McCloskey has edited and written several nature guides for Lone Pine Publishing, including her recent “Bear Attacks” books. She has a Bachelor in Science, with a major in conservation biology and management from the University of Alberta. She surveys current wolf management across Canada: culling, hunting and trapping; aerial shooting, poisoning, and sterilization. There are some other strategies which involve non-lethal measures, as well as mitigation of human impact on wildlife. She observes that the wolf is now primarily a Canadian species, although there has been some reintroduction to the United States. In general, wolves will avoid urban areas, while coyotes can become habituated to garbage. The animal story is a Canadian genre. The word “bounty” has been replaced by “incentive” and “compensation”. This book contains maps, black-and-white photographs, and References.
Tamara Eder has a degree in environmental conservation sciences. Gregory Kennedy is a naturalist and historian, producer of film and television programs. Their book, with a Quick Reference Guide, contains full-colour photographs and illustrations; maps, a glossary, selected references, and an index. We find: hoofed animals; whales, dolphins, & porpoises; carnivores, rodents, hares & pikas; the mole family of insectivores & opossums; with keys to bats and shrews. Among the carnivores, in the dog family, are: coyotes, grey wolf, arctic fox; swift fox, red fox, and grey fox. Although rabbits and hares belong to the same family, you will learn their distinct differences.
Only nine humans have been killed by wolves in North America in the past 110 years. As the number of moose, elk, deer, and other prey species grow, so do the number of wolves. (Source: “Controlling the wolf population won’t save caribou, biologists say”, by Ed Struzik, Edmonton Journal, Monday, June 13, 2011, B3.)
Anne Burke
With an informative introduction on “The Key Role Played by Wolves in Community Ecology and Wildlife Management Planning”, this collection of nine essays has been divided into two Sections. Section I “Re-discovering the Role of Wolves in Natural and Semi-natural Ecosystems” deals, in part, with the population genetics of wolf-like canids, establishing “What, if anything, is a wolf?” The articles examine the recovering of wolves in Banff and Yellowstone National Parks, as well as comparing the future of wolves and moose.
The Section II “Wolves’ Role in Wildlife Management Planning” includes a study of “Human Impacts in Protected Wolf Populations, Hunting and Removal of Wolves.” The articles analyze anthropogenically-modified snow conditions on wolf predatory behaviour; re-colonizing the wolf population in two Scandinavian countries; as well as wolf management in Eastern Europe, in comparison with North America. In addition, a snowmobile wolf hunt in the North West Territories is described, with reducing wolf depredation risk in Alberta.
In Alberta, wolves are “relatively abundant” in northern and central Alberta; wolves in southern Alberta are restricted to the foothills of the Rocky Mountains along the southwest forest and agricultural fringe. The authors observe that “non-lethal means”, such as relocation, to protect livestock may be essential to maintain a viable wolf population in southern Alberta. (p. 262)
Grizzly bears are hit and killed by trains in Banff National Park. Biologists and ecologists study bear-and-wolf behaviours, with radio-or-satellite-collars. To capture wolves, nets are cast from a helicopter and the wolves anaesthetized. Wolves use roads for easier transportation because they are free of obstacles and thick vegetation. In Canada, wolf hunting and trapping are both allowed. Ranchers can kill wolves that are considered a threat to their livestock year-round. Governments may kill wolves to protect prey populations.
Complementing the text are 38 colour photographs, grouped at the back of the book, 44 black-and-white figures, and 9 pencil drawings. There is a profusion of tables and figures, with a bibliography of “Literature Cited” (pp. 287-352).
This is number 3 in the Energy, Ecology, And The Environment Series, preceded by Place: Linking Nature, Culture, and Planning, by J. Gordon Nelson and Patrick L. Lawrence, Number 1, and A New Era for Wolves and People: Wolf Recovery, Human Attitudes, and Policy, edited by Marco Musiani, Luigi Boitani, and Paul Paquet, Number 2.
