The Future of the Wild - Radical Conservation for a Crowded World (Hardcover)

In this important book, biologist Jonathan S. Adams explains an exciting new approach to conservation. The main strategy behind it involves using the latest in conservation science along with the desires of local communities to protect the places where people live and work. In this way, each small success moves conservationists closer toward creating huge protected landscapes large enough to support animals like bison and wolves. Only with freedom to roam through and between these lands, using wilderness corridors, can such large animals flourish.
Adams provides numerous examples of how this new conservation is succeeding around the country: cooperative ranchers work together to preserve wilderness in Arizona; activists fight the encroachment of big business on the Florida Everglades; and a maverick scientist struggles to create safe passageways for pumas in California's overpopulated Orange County. Each example proves the benefits of combining the latest scientific studies with practical community organizing and sound economic planning. Through these examples and important conservation history, Adams shows how we can realistically protect wildlands despite our growing numbers.
The Future of the Wild is a much needed, accessible book full of fascinating stories, unforgettable characters, and, ultimately, a powerful new vision for conservation in America.
"Adams profiles ecologists and activists, as well as grassroots and national conservation organizations, in a seamless flow of readable prose to make his point that sustainable human activity and sustainable populations of wildlife must not be mutually exclusive."
--Ted Levin, OnEarth
"An engaging, well-written bookwith a real feel for wildlife, wild places and the fascinating cast of characters--scientists, environmentalists and ranchers--whose idealism and dedication are contributing to a radically different kind of conservation."
--Paul Evans, BBC Wildlife
"Jonathan Adams lays out a bold road map for how to bind together the scattered remnants of this continent's wild places--and for knitting up the mingled fates of the wild and human communities that inhabit them, envisioning a better, more sustainable future for both."
--Scott Weidensaul, author of Return to Wild America
Jonathan S. Adams is a conservation biologist, writer, and program director with The Nature Conservancy. He is the coauthor of The Myth of Wild Africa: Conservation Without Illusion and the coeditor of Precious Heritage: The Status of Biodiversity in the United States. He lives with his wife and two children in the Maryland suburbs of Washington, D.C.