National Wildlife Refuges

An all-in-one UPDATED guide to the National Wildlife Refuge system that describes over 530 U.S. wildlife reserves. This guide contains detailed explanations of each refuge's habitat and wildlife, as well as refuge amenities. Butcher provides information helpful to both the novice wildlife observer and the expert environmentalist. Butcher's work also contains 240 full-color photographs that show the magnificent beauty held within these refuges.

Photographer Ian Shive shows you the largest network of protected lands and waters in the world, the National Wildlife Refuge System. From the rugged reaches of Kenai, Alaska, to the vibrant coral reefs of the Palmyra Atoll, the National Wildlife Refuge System is dedicated to the preservation of America's natural habitats. Through the lens of Ian Shive, recipient of the Ansel Adams Award for Conservation Photography, Refuge will show you the greatest of these landscapes and wildlife, including the migratory birds of Midway Atoll, the golden prairies of the Rocky Flats, and more. Learn from America's leading experts: Includes essays from top environmental and conservation organizations such as the National Wildlife Refuge Association, Earth Island Institute, and the Arctic Refuge Defense Campaign, giving you the context that you need to appreciate these natural wonders. Plan your own journey: A refuge map and index of traversable locations allows you to start planning your trip of a lifetime to these hallowed refuges. Over 300 awe-inspiring images will let you experience more than 40 refuges right from your coffee table, including Alaska Maritime National Wildlife Refuge (NWR), Rachel Carson NWR, Bayou Sauvage NWR, Valle de Oro NWR, National Elk Refuge, and more.

Winner of the Samuel Eliot Morison Award for Naval Literature Winner of the Fraunces Tavern Museum Book Award A Massachusetts Center for the Book "Must-Read" Finalist for the New England Society Book Award Finalist for the Boston Authors Club Julia Ward Howe Book Award The bestselling author of Black Flags, Blue Waters reclaims the daring freelance sailors who proved essential to the winning of the Revolutionary War. The heroic story of the founding of the U.S. Navy during the Revolution has been told many times, yet largely missing from maritime histories of America’s first war is the ragtag fleet of private vessels that truly revealed the new nation’s character—above all, its ambition and entrepreneurial ethos. In Rebels at Sea, best-selling historian Eric Jay Dolin corrects that significant omission, and contends that privateers, as they were called, were in fact critical to the American victory. Privateers were privately owned vessels, mostly refitted merchant ships, that were granted permission by the new government to seize British merchantmen and men of war. As Dolin stirringly demonstrates, at a time when the young Continental Navy numbered no more than about sixty vessels all told, privateers rushed to fill the gaps. Nearly 2,000 set sail over the course of the war, with tens of thousands of Americans serving on them and capturing some 1,800 British ships. Privateers came in all shapes and sizes, from twenty-five foot long whaleboats to full-rigged ships more than 100 feet long. Bristling with cannons, swivel guns, muskets, and pikes, they tormented their foes on the broad Atlantic and in bays and harbors on both sides of the ocean. The men who owned the ships, as well as their captains and crew, would divide the profits of a successful cruise—and suffer all the more if their ship was captured or sunk, with privateersmen facing hellish conditions on British prison hulks, where they were treated not as enemy combatants but as pirates. Some Americans viewed them similarly, as cynical opportunists whose only aim was loot. Yet Dolin shows that privateersmen were as patriotic as their fellow Americans, and moreover that they greatly contributed to the war’s success: diverting critical British resources to protecting their shipping, playing a key role in bringing France into the war on the side of the United States, providing much-needed supplies at home, and bolstering the new nation’s confidence that it might actually defeat the most powerful military force in the world. Creating an entirely new pantheon of Revolutionary heroes, Dolin reclaims such forgotten privateersmen as Captain Jonathan Haraden and Offin Boardman, putting their exploits, and sacrifices, at the very center of the conflict. Abounding in tales of daring maneuvers and deadly encounters, Rebels at Sea presents this nation’s first war as we have rarely seen it before.

The National Wildlife Refuges provides a comprehensive examination of the laws and policies governing management of the national wildlife refuges, offering for the first time a practical description and analysis of the management regime outlined in the 1997 National Wildlife Refuge System Improvement Act. The 1997 act is the first new statute governing a system of federal public lands enacted since the 1970s. The evolution of law governing the refuge system parallels broader trends in public land management and environmental protection, making the refuge system a valuable case study for those interested in environmental management, policy, and law. The book: describes the National Wildlife Refuge System and its legal history offers a detailed breakdown of the 1997 act, including its purpose, designated uses, comprehensive planning provisions, substantive management criteria, and public participation aspects considers individual refuges and specific issues that apply to only certain refuges discusses oil and gas development in refuges offers observations about how well the refuge system law resolves historic tensions and achieves modern conservation goals A separate chapter examines the special rules governing refuges in Alaska and considers the contentious debate over the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Appendixes offer a reference of acronyms and abbreviations, a chronology of the refuge system's development, key statutory provisions (including the full text of the 1997 act), and basic information about each national wildlife refuge. With an approach to conservation that is increasingly prevalent around the world, the National Wildlife Refuge System is an important model for sustainable resource management, and the book's analyses of the refuge system's ecological management criteria, conflicts between primary and subsidiary uses, and tension between site-specific standards and uniform national goals all offer important lessons for environmental governance generally.

"This account of the armed takeover of Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Harney County, Oregon, explores the full context of the 2016 public land occupation, including the response of local and federal officials and the grassroots community reactions and resistence"--