Animal Tracks of the Rocky Mountains: Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Utah, Colorado, Arizona and New Mexico

Book Description

One of Rick Bass's most widely respected works of natural history, The Ninemile Wolves follows the fate of a modern wolf pack, the first known group of wolves to attempt to settle in Montana outside protected national park territory. The wolf inspires hatred, affection, myth, fear, and pity; its return polarizes the whole of the West -- igniting the passions of cattle ranchers and environmentalists, wildlife biologists and hunters. One man's vigorous, emotional inquiry into the proper relationship between man and nature, The Ninemile Wolves eloquently advocates wolf reintroduction in the West. In a new preface, Bass discusses the enduring lessons of the Ninemile story.

Customer Reviews:

Are you kidding this book is great!.......2006-05-08

I can't believe that only ONE person read that book! I LOVED it. And I am just a kid. I read two books on the same pack and this one was the second one I read. At the sad part I cried in this book even though I already knew what happened and I don't normally cry in books. He was a strong author and he told about his life he left his own soul in that book and no one bothered to even write a REVIEW even except for one person. This book is extrodinary! You should really read it. You will be pulled in to it as he tells about how wolves changed so many people's lives. You have to read it. I may be just some kid reading a book that is ment for 15+ but I have as much say in it as anyone else. You have to read it. You will never see wolves in the same way again.

You'll want wolves in your backyard........1997-12-13

Well, you won't want them in your backyard if you're raising cattle. This story about the Ninemile wolf pack in northwestern Montana is a fascinating account of a wolf reintroduction program, and it deals with the complexity of the situation thoroughly and compassionately. Bass makes no secret of his own opinions--he wants wolves to make a comeback in the lower 48--but he discusses the concerns of the ranchers and all parties involved in a professional, fair manner. I learned more about wolves from reading this book than from any other source, and it helped me to clear up many of my own misconceptions about these canines. Bass very cleverly shows us the human side of the wolf reintroduction issue, the often predictable pattern of what happens when you put wolves and people together. And it helped me to think about wolves in a new way--if there's an antonym for anthropomorphism, Bass's writing is it. And like all of Bass's other books, this one displays his uncanny economy with words. If you think that all nonfiction writing should be devoid of passion or color, this isn't the book for you. But if you love wolves, you'll love this book.

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Woodsman, spare that old growth. . .
The True Wild
Don't Hack the Yaak
Review of "Winter" Notes of Montana
Not for the

The Book of Yaak
Rick Bass
Manufacturer: Mariner Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0395877466

Amazon.com

Rick Bass, a prolific writer of considerable merit, has crafted an elegant plea to save the ecosystem of the Yaak Valley in northwestern Montana. Bass argues that the Yaak deserves to be saved, both for its beauty and for its role in a biological system that stretches through much of North America. To enamor readers with the Yaak he describes it with reverence, and in doing so makes us care. "We are all complicit," he says.

Book Description

The Yaak Valley of northwestern Montana is one of the last great wild places in the United States, a land of black bears and grizzlies, wolves and coyotes, bald and golden eagles, and even a handful of humans. But its magic may not be enough to save it from the forces threatening it now. In The Book of Yaak Rick Bass captures the soul of the valley itself, and he shows how, if places like the Yaak are lost, so too will be the human riches of mystery and imagination.

Customer Reviews:

Woodsman, spare that old growth. . ........2003-10-17

I first came across Rick Bass in the very readable collection "Big Sky Reader." His essay there about accompanying a friend on a fishing trip with several out-of-state fishermen was an enjoyable glimpse into the lives of folks in the thinly populated woods of the far northwestern corner of Montana. It's a self-sufficient kind of life, where people make do with few amenities in exchange for the beauty and solitude of the mountains and the isolation that comes with many months of snow and cold.

That essay, "This Savage Land," appears in this collection of the author's nonfiction. However, instead of the self-effacing, quiet humor of that essay, the rest of this book is a poignant account of an apparently doomed effort to preserve the Yaak River valley as a wilderness and bring a stop to the clear-cut logging that has been steadily turning it into a vast area of devastation. Chapters describing the author's letter-writing campaigns and his trip to Washington DC to make his case before Montana's congressmen alternate with descriptions of walks on the mountains, sighting bears and other wildlife, discoursing on the delicately interrelated flora and fauna, and admiring what is left of the old growth forests. There's also a chapter on the experience of the winter months and another on a summer of fires in the mountains and the role that fire plays in the regeneration and preservation of forests.

