Kingfishers are birds more often heard than seen. Walk next to Bear Creek here in the Rogue Valley and you will probably hear them, though seeing them is not so easy. Fortunately, we have a new book about the kingfisher by Marina Richie to shed light on this fascinating bird. Marina takes us along with …
Audrey Schulman’s The Dolphin House, inspired by a true story about dolphin research in St. Thomas in the 1960s, is a beautiful, thought-provoking read, at times as heartbreaking as it is fascinating. The novel reveals much about the vast intelligence of dolphins—and, at times, the lack thereof in humans—and offers a look at animals in …
Not on My Watch: How a Renegade Whale Biologist Took on Governments and Industry to Save Wild Salmon by Alexandra Morton Guest book review by Gene Helfman. A colleague of mine, a federal agency biologist, finishes his emails with, “If you’re not outraged, you’re not paying attention.” Alexandra Morton has been outraged for decades. Not only …
Deer are a common sight here in Ashland, Oregon. And a common source of conflict between residents. Some want to see the deer killed and others (like us) want to see the deer left alone. Fortunately, the deer have been fairly expressive as of late and one deer penned this letter for High Country News …
Why do animals lend themselves to economic and financial jargon? Perhaps it’s because we need visual and tangible ways or relating to concepts that are so vague, confusing or downright opaque. Bear Markets and Beyond by Dhruti Shah and Dominic Bailey provides an A-Z compendium of animal financial jargon. From an “alligator spread” that has …
The stories and essays of Touching Creatures, Touching Spirit: Living in a Sentient World form a beautiful tapestry of communications across species and consciousness. From grateful dragonflies to fatherless strawberries to companionable stones, poet and activist Judy Grahn details meaningful connections from her own experiences of the sentient world. Throughout her firsthand accounts, she weaves in histories …
In Irreplaceable: The Fight to Save Our Wild Places, Julian Hoffman shows us endangered habitats and the creatures who inhabit them—as well as the humans who are fighting to save these fragile landscapes. He puts us vividly within these places, portraying just how special and vulnerable they are, and also shows us the passion, dedication, …
At the opening of the essay collection Maverick, Laura Jean Schneider writes: I’m in the third generation of butchers in my family. As a family, we slaughtered and butchered most of the meat we eat ourselves. While this was not without conflict it seemed that once animals flesh was cooked, we were absolved of the …
Sadly, we cannot review everything we receive here at EcoLit Books — but I did want to highlight a few new and newly republished works… The Lives and Deaths of Shelter Animalsby Katy M. GuentherStanford University Press For the Birds: Protecting Wildlife through the Naturalist Gazeby Elizabeth CherryRutgers University Press Butterfly: Poems by Miriam Sorrel …