The Rediscovery of the Wild

The Rediscovery of the Wild
Author: Peter H. Kahn, Jr.
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 277
Release: 2013-01-25
Genre: Nature
ISBN: 0262312832

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A compelling case for connecting with the wild, for our psychological and physical well-being and to flourish as a species We often enjoy the benefits of connecting with nearby, domesticated nature—a city park, a backyard garden. But this book makes the provocative case for the necessity of connecting with wild nature—untamed, unmanaged, not encompassed, self-organizing, and unencumbered and unmediated by technological artifice. We can love the wild. We can fear it. We are strengthened and nurtured by it. As a species, we came of age in a natural world far wilder than today's, and much of the need for wildness still exists within us, body and mind. The Rediscovery of the Wild considers ways to engage with the wild, protect it, and recover it—for our psychological and physical well-being and to flourish as a species. The contributors offer a range of perspectives on the wild, discussing such topics as the evolutionary underpinnings of our need for the wild; the wild within, including the primal passions of sexuality and aggression; birding as a portal to wildness; children's fascination with wild animals; wildness and psychological healing; the shifting baseline of what we consider wild; and the true work of conservation.

The Rediscovery of the Wild

The Rediscovery of the Wild
Author: Peter H. Kahn (Jr.)
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 277
Release: 2013
Genre: Nature
ISBN: 026201873X

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A compelling case for connecting with the wild, for our psychological and physical well-being and to flourish as a species We often enjoy the benefits of connecting with nearby, domesticated nature--a city park, a backyard garden. But this book makes the provocative case for the necessity of connecting with wild nature--untamed, unmanaged, not encompassed, self-organizing, and unencumbered and unmediated by technological artifice. We can love the wild. We can fear it. We are strengthened and nurtured by it. As a species, we came of age in a natural world far wilder than today's, and much of the need for wildness still exists within us, body and mind. The Rediscovery of the Wild considers ways to engage with the wild, protect it, and recover it--for our psychological and physical well-being and to flourish as a species. The contributors offer a range of perspectives on the wild, discussing such topics as the evolutionary underpinnings of our need for the wild; the wild within, including the primal passions of sexuality and aggression; birding as a portal to wildness; children's fascination with wild animals; wildness and psychological healing; the shifting baseline of what we consider wild; and the true work of conservation.

Still Alive

Still Alive
Author: Forrest Galante
Publisher: Hachette Books
Total Pages: 211
Release: 2021-06-01
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0306924269

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Experience the thrilling adventures in wildlife conservation from "the Indiana Jones of Biology" (Entrepreneur) in this action-packed and educational memoir filled with danger and intrigue. Very few individuals can truthfully say that their work impacts every person on earth. Forrest Galante is one of them. As a wildlife biologist and conservationist, Galante devotes his life to studying, rediscovering, and protecting our planet’s amazing lifeforms. Part memoir, part biological adventure, Still Alive celebrates the beauty and determined resiliency of our world, as well as the brave conservationists fighting to save it. In his debut book, Galante takes readers on an exhilarating journey to the most remote and dangerous corners of the world. He recounts miraculous rediscoveries of species that were thought to be extinct and invites readers into his wild life: from his upbringing amidst civil unrest in Zimbabwe to his many globetrotting adventures, including suspenseful run-ins with drug cartels, witch doctors, and vengeful government officials. He shares all of the life-threatening bites, fights, falls, and jungle illnesses. He also investigates the connection between wildlife mistreatment and human safety, particularly in relation to COVID-19. Still Alive is much more than just a can’t-put-down adventure story bursting with man-eating crocodiles, long-forgotten species rediscovered, and near-death experiences. It is an impassioned, informative, and undeniably inspiring examination of the importance of wildlife conservation today and how every individual can make a difference.