Through it all are the themes of loss and the ruinous harm of the logging industry, which he believes is not simply destroying a wilderness area but removing a critical link connecting regions where grizzlies, wolves, and other forms of wilderness wildlife still survive. When that connection is gone, he believes that these creatures will quickly die out. Meanwhile, the poet in him believes that something also dies within humankind when the wilderness is gone, and he reminds us that once it's gone it will be gone forever.

I recommend this book to anyone interested in the mountainous West, nature writing, and the lives of people in sparsely populated and isolated areas. It's also a book for those whose hearts respond to the call of the wild and who are concerned by the destruction of national forests by the heedless economics of the logging industry and its strangle-hold in government and other seats of power.

The True Wild.......2003-02-11

I bought this book after visiting the Yaak. and loved the wonderful prose and the enormous feeling of the wilderness.

I loved the book, and recommend it highly -- it really focuses on the valuable resources we have but often don't appreciate.

Don't Hack the Yaak.......2002-04-29

Rick Bass has written a plea that is at times elegant and at other times shrill. The best writing in the book are the stories of long-time valley residents (both human and animal) trying to exist in a habitat that is shrinking in the hands of indifferent government and corporate stewards. Every 30-40 pages there is the ripe whiff of the holier-than-thou that usually occurs when a gifted writer transplants himself to the West and somehow comes to believe he is the only one who can truly interpret its significance. But this is possibly a quibble based on the prejudices in my head as a longtime Wyoming rancher. In any case, it's good to know that each member of the Congressional delegation received a copy of this book, although it's doubtful that Conrad Burns or Craig Thomas ever cracked the thing.

Review of "Winter" Notes of Montana.......1997-12-24

I do alot of reading of Conservation related issues and I like the fresh and crisp approach Rick Bass used in waking up the frontier spirit that is in all Americans. Paul Schultz

Not for the.......1997-12-13

Rick Bass has a knack for going far beyond the traditional environmentalist arguments about biodiversity and global warming, arguments that have fallen on deaf ears for the past thirty-plus years in this country. In his moving story of the Yaak Valley in northwestern Montana, he does touch on these subjects--the economic and other reasons why the Yaak should be protected from out-of-state corporate interests--but his story is more far-reaching than that. He understands that the value of a forest extends to something less tangible than economics, and he says it as well as any other living writer. His discussion of the correspondences he's had with the Montana Congressional delegation is entertaining and poignant, and his descriptions of natural scenes are visceral and succinct. At times his tone is like that of fellow naturalist Doug Peacock, but his skill with words is far greater. Bass gets a lot of bang out of few words. You'll come away feeling like writing to your Congresspeople. A beautiful and passionate account.

The Roadless Yaak: Reflections and Observations About One of Our Last Great Wilderness Areas

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Forever Yaak?
Redefining Wilderness

The Roadless Yaak: Reflections and Observations About One of Our Last Great Wilderness Areas

Manufacturer: The Lyons Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 1585745456

Book Description

An important book about the rich, yet fragile ecosystem in the Yaak Valley of northwestern Montana

Customer Reviews:

Forever Yaak?.......2003-01-20

One of my experiences as a biologist for the U.S. Forest Service was a brief stint in Libby, Montana where I was a weekend visitor to the remote Yaak Valley championed by resident conservationist Rick Bass. My first pass through the valley was a shock. The sea of clearcuts from past timber sales were clearly alarming, and I vowed to return for further investigation. In 1994 I studied fish populations in the Libby area now, and then, a superfund site at the plywood mill where we installed a fish weir in an attempt locate the last remaining Bull trout, now an endangered species in the Pacific Northwest. The previous year there were two. In 1994 none returned to the Libby trap. Similar conditions exist on the Yaak River, a major tributary to the Kootenai. Though superficially "wild" in outward apearance this is devastated landscape due to economic activity that has ruined the landscape and the citizenry from asbestosis at the other superfund site, a vermiculite mine once operated by W.R. Grace Corporation of "A Civil Action" fame. They are gone now, but so is everything else the area once offered. "We don't mind looking at the clearcuts," my boss a dour wildlife biologist told me. It is a legacy that Mr. Bass will be hard pressed to reverse with the current forest management leadership. But we must try. I stand with him in that battle. The chapter in my book "Against a Strong Current," is called "Three Bull Trout."

