Today's (9/3/2010) New Book Releases on Outdoors & Nature

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Animal Ethics in Context by Clare Palmer - 208 pages

It is widely agreed that because animals feel pain we should not make them suffer gratuitously. Some ethical theories go even further: because of the capacities that they possess, animals have the right not to be harmed or killed. These views concern what not to do to animals, but we also face questions about when we should, and should not, assist animals that are hungry or distressed. Should we feed a starving stray kitten? And if so, does this commit us, if we are to be consistent, to feeding wild animals during a hard winter?

In this controversial book, Clare Palmer advances a theory that claims, with respect to assisting animals, that what is owed to one is not necessarily owed to all, even if animals share similar psychological capacities. Context, history, and relation can be critical ethical factors. If animals live independently in the wild, their fate is not any of our moral business. Yet if humans create dependent animals, or destroy their habitats, we may have a responsibility to assist them. Such arguments are familiar in human cases-we think that parents have special obligations to their children, for example, or that some groups owe reparations to others. Palmer develops such relational concerns in the context of wild animals, domesticated animals, and urban scavengers, arguing that different contexts can create different moral relationships.

book
Forecasting Forest Futures: A Hybrid Modelling Approach to the Assessment of Sustainability of Forest Ecosystems and their Values (Earthscan Forestry Library) by Hamish Kimmins, Juan A. Blanco, Brad Seely, Clive Welham, Kim Scoullar - 281 pages
Modelling is an important tool for understanding the complexity of forest ecosystems and the variety of interactions of ecosystem components, processes and values. This book describes the hybrid approach to modelling forest ecosystems and their possible response to natural and management-induced disturbance. The book describes the FORECAST family of ecosystem management models at three different spatial scales (tree, stand and landscape), and compares them with alternative models at these three spatial scales.

The book will help forest managers to understand what to expect from ecosystem-based forest models; serve as a tool for use in teaching about sustainability, scenario analysis and value trade-offs in natural resources management; and assist policy makers, managers and researchers working in assessment of sustainable forest management and ecosystem management. Several real-life examples of using the FORECAST family of models in forest management and other applications are presented from countries including Canada, China, Spain and the USA, to illustrate the concepts described in the text. The book also demonstrates how these models can be extended for scenario and value trade-off analysis through visualization and educational or management games.
book
Animal Ethics in Context by Clare Palmer - 216 pages

It is widely agreed that because animals feel pain we should not make them suffer gratuitously. Some ethical theories go even further: because of the capacities that they possess, animals have the right not to be harmed or killed. These views concern what not to do to animals, but we also face questions about when we should, and should not, assist animals that are hungry or distressed. Should we feed a starving stray kitten? And if so, does this commit us, if we are to be consistent, to feeding wild animals during a hard winter?

In this controversial book, Clare Palmer advances a theory that claims, with respect to assisting animals, that what is owed to one is not necessarily owed to all, even if animals share similar psychological capacities. Context, history, and relation can be critical ethical factors. If animals live independently in the wild, their fate is not any of our moral business. Yet if humans create dependent animals, or destroy their habitats, we may have a responsibility to assist them. Such arguments are familiar in human cases-we think that parents have special obligations to their children, for example, or that some groups owe reparations to others. Palmer develops such relational concerns in the context of wild animals, domesticated animals, and urban scavengers, arguing that different contexts can create different moral relationships.

book
The Gulf Stream: Tiny Plankton, Giant Bluefin, and the Amazing Story of the Powerful River in the Atlantic by Stan Ulanski - 232 pages
Coursing through the Atlantic Ocean is a powerful current with a force 300 times that of the mighty Amazon. Ulanski explores the fascinating science and history of this sea highway known as the Gulf Stream, a watery wilderness that stretches from the Caribbean to the North Atlantic. Spanning both distance and time, Ulanski's investigation reveals how the Gulf Stream affects and is affected by every living thing that encounters it--from tiny planktonic organisms to giant bluefin tuna, from ancient mariners to big-game anglers. He examines the scientific discovery of ocean circulation, the role of ocean currents in the settlement of the New World, and the biological life teeming in the stream.
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Holy Ground, Healing Water: Cultural Landscapes at Waconda Lake, Kansas (Environmental History Series) by Donald J. Blakeslee - 288 pages
Most people would not consider north central Kansas’ Waconda Lake to be extraordinary. The lake, completed in 1969 by the federal Bureau of Reclamation for flood control, irrigation, and water supply purposes, sits amid a region known—when it is thought of at all—for agriculture and, perhaps to a few, as the home of "The World’s Largest Ball of Twine" (in nearby Cawker City).

Yet, to the native people living in this region in the centuries before Anglo incursion, this was a place of great spiritual power and mystic significance. Waconda Spring, now beneath the waters of the lake, was held as sacred, a place where connection with the spirit world was possible. Nearby, a giant snake symbol carved into the earth by native peoples—likely the ancestors of today’s Wichitas—signified a similar place of reverence and totemic power.

All that began to change on July 6, 1870, when Charles DeRudio, an officer in the 7th U.S. Cavalry who had served with George Armstrong Custer, purchased a tract on the north bank of the Solomon River—a tract that included Waconda Spring. DeRudio had little regard for the sacred properties of his acreage; instead, he viewed the mineral spring as a way to make money.

In Holy Ground, Healing Water: Cultural Landscapes at Waconda Springs, Kansas, anthropologist Donald J. Blakeslee traces the usage and attendant meanings of this area, beginning with prehistoric sites dating between AD 1000 and 1250 and continuing to the present day. Addressing all the sites at Waconda Lake, regardless of age or cultural affiliation, Blakeslee tells a dramatic story that looks back from the humdrum present through the romantic haze of the nineteenth century to an older landscape, one that is more wonderful by far than what the modern imagination can conceive.