Elegy For a River

Whiskers, Claws and Conservation's Last, Wild Hope

Elegy For a River
Tom Moorhouse
RRP:
NZ$ 40.00
Our Price:
NZ$ 32.00
Hardback
h225 x 145mm - 272pg
25 Mar 2021 UK
International import eta 7-19 days
9780857527011
Out Of Stock
Currently no stock in-store, stock is sourced to your order
A conservationist' s hopeful and charming study of our endangered riverbanks and specifically the water vole, once ubiquitous and now close to extinction. Water voles are small, brownish, bewhiskered and charming. Made famous by ' Ratty' in The Wind in the Willows, once they were a ubiquitous part of our waterways. They were a totem of our rivers. Now, however, they are nearly gone. This is their story, and the story of a conservationist with a wild hope- that he could bring them back. Tom Moorhouse spent eleven years beside rivers, fens, canals, lakes and streams, researching British wildlife. Quite a lot of it tried to bite him. He studied four main species - two native and endangered, two invasive and endangering - beginning with water voles. He wanted to solve their conservation problems. He wanted to put things right. This book is about whether it worked, and what he learnt - and about what those lessons mean, not just for water voles but for all the world' s wildlife. It is a book for anyone who has watched ripples spread on lazy waters, and wondered what moves beneath. Or who has waited in quiet hope for a rustle in the reeds, the munch of a stem, or the patter of unseen paws.
Oh my ears and whiskers. I loved this. . . Self-deprecating humour combines with a paean to the wonders of creation, hard facts and hope for an imperilled species. * Saga * It flows from the heart, eddies with fascinating information, and runs cool and clear with concern about the state of our rivers. They now have their champion. * John Lewis-Stempel * What a book. It has everything I love. It is lively, it is tender, it is fascinating, it starts small and very particular, and then - my God - by the end you are doing the Hallelujah chorus. It feels such an important book and I hope that everyone reads it. It seems to me to deliver on the greatest thing a book can achieve - when, through reading, you feel changed and inspired to act. * Rachel Joyce, author of Miss Benson' s Beetle and The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry * Tom Moorhouse has written a book about ecological loss that is also somehow laugh-out-loud funny - passionate, warm and full of fascinating insights into the eccentric world of the field naturalist. ' * Isabella Tree, author of WILDING * Beautiful and important. Tom' s book is extraordinary in its gentle curiosity and sympathy for his subjects. In Elegy for a River he takes us back to our childhoods. He then holds our confused moral compass up to a microscope to make us realise that only a return to that place can save us. I love this book. * Sir Tim Smit KBE, Executive Vice-Chairman and Co-founder of the Eden Project *
Dr Tom Moorhouse is a conservation research scientist who has worked for twenty years at the Wildlife Conservation Research Unit, part of Oxford University' s Zoology Department. He completed his DPhil on the conservation ecology of water voles in 2003 at Oxford. His work subsequently focused on water vole reintroductions, then the management of signal crayfish and hedgehog conservation. More recently he has studied the impacts of wildlife tourism and of global demand for wildlife products. Outside of conservation research, Tom is the author of award-winning children' s fiction. He has also published a number of public engagement pieces based on his own work, including the winner of the 2003 New Scientist New Millennial Science Writing Competition, entitled Reintroducing ' Ratty' . He lives with his wife and daughter in Oxford and spends as much time as possible beside water.
Status: Active
ISBN-13: 9780857527011
Published: 25 Mar 2021
Published In: United Kingdom
Imprint: Doubleday
Publisher: Transworld Publishers
Format: Hardback
Height: 225mm
Width: 145mm
Spine: 26mm
Weight: 382g
Pages: 272

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