5 minute read
Booknotes
Recommended Reading
The Rise of the American Conservation Movement
Advertisement
Dr. Dorceta Taylor Duke University Press Paperback, $31.95
In this sweeping social history Dorceta E. Taylor examines the emergence and rise of the multifaceted U.S. conservation movement from the mid-nineteenth to the early twentieth century. She shows how race, class, and gender influenced every aspect of the movement, including the establishment of parks; campaigns to protect wild game, birds, and fish; forest conservation; outdoor recreation; and the movement’s links to nineteenth-century ideologies.
Initially led by white urban elites—whose early efforts discriminated against the lower class and were often tied up with slavery and the appropriation of Native lands—the movement benefited from contributions to policy making, knowledge about the environment, and activism by the poor and working class, people of color, women, and Native Americans. Farranging and nuanced, The Rise of the American Conservation Movement comprehensively documents the movement’s competing motivations, conflicts, problematic practices, and achievements in new ways.
Writing Wild: Women Poets, Ramblers, and Mavericks Who Shape How We See the Natural World
Kathryn Aalto Timber Press Paperback $24.95
Kathryn Aalto celebrates 25 women whose influential writing helps deepen our connection to and understandingof the natural world. These inspiring wordsmiths are scholars, spirtual seekers,conservationists, scientists, novelists, and explores. Part travel essay, literary biography, and cultural history, Writing Wild ventures into the landscapes and lives of extraordinary writers and encourages a new generation of women to pick up their pens, head outdoors, and start writing wild.”
Featured writers include Dorothy Wordsworth, Susan Fenimore Cooper, Gene StrattonPorter, Mary Austin, and Vita Sackville-West. Nan Shepherd, Rachel Carson, Mary Oliver, Carolyn Merchant, and Annie Dillard. Gretel Ehrlich, Leslie Marmon Silko, Diane Ackerman, Robin Wall Kimmerer, and Lauret Savoy. Rebecca Solnit, Kathleen Jamie, Carolyn Finney, Helen Macdonald, and Saci Lloyd. Andrea Wulf, Camille T. Dungy, Elena Passarello, Amy Liptrot, and Elizabeth Rush.
New & Noteworthy
Finding the Mother Tree
Suzanne Simard Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group Harcover, $24.49
In her first book, Simard brings us into the intimate world of the trees, in which she brilliantly illuminates the fascinating and vital truths - that trees are not simply the source of timber or pulp, but are creatures connected through undergroundnetworks by which trees communicate their vitality and vulnerabilities with communal lives not that different from our own.
A Backyard Prairie
Fred Delcomyn and James Ellis Southern Illinois University Press Paperback, $23.28 Fred Delcomyn and James Ellis document their journey and reveal the incredible potential of a backyard to travel back to a time before the wild prairie was put into plow rows.
The Life of the Lakes
B. Schroeder, D. O’Keefe, & S. Dann University of Michigan Press Paperback, $19.95 The Life of the Lakes examines the complex portrait of the Great Lakes fishery, including the history of the fishery’s exploitation and management, the current health of the Lakes, and the outlook for the future. Co-author Brandon Schroeder is a member of MNA’s Board of Trustees.
Q&A
Carrie Tansy
Assistant Field Supervisor Michigan Ecological Services Field Office U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service
Tell us a little bit about the Field Office’s endangered species work.
Our field office implements wildlife trust responsibilities under Federal law, including the Endangered Species Act (ESA), where we work on recovery planning and implementation efforts for listed species. We work with lots of partners, including organizations like MNA, to identify and implement the on-the-ground actions that are needed to reduce threats and reduce risk of extinction.
How did you start in your career and what is your role at the Michigan Ecological Services Field Office?
My dad was a wildlife biologist, and I was always interested in science. As an undergrad, I was initially interested in cell/molecular biology, but when I took Ecology, I immediately switched to a wildlife focus. After an internship with the Field Office and receiving my Master’s in environmental toxicology with a wildlife emphasis, I was brought on as a biologist, served as the Endangered Species Coordinator, and recently moved into a new role as Assistant Field Supervisor.
MNA is currently working on a USFWS Recovery Challenge Grant with our partners, the Michigan Natural Features Inventory and Grand Valley State University. What do you hope to see from our work? What else are you are currently working on?
I’m excited about our new outreach program to Lansing area schools to introduce the value and role of freshwater mussels, including the endangered snuffbox mussel. We talk about the animals they find in the river, the watershed, and how they can make a difference. Their excitement at seeing these animals is just wonderful. We are also introducing students to conservation careers, many young people don’t know it’s an option.
What gives you hope for rare, threatened, and endangered species?
The eastern massasauga rattlesnake, which is listed as threatened under the ESA, still has many populations in Michigan. It is critical to develop the science we need to develop more effective recovery strategies. The grant will help answer questions about needed habitat management, landscape connectivity, and other strategies. We hope to apply what we learn to other massasauga populations throughout Michigan, as well as throughout the species’ range in other states. MNA is a great partner for species recovery work in many ways. The greatest threat to our threatened and endangered species is increasing habitat loss and fragmentation. MNA both protects and manages important habitat and has been an active partner at the table for as long as I’ve been at the FWS. It is a most effective conservation strategy for many imperiled species and groups like MNA play a really important role, also helping people stay connected to nature and wildlife while conveying the value of protecting imperiled species. Those things make a real difference.
There is no shortage of challenges! But there are reasons to be hopeful. We can recover species, the bald eagle and Kirtland’s warbler are two great examples. But we couldn’t ask to be at a more critical junction in time - what we do today will shape the opportunities for future generations tomorrow. If we do things right, the future conservationists will have more pieces of the puzzle to work with. So we have to do all we can in this moment, take action, and take our best shot.