Redefining Wilderness.......2002-09-27

A valuable collection of diverse voices bearing witness to the last of the last: a small but ecologically rich valley in the far northwest corner of Montana. Those familiar with the prolific writings (and rantings) of Yaak resident Rick Bass know that he can come off as a monomaniac, but this anthology proves his passion is grounded and infectious. Great contributions from prominent writers, poets, conservationists, biologists, politicians, and local residents provide a mosaic of visions on the endangered magic that is the Yaak. The primary lesson: the Yaak is a biological, not a recreational wilderness. It is a place that must be saved, not for your next summer vacation, but for the itinerent wolves, the few remaining stands of ancient larch, the inland redband trout, the resident horse loggers, 15 modest-sized 'gardens' of unroaded national forest, and a tiny (perhaps single digit)population of super-survivor grizzly bears.
Once gone, they are gone forever.

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Montana Wildlife Viewing Guide, rev.
Carol Fischer
Manufacturer: Falcon
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Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 1560443480

Book Description

Where-to guide to 109 viewing sites of the best locations to watch wildlife including mammals and birds in their natural environment. Offical field guide of the Watchable Wildlife Series.

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Captivating Wilderness Adventure
Excellent story! Well-crafted in all ways-very detailed! A++
Beautiful, Breathtaking, and Heartwrenching.
I Think I'm In Love
A lot going on in this novel

The Loop
Nicholas Evans
Manufacturer: Delacorte Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 038531700X
Release Date: 1998-09-08

Amazon.com

Things aren't going too well for wolf biologist Helen Ross. At 29, she's unemployed (recently retired dishwasher), single (boyfriend of two years left her for Africa), and has just learned that her father is marrying someone younger, richer, and prettier than herself (completely accurate). Back in her lonely log cabin in Cape Cod, frantically chain-smoking, she receives a message from her former lover Dan Prior. Prior, also a biologist, works for the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service wolf-recovery program. In return for helping him track the lupine posse, Prior will provide her with a cabin, truck, and a snowmobile for good measure in a rustic little town called Hope, just outside of Helena, Montana. Apparently, Ross has never heard the proverb "If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is," and happily skips off to Big Sky Country.

Within moments of her arrival, she finds out what she's up against: a small town with a long history of wolf fear and loathing, no resources (big surprise), and a powerful rancher who will do whatever it takes to eliminate the wolves. The rancher, testosterone-saturated Buck Calder, has got the community riled up after a wolf stalked his daughter's home and killed the family dog. He won't stop until every last endangered wolf is dead, which proves problematic for Ross when she decides to romance his 18-year-old son, Luke. Cynics be warned: their love affair spawns a trove of gooey pillow talk and syrupy prose. Even so, Evans has made impressive strides as a writer since his debut novel, The Horse Whisperer, and his storytelling has reached a noticeably new level of sophistication: the plot is tight, the characterization is realistic, and the dialogue is crisp. --Rebekah Warren

Amazon.com Audio Review

In this unabridged audio version of The Loop by Nicholas Evans (The Horse Whisperer), actor-narrator John Bedford Lloyd (Philadelphia) delivers a calm, almost casual read. It's a wise choice, not just because of the version's 14-plus hour length, but for the subtle way he allows the deeply textured story to unfold on its own, revealing a complex weave of compelling plot lines that form a circle of love, hate, trust, and suspicion.

Using the controversial reintroduction of wolves into the American West as its catalyst, Evans pits a powerful Montana rancher against a struggling wolf pack, the wildlife agents mandated to protect the animals and, ultimately, recalcitrant members of his own family. "Luke could taste blood starting, salty and metallic, inside his mouth. He stared at his father, who stood glaring at him, his massive chest heaving and his neck flushed with anger."

