The Bookshop

Sworn to Protect

There are many conservationists who will lay their dollar on the line to help preserve wildlife, but there are few who will lay their life on the line. Lieutenant Terry Hodges, a California Department of Fish and Game Warden, is one of the few. Given the busy work schedule of a warden, how he found time to pen Sworn to Protect, a compilation of adventures experienced by California’s wildlife law enforcement officers, is beyond my comprehension. Maybe it came together during those midnight to 4:00 a.m. stakeouts with a penlight poised between his upper and lower incisors and a Rite-in-the-Rain pen and pad in hand.

As I read Sworn to Protect, it occurred to me that Terry is to wildlife law enforcement what James Herriot was to veterinary medicine. Each of the book’s 25 chapters relates a “war story,” giving you a brush with psychologically interesting, bizarre, and downright mean “outlaws.” All of the stories are true, only the names have been changed, as Terry says, “to protect the privacy of those who have already paid the price for their misdeeds” and to protect the identity of law enforcement officers, many of whom work undercover.

In reading this book, you will experience a range of emotions. You will laugh at the mother-and-felon-son poaching team and be ready to judge guilty and sentence to hanging the catfish poachers who bait their lines with hatchling swallows gigged from a nesting colony. The book is filled with stories capable of invoking tears, smiles, rage, and pride, but inspiration for sure.

Twice chosen as Writer of the Year by Outdoor Writers Association of California, Terry offers an entertaining read and a peek into the clandestine world of wildlife law enforcement. Order Sworn to Protect from Terry Hodges, P.O. Box 1126, Oroville, California 95965, or call toll-free (800) 499-8420. Hardcover, 5 3/4 x 8 3/4, 317 pages. Cost: $19.95, plus $2.00 shipping.

Photo Pantanal

If you are one of those who learns best through visual stimuli, and if you are one of those who would like to know more about the habitats and wildlife in the southern half of our Western Hemisphere, Photo Pantanal is a fit for your profile. Tom J. Ulrich, a world-renowned wildlife photographer, has captured on film the essence of the Pantanal, a 68,000-square-mile wetland located in southwestern Brazil, eastern Bolivia, and northern Paraguay.

Photo Pantanal manifests the old Chinese adage “One picture is worth 1,000 words.” Using 240 color images, Mr. Ulrich shares his adventure in this wild area with you through his book. He also provides brief narratives of the wetland’s history, of the people who live on and use the Pantanal, and of the threats the wetland faces. He also offers anecdotal information about some of the species he photographed: “The Birds,” “The Mammals,” and “Everything else.”

Ducks Unlimited, Inc., and the USDA Forest Service have been working with partners in the Pantanal to uncover its secrets. Photo Pantanal will allow you to see some of what they may have observed. Softcover, 11 x 8.5, 240 color images, in English or Portuguese. Order from Tom J. Ulrich, P.O. Box 361, West Glacier, Montana 59936, (406) 387-5521, tjulrich@cyberport.net. Cost is US$25.00, plus shipping.

The Laguna Madre of Texas and Tamaulipas

Whether you’re an environmental scientist, resource manager, conservation enthusiast, birder, fisherman, coastal resident, armchair traveler, or all of the above, you’ll find The Laguna Madre of Texas and Tamaulipas a valuable and interesting guide to the largest hypersaline wetland ecosystem in the world. The binational Laguna Madre extends along 277 miles of shoreline between southern Texas and northeast Mexico. It contains a diversity of habitats that sustain avian, aquatic, and human populations alike.

Authors/editors John W. Tunnell, Jr., and Frank W. Judd take us on the most comprehensive journey ever offered through this vast ecosystem via numerous enlightening essays by scientists and conservationists, and 150 figures and photos. This book represents 70 years worth of literature and research, rolled into one volume. Part I’s chapters provide an overview of the Laguna Madre’s geography, climate, and natural history, while Part II’s chapters delve into its habitats and wildlife. The chapters in Part III deal with an array of special issues and concerns unique to the Laguna Madre and its wildlife and people.

Hard cover, 8.5 x 11, English, 346 pages, color photographs and black-and-white figures. Available in bookstores or by calling the Texas A&M University Press toll-free in the United States at (800) 826-8911. Also available through on-line ordering at www.tamu.edu/upress. The cost is US$60.00, plus shipping.

American Sportsmen and the Origins of Conservation

It may surprise many to learn that sportsmen were originally in the vanguard of the conservation movement. John Reiger’s American Sportsmen and Origins of Conservation, born out of research for his doctoral degree in history, provides an authoritative look at these early conservationists. In this the third, revised edition, he broadens the book’s historic sweep.

Beginning in the 1870s, sportsmen across America formed hundreds of organizations that not only fostered responsibility for game habitats but also spearheaded the creation of national parks, forests, and wildlife refuges. Reiger tells how these “gentlemen” hunters and anglers, outdoor journals like Forest and Stream, and organizations such as the Boone and Crockett Club—founded by Theodore Roosevelt and George Bird Grinnell, and other prominent sportsmen—lobbied for laws regulating the taking of wildlife, and helped to arouse public interest in wilderness preservation.

In this new edition, Reiger traces the antecedents of the sportsmen’s conservation movement to the years before the Civil War. He extends his coverage into the present by demonstrating how the 19th century sportsman’s code—with its demand for taking responsibility for the total environment—continues to be the cornerstone of the sporting ethic. A new Epilogue depicts leading environmental thinker Aldo Leopold as the best-known exponent of this sportsman-conservationist ideal. Reiger does all this in a writing style that leaves the impression you have just read an intriguing novel rather than an academic treatise.

To order with Visa or Mastercard, call The University of Arizona Press toll free at (800) 426-3797, or send a payment of $24.95, plus $3.00 shipping for the first book, plus $2.00 for each additional book to The University of Arizona Press, 355 S. Euclid Avenue, Suite 103, Tucson, Arizona 85719. For surface delivery outside the United States, add $1.00 more per book. Softcover, 6 x 9, 352 pages, 90 historic photographs, notes, annotated bibliography, index. ISBN 0-87071-487-2.