America’s Wildlife Refuges: Lands Of Promise, text by Jeanne L. Clark, photography by Tom & Pat Leeson, Jason & Gene Stone

[Note: This book was provided free of charge by Carpe Diem Books in exchange for an honest review.]

A book that is the textual equivalent of a gorgeous nature documentary, this slim volume takes 140 pages, many of them festooned with artistic photos of wildfowl, timid deer, or suspicious desert pupfish, to examine some of the success stories of the National Conservatory’s efforts to establish and maintain hundreds of wildlife refuges around the United States. Accompanying the photos is passionate and descriptive text discussing the people responsible for the wildlife refuges and the animals who have been delivered from the edge of extinction, from the Canadian goose and bald eagle to the key deer and American bison, thanks to the devoted efforts of preservationists, some of which is highly quotable [1] and elegant prose of great beauty. Animal lovers, and those who are fond of visiting our national wildlife refuges, or people who enjoy nature documentaries, will likely find much to appreciate whether they look at the lovely photos of animals and landscapes or whether they read the beautiful text of captions and explanatory text.

The contents of this book are divided among half a dozen types of terrain, and including focused attention on various animals who find refuge within these climate zones. Within the first section, continental wetlands, the authors shine a spotlight on geese, ducks, bald eagles, whooping cranes, and the obscure California Tule elk. Among the coastal islands, beaches, and estuaries, the authors pay special attention to seabirds, the monk seal, sea turtles, and shorebirds. Among the prairies and semiarid regions of the Western mountains and plains, the authors focus on songbirds, the American bison, the Sandhill crane, and the non-migratory Trumpeter swan. Among the fetid southern shores and mangrove swamps, the authors show their concern for the brown pelican, the torpid American alligator, the diminutive key deer, and various vulnerable colonial birds like the rosette spoonbill. Within the broad and desolate grandeur of the American deserts, the authors write about the bighorn sheep, pronghorn antelope, and the courageous desert pupfish. Finally, the book ends with a focus on the Alaskan northern shores and tundra, with special emphasis given to wandering caribou, nesting waterfowl, the Aleutian Canada goose, and the noble coastal brown bear. Afterwards there follows a great deal of acknowledgements from the authors to the legion of wildlife refuge staff who helped them along their pilgrimage to provide insight as well as guidance for the beautiful photos that fill this book and the writing that explains the efforts to conserve not only species, but whole ecologies.

Nevertheless, although this book provides a reasonable and balanced view of the coalitions needed to protect habitat for various species great and small, and though it provides encouragement at the resilience of creation when it is being properly stewarded by mankind, and though the book contains very impressive prose as well as award-quality photographs of creation, there are some troubling notes sounded in this book as well. The dangers faced by early volunteers seeking to protect Floridian shorebirds from predation demonstrate that the current fragile consensus about preserving pristine habitats may not endure in the face of threats to domestic food and water supplies or national security. Likewise, the authors seem a bit too unconcerned with the freewheeling and sometimes unethical and unconstitutional behavior among protectors of natural habitats. The authors seem to imply that the desirable ends of preserving wilderness and refuge land ennobled the sometimes shabby means that were undertaken to this end, a view that is deeply unwise. Aside from this troubling aspect of politics, not uncommon in works about the preservation of wilderness space in the face of difficult collaboration between people of different interests [2], the book is beautiful and ought to be appreciated and treasured on coffee tables and in libraries for those who love cute wild animals and starkly remote wilderness landscapes.

[1] See, for example:

“A superb hunter, a skillful thief, and a devoted mate, the bald eagle is one of only a few endangered species to recover, demonstrating the resiliency of nature when provided a chance, and given a refuge (29).”

“At twenty-five years, she is both mature and new to motherhood. She chooses a stretch away from the tide but still close to shore, and with powerful flippers, excavates a pit. She lowers herself into it, digging chambers in the most soil to shelter as many as 130 plum-sized eggs. She carefully buries them and haphazardly casts sand to camouflage the nest, then inches back to the sea. The process takes about two hours and will be repeated up to half a dozen times during the summer, an act of survival that ensures at least some of her progeny will escape beach-lashing storms, predation, human disturbance, and other hazards of the land (49).”

“A monarch butterfly feeds on goldenrod along the Atlantic shore. Thousands may rest on a single tree. Their closed wings are a somber grey, but as the morning sun warms them, the tree pulses with the brilliant orange of fluttering wings. Their migrations are legendary, some of the tiny travelers covering four thousand miles during a round-trip migration (67).”

“From a distance, rocky ridges and rugged desert canyons often seem devoid of life. Were it not for the occasional flash of a white rump patch, bighorn sheep might go unnoticed, blending naturally with the faded browns of the desert landscape. A bighorn ram has spotted a group of ewes and lambs, which band up and move to the point of a ridge. The ram follows the nervous group, looking for ewes that are ready to mate (107).”

[2] See, for example:

https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2015/12/07/book-review-the-edge-of-extinction/

https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2011/01/17/book-review-cadillac-desert/