Evans has loaded his characters with deep secrets and hidden agendas, creating a potent mix that teeters perilously close to the edge of believability. But his technique is solid enough to keep the story grounded. Lloyd's understated delivery, which stands alone with no music cues or sound effects, lets the action move forward without slipping into the realm of melodrama. (Running time: 14.5 hours, 10 cassettes) --George Laney

Book Description

A pack of wolves makes a sudden savage return to the Rocky Mountain ranching town of Hope, Montana, where a century earlier they were slaughtered by the thousands. Now shielded by law as an endangered species, they reawaken an ancient hatred that will tear a family, and ultimately the town, apart.

At the center of the storm is Helen Ross, a twenty-nine-year-old wolf biologist sent alone into this remote and hostile place to protect the wolves from those who seek to destroy them. The Loop charts her struggle, and her dangerous love affair with the son of her most powerful opponent, the brutal and charismatic rancher Buck Calder.

A haunting exploration of man's conflict with nature and the wild within himself, an epic story of deadly passions and redemptive love set against the grandeur of the American West, The Loop is destined to capture the hearts and imaginations of readers everywhere.

Customer Reviews:

Captivating Wilderness Adventure.......2006-10-11

Helen Ross is a wolf biologist that is called in to track and tag several wolves near an area of Hope, Montana. Dealing with her own inner demons (dumped by her boyfriend who ran away to volunteer in Africa, torn that her father is marrying a younger woman)

Evans brings a great cast of characters into the world of Hope. Anti-wolf rancher (and aged romantic rogue) Buck Calder and his introverted 18 year old stuttering Luke.

These characters are set against the current controversy about reintroducing wolves into the West.

I could *feel* the Montana wilderness in Evans prose. The characters all had depth, even the 'villans.' Scenes are well detailed and pictured.

You will get lost in this book. I have already lent it out.

Highly recommended.

Excellent story! Well-crafted in all ways-very detailed! A++.......2006-09-13

This is a must-read, and also I found it very educational as well about the lives of wolves.

The story begins with Helen Ross, just turning 29 years old and is a wolf biologist. She has a sister Celia who is married, and Helen herself is on the verge of a big break-up with Joel, her current lover. Her father who is divorced from her mom, is 56-years-old, and fell madly in love with a young woman of only 25 years of age. Helen is livid about this whole situation, and can't see having a stepmom younger than she is.

When Helen's new assignment comes up, of traveling to Montana to tag and collar the wolves, she gladly accepts it along with her colleague Dan Prior. She is assigned to stay in a cabin while completing her assignment of tracking the wolves, and there on that ranch meets up with Buck Calder, of whom is nothing but a womanizer and anxious to get rid of the wolves, along with Abe Harding, a very sadistic man, and Lovelace, who created what is called, the "loop," where the wolves are trapped by a method of ensnaring them so that they die. This is against the law in Montana. But since the ranchers are tired of these wolves killing their farm animals, they will stop at nothing to put an end to it-and even the collared ones-which when killed leave a track back to Helen. There are neighborhood fights over this during the whole book, and Abe Harding gets sentenced to jail for a long time. Lovelace hasn't yet been discovered-at least not until later on.

Buck Calder is very sadistic-especially with Luke, his 18-year-old-son with a severe stuttering problem. He and his wife Eleanor tragically lost his favored son Henry in a car accident with his grandfather, and Henry always came up on the short end of the stick. Buck is also having affairs with Ruth, Helen's friend, along with other women. Eleanor knows about this secretly.

Helen and Luke form a very special bond in the story, and the two actually fall in love. But of course, since Luke is only 18, this is cause for a lot of talk within their community there. He is her partner in wolving, and reguardless of what anyone else says, their relationship continues. Luke's father though, confronts him with it at the supper table one night, and Luke stands up to his dad for the first time ever. He is kicked out of the house, but then at that point, Eleanor is sick and tired of Buck's abuse and unfaithfulness, and leaves with her son too. Eleanor is totally on Luke's side, and though there is a difference in age of course between Helen and Luke, she completely supports their romantic intentions.

I highly recommend this book, and found it hard to lay down.

Beautiful, Breathtaking, and Heartwrenching........2006-08-08

Nicholas Evans has more than redeemed himself with this novel as I hated the Horse Whisperer. This book involves a likeable protagonist in Helen Ross who is a wolf biologist that gets called by her exboyfriend to help him save endangered wolves in Hope, Montana, and she finds more adventure and danger than she'd ever anticipated in her wildest dreams.