Settled in the Wild

Settled in the Wild
Author: Susan Hand Shetterly
Publisher: Algonquin Books
Total Pages: 257
Release: 2010-01-26
Genre: Nature
ISBN: 1565129733

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Whether we live in cities, suburbs, or villages, we are encroaching on nature, and it in one way or another perseveres. Naturalist Susan Shetterly looks at how animals, humans, and plants share the land—observing her own neighborhood in rural Maine. She tells tales of the locals (humans, yes, but also snowshoe hares, raccoons, bobcats, turtles, salmon, ravens, hummingbirds, cormorants, sandpipers, and spring peepers). She expertly shows us how they all make their way in an ever-changing habitat. In writing about a displaced garter snake, witnessing the paving of a beloved dirt road, trapping a cricket with her young son, rescuing a fledgling raven, or the town's joy at the return of the alewife migration, Shetterly issues warnings even as she pays tribute to the resilience that abounds. Like the works of Annie Dillard and Aldo Leopold, Settled in the Wild takes a magnifying glass to the wildness that surrounds us. With keen perception and wit, Shetterly offers us an education in nature, one that should inspire us to preserve it.

The Human Relationship with Nature

The Human Relationship with Nature
Author: Peter H. Kahn
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 302
Release: 1999
Genre: Nature
ISBN: 9780262112406

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Winner of Outstanding Book Award, 2000, Moral Development and Education, American Educational Research Association. Winner of the 2000 Book Award from the Moral Development & Education Group of the American Educational Research Association Urgent environmental problems call for vigorous research and theory on how humans develop a relationship with nature. In a series of original research projects, Peter Kahn answers this call. For the past eight years, Kahn has studied children, young adults, and parents in diverse geographical locations, ranging from an economically impoverished black community in Houston to a remote village in the Brazilian Amazon. In these studies Kahn seeks answers to the following questions: How do people value nature, and how do they reason morally about environmental degradation? Do children have a deep connection to the natural world that gets severed by modern society? Or do such connections emerge, if at all, later in life, with increased cognitive and moral maturity? How does culture affect environmental commitments and sensibilities? Are there universal features in the human relationship with nature? Kahn's empirical and theoretical findings draw on current work in psychology, biology, environmental behavior, education, policy, and moral development. This scholarly yet accessible book will be of value to practitioners in the social science and environmental fields, as well as to informed generalists interested in environmental issues and children.

Technological Nature

Technological Nature
Author: Peter H. Kahn, Jr.
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 249
Release: 2011-02-25
Genre: Science
ISBN: 0262294834

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Why it matters that our relationship with nature is increasingly mediated and augmented by technology. Our forebears may have had a close connection with the natural world, but increasingly we experience technological nature. Children come of age watching digital nature programs on television. They inhabit virtual lands in digital games. And they play with robotic animals, purchased at big box stores. Until a few years ago, hunters could "telehunt"—shoot and kill animals in Texas from a computer anywhere in the world via a Web interface. Does it matter that much of our experience with nature is mediated and augmented by technology? In Technological Nature, Peter Kahn argues that it does, and shows how it affects our well-being. Kahn describes his investigations of children's and adults' experiences of cutting-edge technological nature. He and his team installed "technological nature windows" (50-inch plasma screens showing high-definition broadcasts of real-time local nature views) in inside offices on his university campus and assessed the physiological and psychological effects on viewers. He studied children's and adults' relationships with the robotic dog AIBO (including possible benefits for children with autism). And he studied online "telegardening" (a pastoral alternative to "telehunting"). Kahn's studies show that in terms of human well-being technological nature is better than no nature, but not as good as actual nature. We should develop and use technological nature as a bonus on life, not as its substitute, and re-envision what is beautiful and fulfilling and often wild in essence in our relationship with the natural world.

