Nature

The go-to guide to California’s natural history, now updated with fresh insights on stewardship for a changing climate and diverse naturalist perspectives.

The California Naturalist Handbook offers a fun, science-based introduction to California’s natural history, emphasizing observation, discovery, communication, and stewardship. This accessible guidebook explores geology, native plants and animals, freshwater resources, forest and rangeland resources, conservation biology, and the effects of pressing environmental issues. Aspiring naturalists will learn how to keep a nature journal, practice participatory science, and improve ecosystem resilience.

Used statewide for the California Naturalist Program, this updated edition includes:

• Updated overview of California’s unique ecosystems and plant and animal communities
• Expanded discussions of Indigenous knowledge and stewardship
• Contributions by diverse naturalist leaders including women, Indigenous peoples, and naturalists of color
• A deeper dive into southern California’s urban and desert ecologies
• Current climate change information, including fire and forest management, drought, flooding and groundwater issues, and recognition of climate grief
• Higher quality images showing a more diverse range of habitats

A magnificent illustrated journey into California’s famed deserts and the astonishingly abundant life they contain.

2023 Glenn Goldman Award Winner for California Lifestyle, Chosen by the California Independent Booksellers Alliance

A San Francisco Chronicle Bestseller!

From Obi Kaufmann, author-illustrator of the best-selling California Field Atlas, comes a grand adventure through time, geography, and ecology in California’s deserts. Of a piece with his richly illustrated books The Forests of California and The Coasts of California, this volume features hundreds of vivid watercolor maps and illustrations, blending art and science to breathtaking effect. Journeying through the Great Basin, Mojave, Colorado, and Sonoran Deserts, Kaufmann pays special attention to national and state parks and monuments, and to the dozens of wilderness areas that reveal the underappreciated natural abundance of California’s arid lands.

From Joshua Tree to Death Valley, these deserts full of life, as Kaufmann evokes them, are perfect places for meditating on our future, and for imagining a California that might thrive beyond the age of climate breakdown. The Deserts of California is a canonical entry into the literature of the American deserts, uniquely colorful and celebratory, and abounding in hope and wonder.

Learn about the wildlife of the Bay Area from a lifelong protector of endangered species, and enjoy the wild ride.

Jeff Miller's quirky guide to the coolest animal neighbors in the Bay Area will have you gawking at elk, whooping with cranes, and crowning yourself a crossing guard for newts before you know it. Join Jeff on a local safari to meet more than sixty species of mammals, birds, fish, reptiles, amphibians, and insects, and discover the fascinating and sometimes bizarre mating, feeding, and athletic antics of our most charismatic animals.

Portraits by Obi Kaufmann, the renowned conservationist artist who created The California Field Atlas, bring each animal to vivid life alongside fun facts, comical photos, and maps to help you scope out the best spots to find your furred, feathered, slimy, and slithery friends. Imbued with the author’s deep compassion for the well-being of our local fauna, Bay Area Wildlife reveals why each of these creatures matters, as well as the threats that loom over our region's incredible biodiversity.

An insightful look at the historical damages early colonizers of America caused and how their descendants may recognize and heal the harm done to the earth and the native peoples

Inherited Silence tells the story of beloved land in California’s Napa Valley—how the land fared during the onslaught of colonization and how it fares now in the drought, development, and wildfires that are the consequences of the colonial mind. Author Louise Dunlap’s ancestors were among the first Europeans to claim ownership of traditional lands of the Wappo people during a period of genocide. As settlers, her ancestors lived the dream of Manifest Destiny, their consciousness changing only gradually over the generations.

When Dunlap’s generation inherited the land, she had already begun to wonder about its unspoken story. What had kept her ancestors from seeing and telling the truth of their history? What had they brought west with them from the very earliest colonial experience in New England? Dunlap looks back into California’s and America’s history for the key to their silences and a way to heal the wounds of the land, its original people, and the harmful mind of the colonizer.

It’s a powerful story that will awaken others to consider their own ancestors’ role in colonization and encourage them to begin reparations for the harmful actions of those who came before. More broadly, it offers a way for every reader to evaluate their own current life actions and the lasting impact they can have on society and our planet.

Los Angeles Times Bestseller

How do we live with fire? From the creator of The California Field Atlas, a book of stewardship, resilience, and hope.

Fire is an essential part of California's ecology. Humans have been using it to shape the California landscape for thousands of years. But today many Californians' relationship to fire is one of fear. Obi Kaufmann, author of the best-selling California Field Atlas, now asks: How do we live with fire? What makes fire essential to a healthy and biodiverse Golden State, and how do we benefit from its teachings? With the same solution-minded ethic as his much-admired The State of Water: Understanding California's Most Precious Resource, Kaufmann presents fire as a force of regeneration rather than apocalypse. He considers the long history of ecological burns, the varied ways fire behaves across the state, and the lessons we can learn from California's largest fires of recent decades.

Packed with Kaufmann's signature watercolor maps and paintings, The State of Fire confronts one of California's most pressing social and ecological challenges. From this maelstrom Kaufmann emerges to share a deepened love for the natural world—and a refreshingly hopeful vision of California's future.

An illustrated obsession, a guidebook, a kaleidoscope of life on the wing.

"If you live in the Bay Area and wish to know the butterflies, this is the only field guide you'll ever need." —Lewis Hyde, author of The Gift

Liam O'Brien has spent three decades chasing, learning about, protecting, occasionally catching, and always loving butterflies. Here, he shares his capacious knowledge of California butterflies through a treasure trove of stories and 700 gorgeous, hand-drawn illustrations—featuring both adult forms and caterpillars—of the 135 species that live in the greater Bay Area. This sumptuous book also shares practical tips for finding and identifying all the butterflies who call the Bay Area home. Learn which plants nurture Silver-spotted Skippers, which trail to hike to see Swallowtails flitting creek-side, and why so many butterflies cluster on hilltops. Share in the joy that O'Brien brings to the study of butterflies, and join the community scientists contributing to our understanding of Monarchs, Metalmarks, and Marbles—and what they need to survive and thrive in our busy Bay Area.

A herpetologist introduces budding snake enthusiasts to the wonders of California snakes.

"I've loved snakes since childhood and am thrilled to now have this gorgeous book as my companion to finding snakes wherever a walk on the wild side takes me." —Amy Tan, author of The Joy Luck Club and The Backyard Bird Chronicles

Fear of snakes is one of the most common phobias in the world, yet step into any local zoo and you'll find the snake pit to be among these menageries' greatest attractions. In this entrancing ode to the charms of California's legless reptiles, rattlesnake wrangler Emily Taylor shares her knowledge, enthusiasm, and advice for getting to know our slithering neighbors, dispelling the usual misapprehensions that surround them and celebrating their striking biological traits along the way.

Featuring profiles of the nearly 50 fork-tongued species that burrow and coil in California's diverse habitats, and containing tips for serpent seekers—including identification guides and handling advice—California Snakes and How to Find Them delves into the longstanding myths and latest natural history research on our ophidian friends of the West. Taylor showcases the biodiversity of California's snakes, from the Common Garter to the fetchingly pink Rosy Boa to the elusive Alameda Striped Racer, illustrated with more than 100 detailed photographs. Supported with critical insights—such as what to do during a venomous encounter, and an exploration of the seemingly simple question, What is a snake?—this guide is the perfect companion for both the seasoned naturalist and the budding snake enthusiast.

A galvanizing road trip across California's immense public wilderness from a beloved adventurer.

