Forest & Desert Ecology, Natural Terrian - Deserts, Natural History - United States, Humanity - Relationship with Nature
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Overview
Despite its implacable, prehistoric appearance, the desert is a dynamic landscape, responsive to a myriad of influences. And as the population of the southwestern United States has exploded, humans have become the primary catalyst for desert change. In The Masked Bobwhite Rides Again, naturalist and ecologist John Alcock explores the complex relationship between the desert and its human inhabitants through a collection of thoughtful and thought-provoking essays. Blending his keen eye for the nuances of desert life with a wealth of scientific knowledge, he takes us on a tour of "a land that has been through a host of changes...some caused by slow-moving but inexorable geological and biological processes and others by fast-moving humans and our heavy-footed livestock." Alcock elegantly chronicles not only the changes wrought on the desert by people but also the ability of the desert to recover and rejuvenate if given the chance. He offers us hope through stories of small, tentative successes - such as the reintroduction of the masked bobwhite quail in southeastern Arizona - all the while gently but persistently prodding us to "maintain the biological heritage that...has the capacity to enrich the lives of us all, if we would just respect it a little more."Editorials
Library Journal
Join Alcock on a tour of the Sonoran Desert and a trek along Usery Peak and Superstition Mountain in southeastern Arizona as he offers his observations of this remarkable desert ecosystem and its environs. In a series of essays, Alcock, a zoology professor at Arizona State University in Tempe and the author of several works on the Sonoran Desert, describes his encounters with saguaro cactus, kangaroo rats, army ants, termites, gnatcatchers, towhees, coyotes, black bears, warblers, and other flora and fauna and their behaviors and roles in the desert ecosystem. He discusses the history of settlement and growth in Arizona and the hostility of Anglo settlers toward Native Americans, which virtually destroyed the Arizona Apaches. Alcock is not kind to ranchers, whom he faults for causing ecological damage by grazing livestock on deserts and other public lands and for failing to understand the precarious balance of the desert. All readers will easily identify with Alcock's love of this land and wish they were there. Highly recommended.-- Irwin Weintraub, Rutgers Univ. Lib., Piscataway, N.J.Roland Wulbert
The only notable flaw of Alcock's book of nature essays and autobiographical fragments is the cute title. True, the essays can be amusing, but they are never supercilious, as amusement is in this era of ecological sanctimoniousness. Alcock subordinates humor to a curiosity informed by scientific tough-mindedness that empowers readers to respond reciprocally. We are intrigued by the middens Sonoran woodrats build in their borrows and the way those middens serve them as toilets and the way, over millennia, the congealed urine and feces preserved the garbage for natural historians--and for starving pioneers (YUCK!). Trash, it turns out, is, as much as anything, an organizing theme of the book. It engenders curiosity when it's animal--woodrat aspic, for instance, or mammoth droppings--or the "paleotrash" of the Clovis people, the first human inhabitants of North America. It is objectionable when it is our modern effluvia; but even then, like evil in medieval justifications of God's ways to humans, it seems to have its place.Book Details
Published
September 1, 1993
Publisher
Univ of Arizona Pr
Pages
186
Format
Hardcover
ISBN
9780816513871