Wild Again

Wild Again
Author: David Jachowski
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 252
Release: 2014-03-28
Genre: Nature
ISBN: 0520281659

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This engaging personal account of one of America's most contested wildlife conservation campaigns has as its central character the black-footed ferret. Once feared extinct, and still one of North America's rarest mammals, the black-footed ferret exemplifies the ecological, social, and political challenges of conservation in the West, including the risks involved with intensive captive breeding and reintroduction to natural habitat. David Jachowski draws on more than a decade of experience working to save the ferret. His unique perspective and informative anecdotes reveal the scientific and human aspects of conservation as well as the immense dedication required to protect a species on the edge of extinction. By telling one story of conservation biology in practiceÑits routine work, triumphs, challenges, and inevitable conflictsÑthis book gives readers a greater understanding of the conservation ethic that emerged on the Great Plains as part of one of the most remarkable recovery efforts in the history of the Endangered Species Act.

Science Set Free

Science Set Free
Author: Rupert Sheldrake
Publisher: Deepak Chopra
Total Pages: 402
Release: 2013-09-03
Genre: Science
ISBN: 0770436722

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The bestselling author of Dogs That Know When Their Owners Are Coming Home offers an intriguing new assessment of modern day science that will radically change the way we view what is possible. In Science Set Free (originally published to acclaim in the UK as The Science Delusion), Dr. Rupert Sheldrake, one of the world's most innovative scientists, shows the ways in which science is being constricted by assumptions that have, over the years, hardened into dogmas. Such dogmas are not only limiting, but dangerous for the future of humanity. According to these principles, all of reality is material or physical; the world is a machine, made up of inanimate matter; nature is purposeless; consciousness is nothing but the physical activity of the brain; free will is an illusion; God exists only as an idea in human minds, imprisoned within our skulls. But should science be a belief-system, or a method of enquiry? Sheldrake shows that the materialist ideology is moribund; under its sway, increasingly expensive research is reaping diminishing returns while societies around the world are paying the price. In the skeptical spirit of true science, Sheldrake turns the ten fundamental dogmas of materialism into exciting questions, and shows how all of them open up startling new possibilities for discovery. Science Set Free will radically change your view of what is real and what is possible.

Ecopsychology

Ecopsychology
Author: Peter H. Kahn, Jr.
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 357
Release: 2012-07-20
Genre: Nature
ISBN: 0262304392

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An ecopsychology that integrates our totemic selves—our kinship with a more than human world—with our technological selves. We need nature for our physical and psychological well-being. Our actions reflect this when we turn to beloved pets for companionship, vacation in spots of natural splendor, or spend hours working in the garden. Yet we are also a technological species and have been since we fashioned tools out of stone. Thus one of this century's central challenges is to embrace our kinship with a more-than-human world—"our totemic self"—and integrate that kinship with our scientific culture and technological selves. This book takes on that challenge and proposes a reenvisioned ecopsychology. Contributors consider such topics as the innate tendency for people to bond with local place; a meaningful nature language; the epidemiological evidence for the health benefits of nature interaction; the theory and practice of ecotherapy; Gaia theory; ecovillages; the neuroscience of perceiving natural beauty; and sacred geography. Taken together, the essays offer a vision for human flourishing and for a more grounded and realistic environmental psychology.

Learning with Nature

Learning with Nature
Author: Marina Robb
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 669
Release: 2015-01-29
Genre: Family & Relationships
ISBN: 0857842404

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A beautifully designed book full of creative ideas and fun activities to get your children outdoors, with a foreword by Chris Packham. Spending time outdoors and interacting with the elements gives our senses a host of stimuli that cannot be recreated indoors. Whether you're splashing in muddy puddles, making shelters, foraging blackberries, playing hide and seek or watching birds, experiencing the natural world reduces stress, makes us feel alive and lays critical foundations for a healthy developing brain. Learning with Nature is ideal for parents, teachers and youth workers looking to enrich children's learning through nature and teach them to enjoy and respect the great outdoors. Written by experienced Forest School practitioners, it is packed with more than 100 tried and tested games and activities suitable for groups of children aged between 3 and 16, which aim to help children develop key practical and social skills and gain a better awareness of the world. The book is well-organised and features step-by-step instructions, age guides, a list of resources needed, and invisible learning points. Explore, have fun, make things and learn about nature with this fantastic guide.