"The Enduring Wild is a call to look beyond the surface, embrace the deep connections that tie us to our public lands, and commit to safeguarding them for future generations." —QT Luong, author of Treasured Lands: A Photographic Odyssey Through America's National Parks

It all began with a camping trip. Outdoor enthusiast Josh Jackson had never heard of "BLM land" before a casual recommendation from a friend led him to a free campsite in the desert—and the revelation that over 15 million acres of land in California are owned collectively by the people. In The Enduring Wild, he takes us on a road trip spanning thousands of miles, crisscrossing the Golden State to seek out every parcel of public wilderness therein belonging to the federal Bureau of Land Management, from the Pacific shores of the King Range down to the Mojave Desert. Over mountains, across prairies, and through sagebrush, Jackson unravels the stories of these lands. He tells of the Indigenous peoples who have called them home for millennia, of the extractivist threats that imperil them today, and of the grassroots organizers and political champions who have rallied to their common defense to uphold the radical mandate to protect these natural treasures for generations to come. For the adventurers, campers, explorers, map readers, road trippers, nature enthusiasts, and public lands lovers out there, The Enduring Wild is an indispensable invitation to know these places more deeply and to embrace our common inheritance. Illustrations by Rebekah Nolan.

Nature isn't only in a park or wilderness. It’s right outside our door Sometimes it’s on the door or comes inside to find us. Nature is the jumping spider on the screen, the assassin bug in the shower, and the cluster of ladybugs at the lamp. It is the moss on brick where gutters spill, a sycamore sprout in the storm drain, and the trash can lid turned into a bird bath.

Joanna Brichetto is a neurodiverse, late-blooming naturalist with a sharp eye. Despite having chronic illnesses, she spends much of her time exploring nature and has an infectious, almost zealous love for the flora and fauna near and in her Nashville home. In This Is How a Robin Drinks, Brichetto weaves observation, reflection, and commentary with unsentimental wit and an earthy humor into an urban almanac of fifty-two short lyrical essays.

Each piece offers a sketch of everyday wonders in everyday habitat loss. Nature is the dead sparrow in the pickup line at the elementary school, a full moon over the electric substation, and the cicada chorus that doesn’t make a days-long migraine any better (but doesn’t make it any worse either). Nature is under our feet, over our heads, and beside us—the very places we need to know first. Arranged by season, the pieces in this collection celebrate nature—just as it is—on the sidewalk and in the backyard, the park, and the parking lot.

Ride across California on the back of the wind and learn about the dramatic impact that seasonal weather and climate change have on the Golden State.

"Selby's greatest gift to readers is to reveal the climate as an indomitable equalizer." —Los Angeles Times

Often stereotyped as the land of unflaggingly perfect weather, California has a world-renowned reputation for sunny blue skies and infinitely even-keeled temperatures. But the real story of the state's weather is vastly more complex. From the scorching heat of Death Valley to the coastal redwoods' dripping in dew, California is home to a dizzying array of landscapes and bespoke weather patterns. In The California Sky Watcher, earth scientist William A. Selby takes readers on a journey through the seasons and across the state, exploring the atmospheric science that connects us all under our single sky dome.

With more than 125 photographs, diagrams, and explanatory charts, Selby guides us through the grand cycles that govern the world we see, feel, and hear every day, from the cirrus clouds that swirl overhead to the breezes that beckon us outside. Unraveling the mysteries behind the state's fog, floods, fires, droughts, and snowstorms, Selby shares his love affair with the sky and reveals what these changeable energies forecast for the future of California's climate.

"Krystle Hickman's travels across wild landscapes reveal rare and elusive pollinators, each one meticulously photographed and arranged in a brilliant A-to-Z tribute." —Olivia Messinger Carril, coauthor of The Bees in Your Backyard

National Geographic Explorer Krystle Hickman has spent a decade capturing exquisitely detailed photographs of native bees and making exciting discoveries about their behavior in the field. In her debut book of natural history, she offers an intimate look at the daily habits of rare and overlooked native bees in California: those cloaked in green or black or red, that live alone in the ground or sleep inside flowers, that invade nests and pillage resources like infinitesimal conquerors, or that, unlike more generalist honeybees, are devoted exclusively to the pollen of a single type of flower. A committed conservationist and community scientist who knows all too well how precarious the wellbeing of these insects is, Hickman shares her adventures in local native plant gardens and throughout the far reaches of California to bring the beauty of such diverse ecosystems into wondrous bee's-eye view. Meant for all curious readers, this collection of bee stories—one for each letter of the alphabet, matching the first letter of a bee's scientific name—will leave you both wowed and compelled to help save these fascinating beings and the lands they call home.

How Silent Spring stands as a monument to a unique, loving relationship between Rachel Carson and Dorothy Freeman, and how such love underpins a new environmental politics

After the success of her first bestseller, The Sea Around Us, Rachel Carson settled in Southport, Maine. The married couple Dorothy and Stanley Freeman had a cottage nearby, and the trio quickly became friends. Their extensive and evocative correspondence shows that Dorothy and Rachel did something more: they fell in love.

In this moving new book, Lida Maxwell explores their letters to reveal how Carson's masterpiece, Silent Spring, grew from the love these women shared for their wild surroundings and, vitally and increasingly, for each other. Carson had already demonstrated a profound environmental awareness by the time she purchased her home in Maine; Maxwell proposes that it took her love for Dorothy to open up a more powerful space for critique. As their love unsettled their heteronormative ideas of bourgeois life, it enabled Carson to develop an increasingly critical view of capitalism and its effects on nonhuman nature and human lives alike, and it was this evolution that made the advocacy of Silent Spring possible.

In Rachel Carson and the Power of Queer Love, Silent Spring's exposé of the dangerous and loveless exhaustion of nature for capitalism's ends is set in bold relief against the lovers' correspondence, in which we see the path toward a more loving use of nature and a transformative political desire that, Maxwell argues, should inform our approach to contemporary environmental crises.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER 

“An antidote to the loneliness of our species.”—ROBIN WALL KIMMERER

“A master class in how to love the world.”—MARGARET RENKL

A thrilling book about the abounding queerness of the natural world that challenges our expectations of what is normal, beautiful, and possible.

Growing up, Patricia Ononiwu Kaishian felt most at home in the swamps and culverts near her house in the Hudson Valley. A child who frequently felt out of place, too much of one thing or not enough of another, she found acceptance in these settings, among other amphibious beings. In snakes, snails, and, above all, fungi, she saw her own developing identities as a queer, neurodivergent person reflected back at her—and in them, too, she found a personal path to a life of science.

In Forest Euphoria, Kaishian shows us this making of a scientist and introduces readers to the queerness of all the life around us. Fungal species, we learn, commonly encompass more than two biological sexes—and some as many as twenty-three thousand. Some intersex slugs mutually fire calcium carbonate “love darts” at each other during courtship. Glass eels are sexually undetermined until their last year of life, a mystery that scientists once dubbed “the eel question.” Nature, Kaishian shows us, is filled with the unusual, the overlooked, and the marginalized—and they have lessons for us all.

Wide-ranging, richly observant, and full of surprises, Forest Euphoria will open your eyes and change how you look at the world.

The author of California Snakes and How to Find Them invites budding reptile enthusiasts into a wonderland of lizards.

"This guide joyfully celebrates the beauty and quirkiness of our native lizards." —John Muir Laws

Lizards: they are cute, endearing, and mind-bogglingly diverse, and yet they are so easy to overlook among California’s natural abundance. Start watching them, though, and a wonderland of lizard life appears. In California Lizards and How to Find Them, lizard lover Emily Taylor profiles over 60 native and introduced species, from California's iconic Western Fence Lizard to the adorable Desert Iguana to the chonky Ringed Wall Gecko. With her expert knowledge and joyous, laugh-out-loud writing, Taylor provides tips for finding, watching, and responsibly catching lizards. She offers absorbing insights on lizard evolution, and she explains the toll of invasive lizard species on California's ecosystems. Featuring more than 100 full-color photographs, and designed for easy use in everyday life, this is the ideal guide for budding reptile enthusiasts and longtime naturalists alike.

