The Quiet Extinction
The Quiet Extinction

Author: Kara Rogers

Publisher: University of Arizona Press

Published: 2015-10-22

Total Pages: 248

ISBN-13: 0816531064

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In the United States and Canada, thousands of species of native plants are edging toward the brink of extinction, and they are doing so quietly. They are slipping away inconspicuously from settings as diverse as backyards and protected lands. The factors that have contributed to their disappearance are varied and complex, but the consequences of their loss are immeasurable. With extensive histories of a cast of familiar and rare North American plants, The Quiet Extinction explores the reasons why many of our native plants are disappearing. Curious minds will find a desperate struggle for existence waged by these plants and discover the great environmental impacts that could come if the struggle continues. Kara Rogers relates the stories of some of North America’s most inspiring rare and threatened plants. She explores, as never before, their significance to the continent’s natural heritage, capturing the excitement of their discovery, the tragedy that has come to define their existence, and the remarkable efforts underway to save them. Accompanied by illustrations created by the author and packed with absorbing detail, The Quiet Extinction offers a compelling and refreshing perspective of rare and threatened plants and their relationship with the land and its people.

Ain't There No More
Ain't There No More

Author: Carl A. Brasseaux

Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi

Published: 2017-02-06

Total Pages: 233

ISBN-13: 1496809513

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Winner of the 2018 Louisiana Literary Award given by the Louisiana Library Association For centuries, outlanders have openly denigrated Louisiana's coastal wetlands residents and their stubborn refusal to abandon the region's fragile prairies tremblants despite repeated natural and, more recently, man-made disasters. Yet, the cumulative environmental knowledge these wetlands survivors have gained through painful experiences over the course of two centuries holds invaluable keys to the successful adaptation of modern coastal communities throughout the globe. As Hurricane Sandy recently demonstrated, coastal peoples everywhere face rising sea levels, disastrous coastal erosion, and, inevitably, difficult lifestyle choices. Along the Bayou State's coast the most insidious challenges are man-made. Since channelization of the Mississippi River in the wake of the 1927 flood, which diverted sediments and nutrients from the wetlands, coastal Louisiana has lost to erosion, subsidence, and rising sea levels a land mass roughly twice the size of Connecticut. State and national policymakers were unable to reverse this environmental catastrophe until Hurricane Katrina focused a harsh spotlight on the human consequences of eight decades of neglect. Yet, even today, the welfare of Louisiana's coastal plain residents remains, at best, an afterthought in state and national policy discussions. For coastal families, the Gulf water lapping at the doorstep makes this morass by no means a scholarly debate over abstract problems. Ain't There No More renders an easily read history filled with new insights and possibilities. Rare, previously unpublished images documenting a disappearing way of life accompany the narrative. The authors bring nearly a century of combined experience to distilling research and telling this story in a way invaluable to Louisianans, to policymakers, and to all those concerned with rising sea levels and seeking a long-term solution.