Both Musiani and Paquet teach at the University of Calgary. Paquet was the founder and director of the Central Rockies Wolf Project in Canmore, Alberta.
The List of Tables and Figures, with Biographies for the Editors, Contact Authors and Artists, should have been placed near the end of the book.
Anne Burke
This joy-filled narrative is a recent contribution to the grand tradition of the animal story, practiced by Edward William Thomson (1849-1924), author of Old Man Savarin Stories; and Americans Ernest Thompson Seton and Teddy Roosevelt.
Some of these were fictionalized accounts of animal-human interactions, based in first-hand experience. More recently, a journalist’s 2005 bestseller about a family’s dog, (after a move from Michigan to Florida) as the memoir by John Grogan, Marley and Me: Life and Love with the World’s Worst Dog became a movie. The title was abbreviated from the adage “Birds of a Feather, Flock Together” written by and for a naturalist; of interest to birders, child and child-like readers.
This title, which incorporates some of her fan mail from readers, contains black-and-white illustrations by the author, who is also an artist, sculptor, and poet. The chronology cycles through spring and summer, ending with winter solstice. Johns lives and paints in rural Nova Scotia. She manifests maternal pride in her adopted babies, youngsters, and adolescents, who seem “like new kids in a schoolyard” (p. 228)
Gannets are among her avian convalescents, while starlings and deer make their appearances in this back-garden-centric setting. Her attempts at gardening are sometimes foiled by raccoons, snakes, mice, and squirrels, much as prey animals are sanctioned by predators. A queue of cow, sandpipers, cats, and starlings accompany her efforts and, with varying results, to release some of them into the wild.
More often, rehabilitated grosbeak, raven, ladyhawk, falcons, and woodpeckers must be fed, on occasion by bug and worm hunting, in order to provide for their growing ménage of animals. Naming plays a significant role in habituated pets, such as the goats, “Mower” and “Munch”, her robins and turkeys, her husband “Mack”, “Kiwi” male and “Starr” a female, “Beejay”and “Pip” bluejays, to promote her anthropomorphic point of view.
Rehabilitation of injured wildlife may prepare them only to become part of a domestic household as family members. Johns named her rabbit “Edna”, after Edna Staebler, a dear friend and long-time writer of cookbooks. “Blossom”, a chicken, leads a variety of pigeons, warbler, ducks, “Whiskey” a grey jay, and assorted woodcocks.
I concur with a reader, that:
"I now see animals and other living creatures with an entire[ly] new perspective. I always knew they can show emotion as well as deep feeling, but it is the birds that surprised me most of all." (p. 61)
Johns is the author of Sharing a Robin’s Life (1994) which won the Edna Staebler Award for Creative Non-Fiction, the only such award in Canada, endowed by Staebler (1906-2006) and administered by Wilfred Laurier University). Other popular titles are: In the Company of Birds; For the Birds; A Feathered Family; and Wild and Woolly.
Anne Burke
This text, with full colour photographs and a map, is suitable for neophytes as well as experienced gardeners who face the challenging growing conditions of gardens in the Canadian prairies and the northern Great Plains of the United States. Some of the options are: designing by habitat as well as by function. The step-by-step process involves purchasing, planting, and maintaining gardens. There are details about getting ready; purchase and planting; propagating, and maintaining. Proper preparation includes spacing. Propagation involves seed; suckers, divisions, and layers; hardwood and softwood cuttings. Maintenance calls for mulching, pruning, fertilizing, and pest and disease control.
This is an able follow-up to Best Trees and Shrubs for the Prairies by the same authors. Skinner has a B.S.A. in Horticulture from the University of Manitoba and Williams, who is a retired Horticultural Specialist at the University of Saskatchewan, has a B.Sc. and M.Sc. in Horticulture from the University of Saskatchewan. She is the author of Creating the Prairie Xeriscape and of In a Cold Land: Saskatchewan’s Horticultural Pioneers and co-author of Perennials for the Plains and Prairies.
There is a Glossary of Terms, a Bibliography for further reading, and an Index.
Anne Burke