Braiding together illustration, observation, and reportage, artist and naturalist Robin Lee Carlson offers a watershed work that will forever change how we live with wildfire in the West.

When the nature reserve at Cold Canyon went up in flames—a casualty of California’s raging fire seasons—Robin Lee Carlson embarked on a five-year journey to learn the legacy of the burn. Spurred by scientific curiosity, Carlson’s deep digs into the natural history of this fire-swept ecosystem unearth mind-bending revelations about nature’s wild wisdom. Her transformative story of fire as a force for renewal underscores what scientists are urgently working to understand: that in California’s wildfire ecologies, fire functions as an elemental power that does not destroy the diverse habitats of California, but regenerates them. Richly illustrated in pen, ink, and watercolor, this snapshot of Cold Canyon’s wildlife emerging from the ashes introduces the reader to the wonder of ecological kinship and its cycles in our wild lands. Carlson’s artistic and scientific journey ultimately leads her (and us) to a new understanding of how we must live in relationship to fire and to the land. With fire suppression and climate change undermining the essential regenerative work of fire in our ecosystem, Carlson’s story is an urgent one—one that shows us how cultivating intimacy with our natural world teaches us what we need to do to sustain it.

A sweeping, policy-oriented account of the private and public management of the world's essential natural resource.

Governments dominated water management throughout the twentieth century. Tasked with ensuring a public supply of clean, safe, reliable, and affordable water, governmental agencies controlled water administration in most of the world. They built the dams, reservoirs, and aqueducts that store water when available and move that water to areas with increasing populations and economies. Private businesses sometimes played a part in managing water, but typically in a supporting position as consultants or contractors. Today, given the global need for innovative new technologies, institutions, and financing to solve the freshwater crisis, private businesses and markets are playing a rapidly expanding role, bringing both new approaches and new challenges to a historically public field.

In Liquid Asset, Barton H. Thompson, Jr. examines the growing position of the private sector in the "business of water." Thompson seeks to understand the private sector's involvement in meeting the water needs of both humans and the environment, looks at the potential risks that growing private involvement poses to the public interest in water, and considers the obstacles that private organizations face in trying to participate in a traditionally governmental sector. Thompson provides a richly detailed analysis to foster both improved public policy and responsible business behavior. As the book demonstrates, the story of private businesses and water offers a window into the serious challenges facing freshwater today, and their potential solutions.

Now expanded and updated: Californians’ favorite reference book to trees in our everyday lives.

"Anyone who is curious about trees is sure to find education and inspiration in these pages."—David Allen Sibley, author of The Sibley Guide to Trees and The Sibley Guide to Birds

For more than ten years, A Californian’s Guide to the Trees among Us has taught Californians the what, why, and how of trees in our cities and towns. This edition has been updated by the author to reflect new trends in urban forestry, with a revised introduction, updated taxonomy and nomenclature, and more than ten additional species featured.

Matt Ritter introduces us to over 160 of California’s most commonly grown urban trees in this expanded edition of his best-selling book. Whether native or cultivated, these are the trees that muffle noise, create wildlife habitats, mitigate pollution, conserve energy, and make urban living healthier and more peaceful. Used as a field guide or read with pleasure for the liveliness of the prose, this book will allow readers to learn the stories behind the trees that shade our parks, grace our yards, and line our streets. Rich in photographs and illustrations, overflowing with anecdote and information, A Californian’s Guide to the Trees among Us opens our eyes to a world of beauty just outside our front doors.

Explore the taste of the Sierra with foraging expert Mia Andler, and learn how to responsibly forage and deliciously prepare the wild plants that commonly grow in the Tahoe and northern Sierra Nevada regions.

In this guide to the common edible plants of the Sierra Nevada, Andler offers practical advice for gathering food from the land, in a friendly voice full of rich knowledge of the montane regions of California. Whether hiking high above Yosemite or foraging at the outskirts of Lake Tahoe or Mammoth, with The Sierra Forager you’ll discover each of the region’s most readily available—and delightfully delectable—edible plants.

With clear instructions for responsible harvesting, Andler connects readers and adventurers to the land’s seasonality and bounteous botany in a manner that fosters respectful, reciprocal caretaking of our wild spaces. Large, detailed photographs assist in identifying plants easily, and 44 simple recipes help you enjoy them, from campfire blackberry pie to manzanita muffins to birch leaf soda! This is the perfect guide for beginners, and it includes mouthwatering innovations to delight foragers of any experience level.

A deep dive into the Bay Area’s ecological treasure trove—and how this wild mountain in our midst was saved.

Obi Kaufmann, author of the best-selling California Field Atlas, turns his artful yet analytical attention to the Golden State's single most complex and controversial resource: water.

Winner, 2025 Catholic Media Association Book Awards: Inclusion in the Church

Explores the contours of Latinx Catholic environmentalism

Home-based conservationist measures such as cultivating backyard gardens, avoiding consumerism, and limiting waste are widespread among Spanish-speaking Catholics across the United States. Yet these home-based conservationist practices are seldom recognized as “environmental” because they are enacted by working-class immigrant communities and do not conform to the expectations of mainstream environmentalism.

In Falling in Love with Nature, Amanda J. Baugh tells the story of American environmentalism through a focus on Spanish-speaking Catholics, shedding light on environmental actors who have been hidden in plain sight. While dominant narratives about environmental activism include minorities, primarily in the realm of environmental racism and injustice, Baugh demonstrates that minority communities are not merely victims of environmental problems. They can be active agents who express love for nature based on inherited family traditions and close relationships with the land. Baugh shows that Spanish-speaking Catholics have values that have been overlooked in global discourses, grassroots movements, and the highest echelons of the US Catholic Church. By drawing attention to the environmental knowledge that is already abundant within Spanish-speaking Catholic communities, Falling in Love with Nature challenges readers to rethink their assumptions about who can be an environmental leader and what counts as environmentalism.

A charmingly illustrated nature guide to Ocean Beach and the coastal ecology of San Francisco.

Grab your beach blanket and your puffy jacket (this is San Francisco, after all) and get ready to see Ocean Beach like never before. Longtime local surfer and scientist Eddy Rubin celebrates this magical sandy stretch through stories of its animals and plants and the natural and human forces that have shaped this coastal environment. From sand dollars and seaweed to the snowy plovers in the dunes, and stretching out to the seals and whales offshore, Rubin profiles twenty-nine local flora and fauna with wonder and curiosity. To explain the why and how, he also teaches readers about the weather and geological forces that have created this unique sandy ecology. Lifetime lovers of Ocean Beach and new neighbors alike will delight in Rubin's guide, brought vividly to life by more than forty full-color artworks by illustrator Greg Wright. With this guide, Rubin invites readers to explore the place where ocean and land meet, to learn from surfers and fishermen about what's out in the waves, and to protect this shared expanse of sandy shoreline.

A richly illustrated birding guide to the wetlands and developed areas of the California Delta.

From Sacramento to Stockton, the Delta gathers the waters of inner California to create a lush estuary and a haven for birds. In Birds of the California Delta, lifelong birder and Delta local Aaron N. K. Haiman showcases the avian diversity found all around the shoals and sloughs where the Sacramento and San Joaquin Rivers meet. Even though much of the Delta has been claimed for human use, Haiman rejoices in the abundance of resident birds and migratory visitors. Ibises and cranes wander through these pages, just as they stalk across the valley's farmland and the Suisun marsh. Kites hover over pastures, woodpeckers hammer towering trees, and grackles squeak and whistle in Fairfield parking lots. Experienced birdwatchers and new birders alike will appreciate Haiman's soulful descriptions, his introductory essay to the ecology of this region, and his understanding that birding can connect us not only with wildlife but with one another. Paired with vividly realized full-color portraits that offer detailed insights into identification marks and distinctive behavior, this useful and engaging guide to 25 Delta birds helps everyone get to know their avian neighbors a bit better.

