writing a “love song to science and scientists, to Earth and everything that lives on and flies over and tunnels underneath it.” As a scientist, he worked for academia, the U.S. federal government, and the energy industry managing applied research programs addressing conservation issues. He has authored and co-authored more than a hundred papers and book chapters on topics ranging from habitat restoration to the cumulative effects of development to the impacts of underwater sounds on whales and fish. He edited the academic compendium An International Perspective on Wetland Rehabilitation and he has served as editor-in-chief and a guest editor for academic journals. He has also served on several formal advisory committees, including the RAMSAR wetland convention’s Science Advisory Panel, the National Technical Review Committee tasked with commenting on a multi-billion dollar plan to restore coastal Louisiana, and the North Slope Science Initiative, which he chaired for three years. He has been featured as an author on numerous radio shows, including Fresh Air, On Point, Weekend Edition Sunday, and All Things Considered. He also appeared as a guest author on The Martha Stewart Show. He has contributed book reviews to The New York Times Book Review, the Wall Street Journal, The Week, the San Francisco Chronicle, and elsewhere. Today he lives with his wife, marine biologist and photographer Lisanne Aerts, aboard their 57-year-old cruising sailboat Rocinante. The two of them are currently in the Pacific and underway on what they describe as “an intentionally slow circumnavigation.” When Bill is not busy fixing the boat, he spends his time sailing, diving, hiking, rowing a dinghy, paddling a kayak, seeing the world through the twin lenses of science and history, and, of course, writing.

Book Review: Casey Huegel’s wonderfully detailed Cleaning up the Bomb Factory: Grassroots Activism and Nuclear Waste in the Midwest

April 22, 2024 by Bill Streever

Too often, environmental writers fail to capture the complexities that make their genre so interesting. Instead, they tell tales of good versus evil, of right against wrong. While parts of many stories boil down to something at least resembling black and white, few complete stories—at least the ones worth telling—are so simple. Most require convoluted narratives describing more …

A Modest Crossing of Northern Alaska: A review of Arctic Traverse

April 1, 2024March 29, 2024 by Bill Streever

What does a solo journey across the Alaskan Arctic entail? As it turns out, much of it is a matter of putting one foot in front of the other, again and again and again, seemingly forever. But if that is what you envision when you think of Michael Engelhard’s Arctic Traverse: A Thousand-Mile Summer of Trekking the Brooks …

Book Review: Three Bears, not Eight

December 28, 2023August 21, 2023 by Bill Streever

A Review of Gloria Dickie’s Eight Bears: Mythic Past and Imperiled Future In my life I have had the privilege of seeing more grizzlies, more blacks, and more polar bears than I can remember, most at respectable distances but some a bit too close for comfort. And while I may not be able to recall details …