A wolf has killed a labrador retriever on Clyde Hicks' property, probably never intending to hurt his baby son, but it starts a community war in the destroying or preservation of all the wolves in the area. More threatening than Clyde is his father-in-law, politically active and philandering egotist Buck Calder. He and his friends are as passionate to destroy the wolves over things their guilt can't be proven as Helen is to save them from the local ranchers' ignorance. Meanwhile, Helen also becomes involved with Calder's son Luke, who has a stuttering problem, but proves himself to be ten times the man his father is.

This time, Evans' female protagonist Helen is smart, empathetic, resourceful, witty, and extremely likeable as is young, gentle Luke who falls for her. Calder's long suffering wife Eleanor and his mistress Ruth, who become good friends, are very likeable characters as well.

There are many layers and stories inside the main story, all told with acute sensitivity and rapturous, if sometimes violent, beauty. This time I'm also pleased to see Evans give lots of attention and detail to the wolves and their real behavior as opposed to the ranchers' superstitious beliefs. He often discribes some brutal scenes, but they are always factual rather than gored up or painted over with pleasant colors. Highly and emotionally charged, this is a book that will change your views about wolves and also about human nature. I cried a few times, and that doesn't happen very often when I read a book, save for Roseanne Bittner's Song of the Wolf. From the beginning, I couldn't put this one down and, if you like very well written books of this style, neither will you. This one is now a new favorite!

I Think I'm In Love .......2006-06-03

This man Is an amazing author. I've read all of his books but this one is my favourite (if I was forced to choose!).
Nicholas Evans is the sort of author who can really take you top the heart of the book. He achieves this by 1) describing the characters' histories. He is very detailed, it is not just a quick statement ("Helen always struggled with her bodily image" etc) but at the beginning odf the book the main characters get their own sections describing their histories so you really feel like you know them and get a feel of their past, present and future plus understand more about why they interact with each other the way they do.
Also, Evans distributes references to their pasts throughout the book, but not in an intrusive way, it follows on the event as if someone was speaking.
I have heard people mutter "cliche" about this book. DONT LISTEN TO THEM!! I don't think they are too clihed and anyway who cares? It is such a beautiful read - exquisite descriptions the whole way through, very easy to imagine pictures/sounds/smells etc. The dialogue is natural and even funny in places.
I felt i genuinely cared for the characters and even including the wolves. he has done a wonderful job describing them, presenting them not just as the sinisteer animals who howl in the night but those who teach and play with their children. He has obviously done his wolf research.
If i had to sum up to book in one word i would say RICH.

A lot going on in this novel.......2006-05-28

There is a great nature theme and several views on the 'wolf' question that brings out some debates that are going on today. But there is also a lot more happening in this book; relationships between father and sons, husband and wife, lovers, hunter and the hunted, etc. that makes this novel extremely compelling. I truly could not put this one down.
Chrissy K. McVay
author of 'Souls of the North Wind'

Barefoot-Hearted : A Wild Life Among Wildlife

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Don't bother

Barefoot-Hearted : A Wild Life Among Wildlife
Kathleen Meyer
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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Amazon.com

Memoirs by urbanites who homestead in the country and learn hard lessons in the bargain are many, but few attain the depths of a Walden or Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. Readers of those books will want to spend time with Kathleen Meyer's sometimes playful, sometimes somber Barefoot Hearted, which brings a resolutely modern sensibility to some ancient problems--among them, how to live with the creatures on whose homes humans have intruded, and how to learn the arts of self-sufficiency.

Meyer, the author of the indelicately titled but highly useful How to Shit in the Woods, recounts how she and her partner set about making an old Montana barn into a fit home. The job was daunting, she learned: in winter, the place was so cold that she had to bundle up in gear befitting an Antarctic explorer, no easy garb for, well, performing certain functions. And, she found, the barn and its environs had become a shelter for many animals, some of which she welcomed (among them bats and, strangely, skunks), some of which she reluctantly waged war against (specifically a never-ending army of mice). She sets those challenges against a thoughtful, ongoing discussion that touches upon important philosophical issues: the responsibilities of those who live on the edges where civilization and wilderness meet, and the responsibilities of humans to preserve what little of wild nature is left in a time of wholesale extinction and slaughter.