Philadelphia Trees is a pocket-sized resource for identifying the native trees, commonly encountered exotics, and popular ornamentals of the Philadelphia metropolitan area and adjacent counties in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware. Each of the 118 tree-identification entries features a description of a tree species or several related species; a list of places to see specimens; individual photos of leaves, bark, fruits, and seeds; striking portrait photos; and winter-silhouette drawings.

The guide also contains a section on more than fifty of the best parks, botanical gardens, and preserves for viewing trees in and around Philadelphia. Included in this section are ten maps identifying specific trees in such places as Fairmount Park, one of the world’s largest urban parks, and the Morris Arboretum, the official arboretum of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.

A third section, “Great Trees of Philadelphia,” highlights fifty special, historic, and record-breaking trees. Using this field guide, nature lovers will be able to identify and locate the fantastic trees that this unique region, sometimes called “the cradle of American horticulture,” has to offer.

Updated for the first time in twenty years with completely redrawn birds and more, the classic and remarkably easy-to-use guide for identifying birds in the Sierra Nevada.

John Muir Laws began his lifelong project of connecting people to the natural world when he noticed that novice birders often distinguish birds by color and size rather than by family, genus, and species. Inspired by his observation, he created a guide to Sierra birds that assumes no prior birding knowledge on the part of the reader. The guide became the most popular of its kind, used frequently by local birders and visitors alike. Now updated for the first time in twenty years, The Laws Field Guide to Sierra Birds—originally published as Sierra Birds: A Hiker’s Guide—features fully redrawn color illustrations throughout.

Color-coded keys eliminate the time-consuming frustration of thumbing randomly through a guide, and a cross-index is also included for more advanced birders. All this in a format that is simply organized, lightweight, and small enough to tuck inside a pocket. Featuring more than 200 species, The Laws Field Guide to Sierra Birds is a friendly, invaluable resource for anyone seeking to identify birds in the Sierra Nevada mountain range.

Ideal for any experience level, The Bay Area Forager invites readers to deepen their relationship with their environment.

Reading this guidebook is like taking a wild foods walk with foraging experts Mia Andler and Kevin Feinstein: it gives practical advice for gathering edible wild plants in the Bay Area in a voice that is friendly and suffused with rich personal knowledge. The authors provide thorough descriptions of where to find each of the region's most readily available plants, and they give clear instructions for harvesting them responsibly. Large, detailed photographs help readers to identify plants easily. Also included are mouth-watering recipes such as cattail crêpes, cherry laurel cordial, fiddlehead fusilli, and rosehip soup.

The first book of a major new trilogy from artist-naturalist Obi Kaufmann.

"A call to action … full of beautiful watercolor renderings of both landscape and data."—Los Angeles Times

From the author of The California Field Atlas (#1 San Francisco Chronicle Best Seller) comes a major work that not only guides readers through the Golden State’s forested lands, but also presents a profoundly original vision of nature in the twenty-first century. The Forests of California features an abundance of Obi Kaufmann’s signature watercolor maps and trail paintings, weaving them into an expansive and accessible exploration of the biodiversity that defines California in the global imagination. Expanding on the style of the Field Atlas, Kaufmann tells an epic story that spans millions of years, nearly one hundred species of trees, and an astonishing richness of ecosystems. The Forests of California is the first volume in a planned trilogy of field atlases, with The Coasts of California and The Deserts of California to follow, and Kaufmann seeks to create nothing less than a new understanding of the more-than-human world. The lessons in this book extend well beyond California’s borders. If Peter Wohlleben’s The Hidden Life of Trees and Richard Powers’s The Overstory opened readers’ eyes to the awesome power of arboreal life, The Forests of California gives readers a unique and unprecedented immersion in that power.

A richly illustrated guide celebrates California’s coastal birds and the wonders of witnessing them.

"A compact treasury of natural history knowledge." —Burr Heneman, former executive director of Point Reyes Bird Observatory

"A meditation on beauty and survival." —Amy Tan, author of The Backyard Bird Chronicles

A birding paradise, Point Reyes National Seashore boasts a breathtaking coastline that attracts an array of winged beauties and their flightless fanciers year-round. Both a waystation for feathered vagrants and home to a wealth of native species, this coastal sanctuary is teeming with avian life, and in Birds of Point Reyes expert birder and ornithological illustrator Keith Hansen celebrates this airborne abundance. From the sparrows and cormorants to the hawks and ravens to the wild wanderers who sweep through in vast seasonal migrations, Hansen introduces readers to the wildlife that soar and swirl overhead through over 25 awe-filled portraits of Point Reyes’s birds. Both experienced birdwatchers and less-than-expert birders will delight in Hansen’s reflections, brought vividly to life by full-color artworks that reward the reader’s sustained attention and help to identify the many-splendored species of the region. With this guide Hansen invites readers to imagine the world’s fastest hunt through the eyes of a cliff-dwelling peregrine, to appreciate the evolutionary complexity of the shorebird beaks prodding the sands of Drakes Bay, and to attune to the serenade of birdsong. Grab your binoculars and get ready to see these birds like never before.

Don’t be afraid of the dark: grab a flashlight and rediscover your sense of adventure!

Darkness is something humans strive to keep at bay, but under the glow of twilight a nocturnal universe stirs to life. Nightshade blossoms bloom, javelinas parade down city streets, fox eyes gleam under the cover of the forest, and tiny sparrows fly incredible distances, guided by the stars. Naturalist Charles Hood and bat biologist José Gabriel Martínez-Fonseca unravel these enigmas in Nocturnalia, inviting readers on an environmental romp through the wonders of the Wild West. Their sundown dispatches, featuring over 100 photographs from California and the American Southwest, take us from the astronomical canopy overhead, to the flora that unfurl under moonshine, to the creatures that go bump in the night.

With practical tips for the budding nighttime naturalist, the authors invite citizen scientists of all stripes to expand our knowledge of this final frontier and our understanding of life on Earth. Exploring the evolutionary adaptations of owls, bats, and other nightlife animals; the natural history of nighttime plants; and the celestial patterns that regulate this after-dark kingdom, Hood and Martínez-Fonseca lift their lanterns to illuminate the exquisite and intricate inner workings of nature after nightfall.

A guide to the ecosystem famously known as Los Angeles, from a field biologist and longtime San Gabriel Valley resident.

"A worthy and illuminating entry in the tradition of works exploring urbanization’s effect on the environment." —Los Angeles Times

Within the sprawling metropolis of Los Angeles and its suburbs, residents coexist—often unknowingly—with a bustling mosaic of native and introduced wildlife. Conservationist Craig Stanford, whose research has taken him around the world, now takes a deep dive into the natural history of his Southern California home. Stanford's informed and vivid accounts of more than 150 species entreat us to appreciate the ecological marvels of sagebrush and skunks and skippers, the iconic palms of LA lore, and the mountain lions still roaming the hills.

These portraits of the glamorous, humble, irritating, and altogether fascinating species that live alongside Angelenos urge us to recognize that even in a jungle of concrete, we live within nature. Witty and captivating, and combining cutting-edge research with his own critter encounters, Stanford demonstrates the beauty of shaping our cities to support biodiversity, and he warns against the threats that can tip urban ecosystems out of balance, leaving us in a much lonelier world.

This scientifically accurate yet utterly charming field guide to the Pacific coast intertidal zone introduces readers to a world populated by spectacular wildlife.

