Restoring the Pitchfork Ranch tells the story of a decades-long habitat restoration project in southwestern New Mexico. Rancher-owner A. Thomas Cole explains what inspired him and his wife, Lucinda, to turn their retirement into years dedicated to hard work and renewal on 11,300 acres of grass- and wetlands. The Pitchfork Ranch is an inspiring promise for the future in the face of crippling climate change.
In the final decade of the twentieth century, the American West was at war. Battle lines had hardened, with environmentalists squarely on one side of the fence, and ranchers on the other. By the mid-1990s, debates over the region’s damaged land had devolved into political wrangling, bitter lawsuits, and even death-threats. Conventional wisdom told us those who wanted to work the land and those who wanted to protect it had fundamentally different—and irreconcilable—values. In Revolution on the Range, Courtney White challenges that truism, heralding stories from a new American West where cattle and conservation go hand in hand. He argues that ranchers and environmentalists have more in common than they’ve typically admitted: a love of wildlife, a deep respect for nature, and a strong allergic reaction to suburbanization. The real conflict has not been over ethics, but approaches. Today, a new brand of ranching is bridging the divide by mimicking nature while still turning a profit. Westerners are literally reinventing the ranch by confronting their own assumptions about nature, profitability, and each other. Ranchers are learning that new ideas can actually help preserve traditional lifestyles. Environmentalists are learning that protected landscapes aren’t always healthier than working ones. White, a self-proclaimed middle-class city boy, has learned there’s more to ranching than grit and cowboy boots. The author’s own transformation from conflict-oriented environmentalist to radical centrist mirrors the change sweeping the region. As ranchers and environmentalists find common cause, they’re discovering new ways to live on—and preserve—the land they both love. Revolution on the Range is the story of that journey, and a heartening vision of the new American West.
In this inspiring manifesto, an internationally renowned ecologist makes a clear case for why protecting nature is our best health insurance, and why it makes economic sense.
Wrenched from the Land features sixteen interviews with some of the most iconic eco-warriors to put themselves on the line for their beliefs. The activists featured in this book are inspired by the late Edward Abbey, one of America’s uncompromising and irascible defenders of wilderness. The book includes interviews with Terry Tempest Williams, the late Charles Bowden, Sea Shepherd Society founder Paul Watson, Jack Loeffler, Doug Peacock, Ingrid Eisenstadter, John De Puy, Bob Lippman, Derrick Jensen, Shonto Begay, Ken Sanders, Ken Sleight, the late Katie Lee, Executive Director of the Center for Biological Diversity Kieran Suckling, Earth First! cofounder Dave Foreman, and climate activist Tim DeChristopher. Some were among Abbey’s closest friends and were the inspiration for his irreverent comedic masterpiece, The Monkey Wrench Gang. Here are mesmerizing stories about how they adapted Abbey’s monkeywrenching ideas into a radical blueprint for direct action. Their achievements—as ingenious and fierce as the individuals in this book—will encourage readers to discover their own pathways toward positive change.
At the beginning of his memoir Life Lived Wild, Adventures at the Edge of the Map, Rick Ridgeway tells us that if you add up all his many expeditions, he’s spent over five years of his life sleeping in tents: “And most of that in small tents pitched in the world’s most remote regions.” It’s not a boast so much as an explanation. Whether at elevation or raising a family back at sea level, those years taught him, he writes, “to distinguish matters of consequence from matters of inconsequence.” He leaves it to his readers, though, to do the final sort of which is which."--Amazon.
Judith Sandoval brings an eye for striking detail and a feeling for the effects of time and habitation to her photographic tour of 450 ranches in sixteen counties in Wyoming. She discovered a dazzling variety of architectural styles in old ranchhouses, bunkhouses, barns, and even chicken coops. Taking in the whole ranching scene, she photographed corrals, machinery, irrigation works, and structures of stone built by German and Scottish immigrants and of logs by Scandinavians. She interviewed hundreds of people who have made their mark on the land, including many descendants of the builders. Some families have operated the same spread for five generations. Historic Ranches of Wyoming takes in such famous working ranches as the Wyoming Hereford Ranch, Careyhurst, the Palette Ranch, the Pitchfork Ranch, and John Kendrick's LX Bar. Among the dude ranches featured are the Seven-D, Eaton's in the Bar BC, and Valley Dude Ranch. In 1986 the Nicolaysen Art Museum in Casper, Wyoming, is mounting a major touring exhibit of Sandoval's photographs. Historic Ranches of Wyoming contains most of the photographs in the exhibition. The book includes an essay by T. A. Larson on the history of ranching in Wyoming and one by Robert Roripaugh about growing up on a ranch near Lander, Wyoming.
"In a refreshing perspective on water that transcends zero-sum thinking, the author of the groundbreaking Cows Save the Planet, sharing stories from around the globe, offers real-world solutions to today's water crisis, "--NoveList.
An intimate and candid account of our national parks and their strengths, vulnerabilities, and essential role in American life Part memoir, part critique, and paean to the value of national parks, American Covenant distills the experience and insights from two long careers in conservation. Michael A. Soukup and Gary E. Machlis show how the national parks are essential to maintaining the essence of our national heritage, and key to America’s future in a changing climate and political landscape. Sharing real-world examples of both victories and defeats in protecting national parks, this candid, thoughtful book reminds us that the national parks are a promise—a covenant—within and between generations of Americans. The book is also a call to revitalize, reconstitute, reconfigure, and reform the National Park Service, which the authors believe is governed too much by outdated management practices and politics instead of a foundation of expertise and science.