Wise, literate, and often moving, Meyer's memoir is required reading for anyone contemplating a move to places beyond the avenue--and for anyone who values a good story well told. --Gregory McNamee

Book Description

"The Wyoming Centennial Wagon Train ended in Cody in a dismal, torn-down drive-in movie theater. Before setting up the corral, we were forced to clear away shards of glass, bent nails, broken lumber. My prairie skirt and petticoats hung ragged and clay-caked, and under a droopy Stetson my frizzled hair appeared at once greased and starched beyond human recognition. A cloud, a sort of vaporousness, redolent with fresh acrid sweat on top of powerful stale sweat, hung thickly about me. Laced, as it was, with a woman's sweet musky secretions, and all gone past ripe, oddly it was a pungency I savored. Such goaty piquance, though, was cause to be shunned in any town setting.

The look of my world had changed. Gone were the high-dollar designer clothes and the zipping around fabled Marin County in a candy-apple-red 1966 Mustang convertible. It was true that I unfailingly sought the ironies in life and, with a kind of dual personality, shifted easily through incongruencies such as town strolls in high heels and backcountry hiking in bare feet; the bucket seats of a classic automobile and the broken-down bench of a beater truck. It was only during the years that Iíd worn white overalls, taped drywall, and come home every night much like Charles Schulz's Pig Pen, flaking a cloud of dried white mud bits onto the rug, that I'd felt moved to keep my fingernails painted red. Now I was to slip farther than ever planned toward one end of my seesaw and then, incredibly, by conscious design, inch out even farther."
--from Barefoot-Hearted

With more than 1.5 million copies in print, Kathleen Meyer's groundbreaking international bestseller, How to Shit in the Woods: An Environmentally Sound Approach to a Lost Art, has been widely embraced by the outdoor community and has found its way into myriad places: national parks, outdoor leadership schools and scout-troop headquarters, the camp tents of those who have discovered that it is amusing out-loud reading, and the bathroom-literature baskets of households around the world.

Now, from the Rocky Mountain West, Meyer brings us Barefoot-Hearted: A Wild Life Among Wildlife, a coming-into-the-country story told with the frank, dry humor and sharp research of her first book. The country, in this case, is Montana's tall, reaching landscape with its ever underfoot wild critters; the on-tenterhooks territory of a new romantic relationship; and the pressure cooker that is our precarious global imbalance. Meyer finds herself in midlife standing out under yawning skies, surrounded by sagebrush and cactus, having fallen for the Irish charm of itinerant farrier Patrick McCarron. As partners, they travel across three mountain states with draft horses and a covered wagon and then set up housekeeping in a seventy-five-year-old dairy barn.

In this primitive structure, the author rapidly discovers she's living with troops of mice, a nursery colony of seventy-five bats, sexually fired-up skunks, and more flies than in a pig shed. She tells of a freakish season that or-phaned seventy-seven bear cubs, an unusual fly-fishing trip on a famed blue-ribbon trout stream, the visitations of moose, and the discovery of a den of wolves.

Meyer's prose is original and inspired, playful yet provocative. She carries us vividly back to the settlers' old West while pondering modern-day dilemmas, those of fitting into this fast hurtling world, of determining amid the earth's rising extinctions of species, whose planet it is, and of managing to stay empowered residing with a man who "stands six feet six and beats steel on an anvil for a living." A personal chronicle of conscience and a love story of rare and quirky dimension, Barefoot-Hearted catapults readers into new realms of thought, deftly guided there by Meyer's sense of the ironic, the randy, and the humorous.

Download Description

Meyer narrates a madcap adventure of hand-to-hand combat with nature when her earth-loving sensibilities take her to Montana where she and her farrier spouse purchased an 82-year-old barn.

Customer Reviews:

Don't bother.......2004-08-23

Don't bother with this one. Basically an autobiography, the author's life is not book-worthy.