Explore 150-year-old giant green anemones that paralyze their prey with their petal-like tentacles; sunflower sea stars that traverse the tide pool floor on twenty-four limbs; orange-tipped, opalescent sea slugs that dabble in cannibalism; and much, much more. Small enough to fit in a back pocket during a beach hike, this guide contains concise descriptions of tide pools' most common residents, noting each organism's size and zonation, as well as a few of its fascinating (and sometimes grotesque) habits. Full-color illustrations reminiscent of prints by Ernst Haeckel help tide poolers with easy identification, and tips for viewing help you explore the abundance that tide pools have to offer.

The first book on the birds of California's oaks, from our most lyrical and observant wanderer of the woods.

With charm and delight, The Birds in the Oaks introduces us to the birds who burrow, forage, and soar among California's keystone trees. The mighty oak hosts a multitude of avian denizens—from canopy hoppers to ground nesters to short-billed surface pluckers—who rely on the trees' well-stocked pantry of acorns, insects, and flowers for sustenance and shelter. Spunky kinglets, crimson-eyed towhees, cuddle-craving bushtits, intrepid nuthatches, and impudent wrens are among the many memorable cast members in this pageant of oak-allied birds.

Jack Gedney lyrically conveys the beautiful, comic, and endearing qualities of over fifteen bird species, each profile paired with an illustration by Angelina Gedney. His bird-filled tales of adaptation, ingenuity, and sheer persistence also bring to light the warp and weft of cross-species interdependence. The Birds in the Oaks reveals to us the utter joy of birds, the superabundant world of the oaks, and the innumerable interconnections these living beings create.

A Next Generation Indie Book Award Finalist

''I love this book. It reads like a walk in the woods with the best naturalists."—John Muir Laws

A Californian may vacation in Yosemite, Big Sur, or Death Valley, but many of us come home to an oak woodland. Yet, while common, oak woodlands are anything but ordinary. In a book rich in illustration and suffused with wonder, author Kate Marianchild combines extensive research and years of personal experience to explore some of the marvelous plants and animals that the oak woodlands nurture. Acorn woodpeckers unite in marriages of up to ten mates and raise their young cooperatively. Ground squirrels roll in rattlesnake skins to hide their scent from hungry snakes. Manzanita's rust-colored, paper-thin bark peels away in time for the summer solstice, exposing sinuous contours that are cool to the touch even on the hottest day. Conveying up-to-the-minute scientific findings with a storyteller's skill, Marianchild introduces us to a host of remarkable creatures in a world close by, a world that “rustles, hums, and sings with the sounds of wild things.”

As its sister title, A Californian's Guide to the Trees Among Us, did for arboreal varieties, this new guidebook introduces casual birders to 120 of California's most easily seen bird species—native and exotic alike—as found in a mix of urban, suburban, and traditionally natural habitats.

Full-color images and clear, direct descriptions make identification easy, and author Charles Hood supplements the essential information with surprising facts and trivia, including endangered-species recovery stories and the world record for grasshoppers eaten by one flycatcher in a single day. In sections addressing which gear to buy, where to go birdwatching, and how to read a birdsong transcription, Hood encourages readers to take ownership of their experiences, no matter their level of ornithological expertise. This accurate, lively, and even quotable guide will inspire people to notice nature more closely and find joy in interacting with the astounding diversity of avian life in California.

In the same lighthearted yet scientifically accurate style of Fylling's Illustrated Guide to Pacific Coast Tide Pools, this portable guidebook reveals the splendidly strange animals and plants just outside your door.

Marni Fylling's full-color illustrations make species identification a snap, and concise descriptions include fascinating (and sometimes grotesque) factoids about frequently encountered plants, insects, arachnids, birds, and mammals. With Fylling's guidance, the everyday becomes extraordinary: Pigeons share nest-building and egg-sitting duties, and mate for life—with occasional dalliances; squirrel teeth grow about six inches per year; spiders owe their characteristic creep to their "hydraulic" legs; poison oak and poison ivy’s itch-inducing oil is also found in pistachios, cashews, and mangoes; and much, much more.

Honorable Mention, Outstanding Publication Award, given by the Environmental Sociology Section of the American Sociological Association

A riveting portrait of the cultural struggles and political conflicts of proposed copper-nickel mines in Minnesota’s Iron Range

On an unseasonably warm October afternoon in Saint Paul, hundreds of people gathered to protest the construction of a proposed copper-nickel mine in the rural northern part of their state. The crowd eagerly listened to speeches on how the project would bring long-term risks and potentially pollute the drinking water for current and future generations. A year later, another proposed mining project became the subject of a public hearing in a small town near the proposed site. But this time, local politicians and union leaders praised the mine proposal as an asset that would strengthen working-class communities in Minnesota.

In many rural American communities, there is profound tension around the preservation and protection of wilderness and the need to promote and profit from natural resources. In Mining the Heartland, Erik Kojola looks at both sides of these populist movements and presents a thoughtful account of how such political struggles play out. Drawing on over a hundred ethnographic interviews with people of the region, from members of labor unions to local residents to scientists, Kojola is able to bring this complex struggle over mining to life. Focusing on both pro- and anti-mining groups, he expands upon what this conflict reveals about the way whiteness and masculinity operate among urban and rural residents, and the different ways in which class, race, and gender shape how people relate to the land. Mining the Heartland shows the negotiation and conflict between two central aspects of the state's culture and economy: outdoor recreation in the Land of Ten Thousand Lakes and the lucrative mining of the Iron Range.

Now updated with a new preface: a full-color celebration of coexistence with California's iconic wildlife.

Wildness beats in the heart of California's urban areas, and across the state Californians are taking action to recast wildlife as an integral part of our everyday lives. In Los Angeles, residents rallied to build one of the largest wildlife crossings in the world because of the plight of one lonely mountain lion named P-22. Porpoises cavort in San Francisco Bay again because of a grassroots effort to clean up a waterway that was once a toxic mess. Yosemite's park staff and millions of visitors have mobilized to keep its famed bears wild. And after a near century-long absence, Californians are welcoming wolves back to the state, inspired by the remarkable journey of the wolf OR-7. When Mountain Lions Are Neighbors explores this evolving dynamic between humans and animals. Now updated with a new preface, these inspiring stories celebrate a new model for wildlife conservation: coexistence.

The go-to guide to California’s natural history, now updated with fresh insights on stewardship for a changing climate and diverse naturalist perspectives.

The California Naturalist Handbook offers a fun, science-based introduction to California’s natural history, emphasizing observation, discovery, communication, and stewardship. This accessible guidebook explores geology, native plants and animals, freshwater resources, forest and rangeland resources, conservation biology, and the effects of pressing environmental issues. Aspiring naturalists will learn how to keep a nature journal, practice participatory science, and improve ecosystem resilience.

Used statewide for the California Naturalist Program, this updated edition includes:

• Updated overview of California’s unique ecosystems and plant and animal communities
• Expanded discussions of Indigenous knowledge and stewardship
• Contributions by diverse naturalist leaders including women, Indigenous peoples, and naturalists of color
• A deeper dive into southern California’s urban and desert ecologies
• Current climate change information, including fire and forest management, drought, flooding and groundwater issues, and recognition of climate grief
• Higher quality images showing a more diverse range of habitats

A book to help the ordinary birdwatcher appreciate the fascinating songs, stories, and science of common birds.

