[PDF] The Follies Of Conservation eBook

Author : Robert Jerome Glennon
Publisher : Island Press
Page : 329 pages
File Size : 34,44 MB
Release : 2012-09-26
Category : Nature
ISBN : 1597267872

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The Santa Cruz River that once flowed through Tucson, Arizona is today a sad mirage of a river. Except for brief periods following heavy rainfall, it is bone dry. The cottonwood and willow trees that once lined its banks have died, and the profusion of birds and wildlife recorded by early settlers are nowhere to be seen. The river is dead. What happened? Where did the water go. As Robert Glennon explains in Water Follies, what killed the Santa Cruz River -- and could devastate other surface waters across the United States -- was groundwater pumping. From 1940 to 2000, the volume of water drawn annually from underground aquifers in Tucson jumped more than six-fold, from 50,000 to 330,000 acre-feet per year. And Tucson is hardly an exception -- similar increases in groundwater pumping have occurred across the country and around the world. In a striking collection of stories that bring to life the human and natural consequences of our growing national thirst, Robert Glennon provides an occasionally wry and always fascinating account of groundwater pumping and the environmental problems it causes. Robert Glennon sketches the culture of water use in the United States, explaining how and why we are growing increasingly reliant on groundwater. He uses the examples of the Santa Cruz and San Pedro rivers in Arizona to illustrate the science of hydrology and the legal aspects of water use and conflicts. Following that, he offers a dozen stories -- ranging from Down East Maine to San Antonio's River Walk to Atlanta's burgeoning suburbs -- that clearly illustrate the array of problems caused by groundwater pumping. Each episode poses a conflict of values that reveals the complexity of how and why we use water. These poignant and sometimes perverse tales tell of human foibles including greed, stubbornness, and, especially, the unlimited human capacity to ignore reality. As Robert Glennon explores the folly of our actions and the laws governing them, he suggests common-sense legal and policy reforms that could help avert potentially catastrophic future effects. Water Follies, the first book to focus on the impact of groundwater pumping on the environment, brings this widespread but underappreciated problem to the attention of citizens and communities across America.

Author : William Temple Hornaday
Publisher :
Page : 448 pages
File Size : 37,63 MB
Release : 1913
Category : Law
ISBN :

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William Temple Hornaday was the Director of the New York Zoological Society and the nation's leading advocate of wildlife conservation in this era. This unsparing manifesto was written to accompany Hornaday's launching of the Permanent Wildlife Protection Fund; it is thus (in the words of the historian Stephen Fox) both "a campaign tract" and "one of the first books wholly devoted to endangered wild animals" (John Muir and His Legacy: The American Conservation Movement [Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1981], p. 149). It is also a landmark of conservation history which had a profound effect on the thought of Aldo Leopold, among others. The book surveys the history and causes of wildlife destruction in America and elsewhere, and sets forth a lengthy program to ensure the protection of remaining wildlife for the future, often in militant and moralistic terms. The work also throws light on some of the complexities inherent in the conservation movement at this time: for example, Hornaday accepts the classification of certain bird and mammalian predators as "noxious" or "vermin" and appropriate for destruction (pp. 77-81); there is no criticism here of the massive campaign for the extermination of wolves and coyotes being sponsored at the time by the Bureau of Biological Survey. On a more general level, Hornaday's fulminations against Italian immigrants as incorrigible bird-killers suggest a connection between nativism and conservationism, while his excoriations of market hunters set forth a deeply-rooted class bias shared by many leading conservationists.

Author : Great Britain. Museums and Galleries Commission. Conservation Unit
Publisher : Stationery Office Books (TSO)
Page : 128 pages
File Size : 48,81 MB
Release : 1991
Category : Nature
ISBN :

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From the Acid Rain Information Centre to the Zinc Development Association, this guide provides a directory of information on organizations concerned with the conservation of objects and buildings in the United Kingdom.