Audubon Guide to the National Wildlife Refuges: Rocky Mountains: Idaho, Colorado, Montana, Utah, Wyoming (Audubon Guides to the National Wildlife Refuges)

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Brief and to the Point

Audubon Guide to the National Wildlife Refuges: Rocky Mountains: Idaho, Colorado, Montana, Utah, Wyoming (Audubon Guides to the National Wildlife Refuges)
John Grassy , and Theodore Roosevelt
Manufacturer: St. Martin's Griffin
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0312245742

Amazon.com

Once remote but now among the fastest-growing regions in the country, the five Rocky Mountain states--Colorado, Utah, Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming--contain 22 of the nation's more than 300 wildlife refuges that are open to the public. Some, such as Idaho's Camas National Wildlife Refuge, protect endangered habitat (in this case, the wetlands of the Snake River). Others, such as the 18,000-acre National Bison Refuge west of Missoula, Montana, and the National Elk Refuge near Jackson Hole, Wyoming, are devoted (but not limited to) single species that were once at the brink of extinction. Naturalist John Grassy tours each of the refuges in this well-written guidebook, offering notes on the animals and plants found within them and suggesting walking and driving itineraries for visitors. --Gregory McNamee

Customer Reviews:

Brief and to the Point.......2003-06-04

This guidebook will help you to find each of the National Wildlife Refuges operated by the U.S. Department of the Interior, Fish and Wildlife Service, in the Rocky Mountain states. There are a 3-4 pages for each refuge, focusing on its history, directions to get there, opportunities for driving, walking, and bicycling in the refuge, and a discussion of major wildlife species protected by each refuge, as well as some of the political issues surrounding certain refuges. I had hoped for some general information on Rocky Mountain wildlife; the book was not at all helpful for that, and had very few pictures or photgraphs of wildlife, but it did alert me to a refuge along the route of my upcoming vacation. So without the book I would have missed an opportunity for some spectacular wildlife viewing with only a 27-mile detour. The book accomplishes its purpose very well; I gave it only three stars because that purpose is very limited.

Montana Wildlife (Pocket Naturalist - Waterford Press)

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Montana Wildlife (Pocket Naturalist - Waterford Press)
James Kavanagh
Manufacturer: Waterford Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 1583551530

Book Description

The Pocket Naturalist card is a pocket-sized, folding card which provides simplified, easy-to-use reference to what everyone should know about familiar plants, animals, and natural history. Maps are included to highlight prominent sanctuaries and outstanding natural attractions. Every card is laminated so that it is waterproof and practical for use in the field. This card highlights over 100 of Montana's most familiar mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, and fishes.

Sustaining Rocky Mountain Landscapes: Science, Policy, and Management for the Crown of the Continent Ecosystem (RFF Press) (RFF Press)

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Sustaining Rocky Mountain Landscapes: Science, Policy, and Management for the Crown of the Continent Ecosystem (RFF Press) (RFF Press)

Manufacturer: RFF Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 1933115467

Book Description

Tony Prato and Dan Fagre offer the first systematic, multidisciplinary assessment of the challenges involved in managing the Crown of the Continent Ecosystem (CCE), an area of the Rocky Mountains that includes northwestern Montana, southwestern Alberta, and southeastern British Columbia. The spectacular landscapes, extensive recreational options, and broad employment opportunities of the CCE have made it one of the fastest-growing regions in the United States and Canada. They have also led to a shift in its economic base from extractive resource industries to service-oriented recreation and tourism industries. In the process, however, the amenities and attributes that draw people to this "New West" are under threat. Pastoral scenes are disappearing as agricultural lands and other open spaces are converted to residential uses, biodiversity is endangered by the fragmentation of fish and wildlife habitats, and many areas are experiencing a decline in air and water quality.

Sustaining Rocky Mountain Landscapes provides a scientific basis for communities to develop policies for managing the growth and economic transformation of the CCE without sacrificing the quality of life and environment for which the land is renowned. The book begins with a natural and economic history of the CCE, followed by an assessment of current physical and biological conditions. The contributors then explore how social, economic, demographic, and environmental forces are transforming ecosystem structure and function. They consider ecosystem change in response to changing patterns of land use, pollution, and drought; the increasing risk of wildfire to wildlife and to human life and property; and the implications of global climate change on the CCE. A final, policy-focused section of the book looks at transboundary issues in ecosystem management and evaluates the potential of community-based and adaptive approaches in ecosystem management.

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