"Grounded in science but watered by the heart of a poet, this intimate and personal look at the lives of the birds we see every day invites us to slow down and look again." —John Muir Laws

Jack Gedney’s studies of birds provide resonant, affirming answers to the questions: Who is this bird? In what way is it beautiful? Why does it matter? Masterfully linking an abundance of poetic references with up-to-date biological science, Gedney shares his devotion to everyday Western birds in fifteen essays. Each essay illuminates the life of a single species and its relationship to humans, and how these species can help us understand birds in general. A dedicated birdwatcher and teacher, Gedney finds wonder not only in the speed and glistening beauty of the Anna’s hummingbird, but also in her nest building. He acclaims the turkey vulture’s and red-tailed hawk’s roles in our ecosystem, and he venerates the inimitable California scrub jay’s work planting acorns. Knowing that we hear birds much more often than we see them, Gedney offers his expert’s ear to help us not only identify bird songs and calls but also understand what the birds are saying. The crowd at the suet feeder will never look quite the same again. Join Gedney in the enchanted world of these not-so-ordinary birds, each enlivened by a hand-drawn portrait by artist Anna Kus Park.

A groundbreaking collection that explores human–animal relations and deaths with depth and hope

When Animals Die is an innovative collection of essays that delves into the intricate and uneasy dynamics between humans and other-than-human animals, particularly concerning animal deaths, which are predominantly caused by humans. This groundbreaking book brings together prominent scholars from various disciplines to address the challenging field of animal death studies, incorporating perspectives from social sciences, humanities, biological sciences, and perspectives from beyond academia.

The collection explores profound questions about the experience of animal death for both animals and humans. It examines how humans rationalize animal deaths and utilize deceased animals, and sheds light on the interconnectedness of animal death with issues like race, colonialism, gender, capitalism, and other systems of inequality that humans have established and perpetuated.

By confronting these pertinent issues, When Animals Die seeks to deepen our awareness of the relationship between animal death and humanity’s involvement in it. While grappling with the reality of humans’ impact on the earth, the collection offers hope for an alternative future that does not entail the mutual destruction of human and other-than-human animals.

A quirky and reverent romp through nature with an irreverently funny guide.

"Among nature writers now working, Charles Hood may be my favorite. He never stops telling stories, and his perspective is fundamentally comic, even when he's recounting a tragedy." —Jonathan Franzen

In these wry and explosively funny essays, nature obsessive Charles Hood reveals his abiding affection for the overlooked and undervalued parts of the natural world. Like a Bill Bryson of the Mojave exurbs, Hood takes us on a joyride through the obscure, finding wilderness in Hollywood palms, the airports of Alaska, and the empty lots of Palmdale. In a zinger-filled whirl of literary and artistic allusions, he celebrates Audubon’s droopy condor, the world-changing history of a cactus parasite, and the weird art of natural history dioramas. This debut collection of creative nonfiction from a widely published poet, photographer, and wildlife guide unveils the wonderment of nature’s underbelly with poetic vision and singular wit.

Lauded essayist takes to the high seas in hot pursuit of elusive birds, artistic ghosts, fathers and their memories, and above all, safe harbor.

"Among nature writers now working, Charles Hood is my favorite." —Jonathan Franzen

Charles Hood is on a boat, wearing at least two life jackets as he scans the sky for seabirds and plumbs the depths of his—and our—relationship with the vast Pacific Ocean. Winner of the Foreword INDIES Book of the Year for his collection of essays A Salad Only the Devil Would Eat: The Joys of Ugly Nature, Hood now brings his irrepressible curiosity to the lives of petrels, frigate birds, sea snakes, and flying fish. During our voyage, he resurrects Melville's journey on tempestuous seas to San Francisco, takes us into the storm-tossed minds and paintings of J. M. W. Turner and Winslow Homer, and surfaces the trauma—still reverberating—to ocean and family ecologies alike from World War II. As sharp and witty as ever, Hood also turns his scrutiny on a more personal history, navigating murky waters of harm and forgiveness, love and entrapment. Full of wonder, joy, and terror at the shared capacity of the ocean and the humans on its edges to nurture life and damage it irreparably, this book is a vessel, seaworthy and transportive.

Discover the stories behind Jane Goodall’s visionary approach to community-led conservation.

You know of Jane Goodall’s work with wild chimpanzees and her lifelong career advocating for environmental justice. But just as transformative is her work empowering local communities that live on the edge of human settlement to act to protect their natural resources—or to risk losing them forever.

Local Voices, Local Choices: The Tacare Approach to Community-Led Conservation is the story of the Jane Goodall Institute’s holistic approach to conservation, which puts the local people in charge of preserving their surrounding ecosystems. Rather than conservationists leading the effort and imposing their solutions, local communities that live in the affected regions make their own decisions. Working with science and technology and with the support of conservationists, these communities grow to understand their human impact on the environment. By choosing to adopt sustainable livelihoods, they decide their own path into the future, finding ways to balance their environmental impact with their communities’ needs.

Story by story, Local Voices, Local Choices brings readers into the diverse perspectives behind this approach to community-driven conservation—not only those of JGI staff and program partners but also, and equally, those of the local people who lead these initiatives.

Read about:

• The origins of the Tacare approach, originally designed as a 1994 reforestation project with an abbreviation pronounced “ta-CAR-reh”
• A retired village member keeping the knowledge of medicinal plants alive in his community
• Spiritual and cultural story-holders who are vital to the recording and preservation of their traditional ecological knowledge
• Local people participating as forest monitors, village health workers, beekeepers, small-business owners, and educators of the next generation
• Former poachers turned advocates for sustainable land management

Written for conservationists, fans of Jane Goodall, and readers interested in environmental issues, Local Voices, Local Choices is a vibrant expression of Jane Goodall’s vision and her hope that the Tacare approach will be understood and adopted wherever there is a need for genuine community-driven conservation.

Local voices matter, and their choices can make all the difference for generations to come.

• More than 1,000 maps, graphics, and photographs
• Contributions from more than 130 experts
• Detailed topographic maps of Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks
• Exploration of Yellowstone National Park’s influence over 150 years on conservation practice, park management, and American culture
• New, detailed visualizations of wildlife that take advantage of modern GPS technology to track individual animals and entire herds
• Place-name origins for Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks and the surrounding region

“Outstanding photography! This book is a valuable contribution to the public’s understanding of our remarkable ‘near relatives.’” —Robert Bateman, wildlife painter and environmental icon

“Just Like Us is an entertaining and informative read that illustrates how one ordinary person can be a catalyst for positive change.” —Jane Goodall, primatologist and bestselling author

"Just Like Us will be a classic and is a must read. The book adds much to what we can learn about ourselves. A beautifully written adventure with great apes, with some of the most difficult and stunning photographs of the great apes ever made." —Thomas Mangelsen, award-winning nature and wildlife photographer and conservationist

A stirring account of hope and survival for the planet's endangered great ape species.

For most of his life, veterinarian Rick Quinn ignored a deep longing to meaningfully protect the endangered animals that fascinated him. Then one day, he read two magazine clippings about the great apes and knew it was time to set aside excuses and find the means to help. Armed with his camera and an insatiable curiosity, Dr. Quinn set off for the front lines of great ape conservation.

Just Like Us is a gorgeous tribute to our not-too-distant relatives as well as the courageous people who are risking their lives to protect them.

In this remarkable memoir, we follow Dr. Quinn’s seven-year journey across seven African countries and Indonesia, where he photographed each great ape species in its natural habitat. Using inspiring stories juxtaposed with stunning photographs, he illuminates the threats to great ape survival as well as the complexity of saving them. The result delivers an empathetic sense that these magnificent beings really are—strikingly so—just like us.

Discover The Geographic Approach to help restore, preserve, and protect the environment.

As we continue to uncover and learn about ecological challenges facing our planet, the job of environmental and natural resource management organizations is becoming increasingly difficult. Finding a Sustainable Balance: GIS for Environmental Management explores a collection of real-life stories about how environmental and natural resource management organizations successfully use geographic information systems (GIS) to monitor environmental assets in real time and provide transparency for better outcomes for all, to track environmental assets, and to prevent environmental hazards from becoming disasters.