Author : Ruth Tittensor
Publisher : Oxbow Books
Page : 562 pages
File Size : 22,85 MB
Release : 2016-10-31
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 1909686786

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This book takes a fresh look at the most disliked tree in Britain and Ireland, explaining the reasons it was introduced and why it became ubiquitous in the archipelagos of northwest Europe. Sitka spruce has contributed to the Pacific Coast landscapes of North America for over ten millennia. For the Tlingit First Nation it is the most important tree in terms of spiritual relationships, art, and products in daily use such as canoes, containers, fish-traps and sweet cakes. Since the late nineteenth century it has also been the most important tree to the timber industry of west coast North America. The historical background to the modern use of Sitka spruce is explored. The lack of cultural reference may explain negative public response when treeless uplands in the UK and Ireland were afforested with introduced conifer species, particularly Sitka spruce, following two World Wars. The multipurpose forestry of today recognizes that Sitka spruce is the most important tree to the timber industry and to a public which uses its many products but fails to recognize the link between growing trees and bought goods. The apparently featureless and wildlife-less Sitka spruce plantations in UK uplands are gradually developing recognizable ecological features. Sitka spruce has the potential to form temperate rain forests this century as well as to produce much-needed goods for society. The major contribution of Sitka spruce to landscapes and livelihoods in western North America is, by contrast, widely accepted. But conserving natural, old-growth forests, sustaining the needs of First Nations, and producing materials for the modern timber industry will be an intricate task.

Author : Donald Przebowski
Publisher : Xlibris Corporation
Page : 507 pages
File Size : 47,64 MB
Release : 2009-06-11
Category : History
ISBN : 1462839819

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This is my fourth literary work. The fi rst novel, Aryan, the Last Prussian examined man, war and society; the second novel, Over the Rainbow was concerned with man and tyranny; and the third novel, Heroic Hearts focused on doctors in World War II. This historical work examines the rise and fall of nations, the fundamental values upon which each nation was erected, and the reasons for each nations collapse. The Greek historian Polybius proposed that each nation experienced an evolutionary cycle: democracy, oligarchy, dictatorship, tyranny and collapse. For the United States that evolutionary cycle is: individualism, democracy, oligarchy, tyranny and collapse. The United States is experiencing its fi nal phase: tyranny. Its survival depends upon the strength of the fundamental values upon which the nation was erected: individualism, self-reliance and self-interest. This work will demonstrate that the fall of the U.S. is inevitable, and I have selected from history those ideas and events that will lead to its fi nal collapse.

Author : Roger Park
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 278 pages
File Size : 48,47 MB
Release : 2019-04-09
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 0429728085

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The aim of the present volume is to review the effects of human activity on physical environment processes, and this is justified not only as a complement to the approach taken by G. P. Marsh his volume Man and Nature (1864), but also as a sequel to the work produced since 1864, with contributions since the mid-nineteenth century to the study of th

Author : Eric Linklater
Publisher : New York Review of Books
Page : 377 pages
File Size : 33,46 MB
Release : 2011-09-07
Category : Juvenile Fiction
ISBN : 159017433X

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A Carnegie Medal winner, this delightful fantasy will appeal to children who love Alice in Wonderland and The Wind in the Willows. Major Palfrey is leaving for the wars, and he tells his two girls, Dinah and Dorinda, to be good while he is gone. But the sisters aren’t sure they can be. As Dorinda explains, “When we think we are behaving well, some grown-up person says we are really quite bad. It’s difficult to tell which is which.” Sure enough, the sisters are soon up to their usual mischief. They convince a judge that minds must be changed as often as socks, stage an escape from the local zoo (thanks to a witch’s potion which turns them into kangaroos), and—in the company of a golden puma and silver falcon—set off to rescue their father from the wicked tyrant of Bombardy. Penned at the height of World War II, this tale of hilarity and great adventure is also a work of high seriousness; after all, “life without freedom,” as the valiant puma makes clear, “is a poor, poor thing.”

Author : Gwyn Headley
Publisher : Heritage Ebooks
Page : 56 pages
File Size : 16,71 MB
Release : 2011-10-12
Category : Travel
ISBN : 1908619090

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An Account of those Architectural Eccentricities commonly known as Follies to be found in the County