Learn how GIS can help improve operations across

• land and wildlife management,
• outdoor recreation, and
• environmental regulation.

The book also includes a section on next steps that provides helpful ideas, strategies, tools, and actions to help jump-start your use of GIS for environmental management. A collection of online resources, including additional stories, videos, new ideas and concepts, and downloadable tools and content, complements this book.

WINNER OF THE 2021 DELMOS JONES AND JAGNA SHARFF MEMORIAL PRIZE FOR THE CRITICAL STUDY OF NORTH AMERICA!

Uncovers the hidden costs and contradictions of sustainable policies in an era driven by real estate development

From state-of-the-art parks to rooftop gardens, efforts to transform New York City’s unsightly industrial waterfronts into green, urban oases have received much public attention. In The Sustainability Myth, Melissa Checker uncovers the hidden costs—and contradictions—of the city’s ambitious sustainability agenda in light of its equally ambitious redevelopment imperatives.

Focusing on industrial waterfronts and historically underserved places like Harlem and Staten Island’s North Shore, Checker takes an in-depth look at the dynamics of environmental gentrification, documenting the symbiosis between eco-friendly initiatives and high-end redevelopment and its impact on out-of-the-way, non-gentrifying neighborhoods. At the same time, she highlights the valiant efforts of local environmental justice activists who work across racial, economic, and political divides to challenge sustainability’s false promises and create truly viable communities.

The Sustainability Myth is a cautionary, eye-opening tale, taking a hard—but ultimately hopeful—look at environmental justice activism and the politics of sustainability.

Tackles a human problem we all share―the fate of the earth and our role in its future

Confident that your personal good deeds of environmental virtue will save the earth? The stories we encounter about the environment in popular culture too often promote an imagined moral economy, assuring us that tiny acts of voluntary personal piety, such as recycling a coffee cup, or purchasing green consumer items, can offset our destructive habits. No need to make any fundamental structural changes. The trick is simply for the consumer to buy the right things and shop our way to a greener future.

It’s time for a reality check. Ecopiety offers an absorbing examination of the intersections of environmental sensibilities, contemporary expressions of piety and devotion, and American popular culture. Ranging from portrayals of environmental sin and virtue such as the eco-pious depiction of Christian Grey in Fifty Shades of Grey, to the green capitalism found in the world of mobile-device “carbon sin-tracking” software applications, to the socially conscious vegetarian vampires in True Blood, the volume illuminates the work pop culture performs as both a mirror and an engine for the greening of American spiritual and ethical commitments.

Taylor makes the case that it is not through a framework of grim duty or obligation, but through one of play and delight, that we may move environmental ideals into substantive action.

A free ebook version of this title is available through Luminos, University of California Press’s Open Access publishing program. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more.

"A remarkable mixture of photos and writing. … An important work well done." —Fabien Cousteau

Marine algae are the supreme eco-engineers of life: they oxygenate the waters, create habitat for countless other organisms, and form the base of a food chain that keeps our planet unique in the universe as we know it. In this beautiful volume Josie Iselin explores both the artistic and the biological presence of sixteen seaweeds and kelps that live in the thin region where the Pacific Ocean converges with the North American continent—a place of incomparable richness. Each species receives a detailed description of its structure, ecological importance, and humans’ scientific inquiry into it, told in scientifically illuminating yet deeply reverent and inspired prose. Throughout the writings are historical botanical illustrations and Iselin’s signature, Marimekko-like portraits of each specimen that reveal their vibrant colors—whether rosy, "olivaceous," or grass-green—and whimsical shapes. Iselin posits that we can learn not only about the seaweeds but also from them: their resilience, their resourcefulness, their poetry and magic.

In The Sea Forager's Guide to the Northern California Coast, Kirk Lombard combines a startling depth of knowledge with wry humor and colorful storytelling to guide readers' quests to hook fish, dig clams, and pick seaweed for themselves.

"Lombard is a divinely inspired whack job—think Frank Zappa meets Aldo Leopold. If you have ever considered the idea of gathering something good to eat from the beach or surf … you need this book."—Bill Heavy, editor-at-large, Field & Stream

Lombard, a former staff member at the state Department of Fish and Game and founder of the foraging tour company/seafood delivery service Sea Forager Seafood, insists that his readers follow all regulations and encourages sustainable practices above and beyond what the State of California requires. This quirky and useful how-to is sure to inspire an empowering epicurean adventure. Leighton Kelly's stunning, occasionally idiosyncratic illustrations complement practical instructions for gathering a variety of fish and seafood and delicious recipes for what to do with each catch.

A New York Times 100 Best Books of the 21st Century Readers Pick 

#1 New York Times Bestseller

A Washington Post and Los Angeles Times Bestseller

As a botanist, Robin Wall Kimmerer has been trained to ask questions of nature with the tools of science. As a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, she embraces the notion that plants and animals are our oldest teachers. In Braiding Sweetgrass, Kimmerer brings these two lenses of knowledge together to take us on "a journey that is every bit as mythic as it is scientific, as sacred as it is historical, as clever as it is wise" (Elizabeth Gilbert).

Drawing on her life as an indigenous scientist, and as a woman, Kimmerer shows how other living beings—asters and goldenrod, strawberries and squash, salamanders, algae, and sweetgrass—offer us gifts and lessons, even if we've forgotten how to hear their voices. In reflections that range from the creation of Turtle Island to the forces that threaten its flourishing today, she circles toward a central argument: that the awakening of ecological consciousness requires the acknowledgment and celebration of our reciprocal relationship with the rest of the living world. For only when we can hear the languages of other beings will we be capable of understanding the generosity of the earth, and learn to give our own gifts in return.

Social changes through urban gardening and farming

Gardens are often spaces of hope, expected to solve many problems in a city including food insecurity and climate resilience. In fact, there has been a historical trend of urban gardening gaining popularity during times of crisis. Gardens of Hope is the story of urban gardening in New Orleans in the decade after Hurricane Katrina. Yuki Kato highlights the impact urban gardens have on communities after disasters and the efforts of well-intended individuals envisioning alternative futures in the form of urban farming.

Drawing on repeated interviews with residents who began cultivation projects in New Orleans between 2005 and 2015, Kato explains how good intentions and grit were not enough to implement or sustain urban gardeners’ visions for the post-disaster city’s future. Coining the term “prefigurative urbanism,” Kato illustrates how individuals tried to realize alternative ways of living and working in the city through pragmatism and innovation. Gardens of Hope asks key questions about what inspires and enables individuals to pursue prefigurative urbanism and about the potential and limitations of this form of civic engagement to bring about short- and long-term changes in cities undergoing transformation, from gentrification, post-pandemic recovery, to climate change.

Winner of the 2023 Nautilus Book Award in the category of Animals & Nature

The surprising, fascinating, and remarkable ways that animals use creativity to thrive in their habitats

Most of us view animals through a very narrow lens, seeing only bits and pieces of beings that seem mostly peripheral to our lives. However, whether animals are building a shelter, seducing a mate, or inventing a new game, animals’ creative choices affect their social, cultural, and environmental worlds.

The Creative Lives of Animals offers readers intimate glimpses of creativity in the lives of animals, from elephants to alligators to ants. Drawing on a growing body of scientific research, Carol Gigliotti unpacks examples of creativity demonstrated by animals through the lens of the creative process, an important component of creative behavior, and offers new thinking on animal intelligence, emotion, and self-awareness. With examples of the elaborate dams built by beavers or the lavishly decorated bowers of bowerbirds, Gigliotti provides a new perspective on animals as agents in their own lives, as valuable contributors to their world and ours, and as guides in understanding how creativity may contribute to conserving the natural world. Presenting a powerful argument for the importance of recognizing animals as individuals and as creators of a healthy, biodiverse world, this book offers insights into both the established and emerging questions about the creativity of animals.

Protecting special places in danger of being changed forever requires urgent action. It’s time for bold conservation strategies to boost land protection around the world.

Bold conservation goals require strategic action. In Protecting the Places We Love: Conservation Strategies for Entrusted Lands and Parks, conservationist and geospatial designer Breece Robertson applies her conservation experience, real-world examples, and myriad resources to deliver a vision for success and clear guidance for conservation groups large and small to achieve their goals.

The goals of these strategies are familiar: support species, habitats, and natural resources and healthy, livable communities that are climate resilient and socially cohesive, all without high costs. Robertson's tools, many of them free, feel quickly accessible, effective, and adaptable to a new or existing conservation strategy. Readers finish this book feeling confident about integrating existing practices with geospatial data and modern applications.

With the smart analysis and targeted action explained in Protecting the Places We Love, readers will better identify places needing protection and better understand how to maximize partnerships, inspire, educate, and engage communities and donors, and produce better results.

See the vision and learn to:

• create maps that tell compelling stories to stakeholders and the public
• analyze park system equity and access and show the economic benefits
• map, model, and analyze land characteristics to enhance biodiversity, connectivity, and climate resilience
• use maps and data to gain insights for fundraising, program initiatives, policy, advocacy, finances, and marketing.  

Protecting the Places We Love is perfect for citizens, and for conservation advocates and professionals at small to medium-sized land trusts, conservation organizations, and park agencies. Examples from land protection organizations all over the globe provide field-tested approaches to improve strategic effectiveness. Robertson provides a vision, strategies, and resources that can take your conservation efforts to the next level.

In this groundbreaking and meticulously field-tested guide, the rich variety of Sierra life—trees, wildflowers, ferns, fungi, lichens, fish, reptiles, amphibians, birds, mammals, and insects—comes alive.

"There are lots of Sierra field guides, some specialized, some general, but this is the best both for beauty and usefulness." —Kim Stanley Robinson

Easy-to-use features include:

• Intuitive organization, color tabs, and simple keys
• Similar-looking species side by side
• Over 2,800 full-color illustrations
• Range maps of species that are otherwise difficult to distinguish
• Index of common and scientific names
• Lightweight and compact—ideal for backpacking

Impressively detailed and comprehensive, the guide includes:

• More than 1,700 species
• Descriptions of behavior, adaptations, and interactions between species
• Species and topics not found in most guides, including aquatic life, spiders and webs, plankton, plant galls, bark beetle galleries, animal tracks and evidence, seasonal star charts, weather patterns, and cloud formations

"A glittering gem of a book!"—Sy Montgomery, author of The Soul of an Octopus

Following dragonflies into the territory between nature and the human psyche

Two decades ago, naturalist and environmental writer Brooke Williams had a powerful dream about a dragonfly, a dream that cracked open his world by giving rise to a steady stream of dragonfly encounters in his waking life.

In the years since, he has delved deeply into the fascinating biology and natural history of dragonflies and made pilgrimages to see them (he now has 38 species on his life list) while also exploring their symbolic meaning and cross-cultural significance.

Encountering Dragonfly is his account—related in a series of odonate encounters—of being drawn into a different kind of relationship with the natural world.  By opening himself to the personal and mytho-poetic meanings of dragonfly, and patiently courting an understanding of these creatures that is built upon, but also transcends, a naturalist’s observation, Brooke has come to believe in the importance of ‘re-enchantment.’

Throughout much of human history, we lived in an enchanted world in which myth and magic, ritual, stories, and spirits informed every aspect of our lives, defining the relationships between psyche, Earth and cosmos. The enchantment ended with the Enlightenment and modernity, when reason and scientific discovery explained away the magic, commencing a commodification of nature that has only intensified ever since.

Brooke’s personal re-enchantment has required of him a faith that material, biological reality isn’t the only reality; it recognizes symbols and archetypes as remnants of a different understanding, which may—as perhaps they always have—play a role in our long-term survival.

In many cultures, the dragonfly carries messages between the inner and outer world. For Brooke Williams the message of the dragonfly is to ask questions about synchronicity, awe and the collective unconscious, and how to engage with a world increasingly out of balance. What are the implications of following a path toward greater enchantment? In a time where the stakes have never been higher, nor the political and biological imperatives of climate change and environmental degradation more urgent, can we afford to choose such a path? Perhaps more to the point, can we afford not to?

2024 Outstanding Academic Title, given by Choice Reviews

The environmental history of “the most polluted lake in America.”
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Native Americans have long regarded Onondaga Lake as one of the most sacred spaces in the continent, the place where peace between nations was achieved and the Haudenosaunee Confederacy was created. In the mid-twentieth century, however, it acquired a wholly different reputation as “the most polluted lake in America.” Toxic Lake is an environmental history of this complex ecological system, tracking how it was tarnished, the costly efforts to clean it up, and the controversies those efforts generated.

Thomas Shevory argues that the history of Onondaga Lake mirrors the larger environmental history of the US, from colonization to the industrial era, resulting, eventually, in the rise of social movements and legislative action for environmental protection. Layered within this history is the dismissal of indigenous land claims and the marginalization of indigenous voices in clean-up efforts. Toxic Lake illustrates that the failure to prevent the environmental destruction of Onondaga Lake was part of a political climate which favored unregulated industrial production and urban growth, ignoring the destructive impacts on local environments. Shevory argues this larger failure was the result of an active process of privileging the economic interests of polluters over other business interests, expanding neighborhoods, and indigenous rights. He concludes with an investigation of New York’s recent declaration that the clean-up is complete, questioning what exactly that means and whether the lake’s status as a sacred space will ever be re-established. Toxic Lake is a compelling work of history, demonstrating the disastrous effects of pollution and the importance of community involvement in environmental activism.

A free ebook version of this title is available through Luminos, University of California Press’s Open Access publishing program. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more.

In Paraguay’s Chaco region, cattle ranching drives some of the world’s fastest deforestation and most extreme inequality in land tenure, with grave impacts on Indigenous well‑being. Disrupting the Patrón traces Enxet and Sanapaná struggles to reclaim their ancestral lands from the cattle ranches where they labored as peons—a decades-long resistance that led to the Inter‑American Court of Human Rights and back to the frontlines of Paraguay’s ranching frontier. The Indigenous communities at the heart of this story employ a dialectics of disruption by working with and against the law to unsettle enduring racial geographies and rebuild territorial relations, albeit with uncertain outcomes. Joel E. Correia shows that Enxet and Sanapaná peoples enact environmental justice otherwise: moving beyond juridical solutions to harm by maintaining collective lifeways and resistance amid radical social-ecological change. Correia’s ethnography advances debates about environmental racism, ethics of engaged research, and Indigenous resurgence on Latin America’s settler frontiers.

Explores ecological socialism's potential against capitalist environmental degradation

Today the fate of the earth as a home for humanity is in question—and yet, contends John Bellamy Foster, the reunification of humanity and the earth remains possible if we are prepared to make revolutionary changes. As with his prior books, The Dialectics of Ecology is grounded in the contention that we are now faced with a concrete choice between ecological socialism and capitalist exterminism, and rooted in insights drawn from the classical historical materialist tradition. In this latest work, Foster explores the complex theoretical debates that have arisen historically with respect to the dialectics of nature and society. He then goes on to examine the current contradictions associated with the confrontation between capitalist extractivism and the financialization of nature, on the one hand, and the radical challenges to these represented by emergent visions of ecological civilization and planned degrowth, on the other.

The product of contemporary ecosocialist debates, The Dialectics of Ecology builds on earlier works by Foster, including Marx’s Ecology and The Return of Nature, aimed at the development of a dialectical naturalism and the formation of a path to sustainable human development.