COMING FULL CIRCLE—A Sweeping Saga of Conservation Stewardship Across America
A Sweeping Saga of Conservation Stewardship Across America
ISBN: 978-1-80074-568-1
by Budd Titlow & Mariah Tinger
As a career wildlife biologist and environmental scientist, I (Budd) am often asked to recommend a book that tells the full story of environmental management and the land conservation ethic in the United States. I can never come up with a good suggestion—mainly because such a book doesn’t exist. Until now, that is. This literary gap is exactly why Mariah and I decided to write this historical novel.
Following the fortunes and foibles of a multi-generational American family, this book explains how we took our country to the brinks of both the?Climate Crash?and the?Sixth Extinction?and then managed to solve them both. Chockful of tall tales—liberally blended with historic facts—the engaging text provides an entertaining and enlightening description of how our Nation’s natural history unfolded from colonial days through the present.?
As the journey progresses, readers experience a vivid array of frontier vignettes—including wagon-crushing landslides, badlands raiding parties, frontier smack-downs, buffalo killing fields, life-threatening blizzards, deadly avalanches, alpha predator battles, Gold Rush boomtowns, and bounteous wildlife habitats. Along the way, they also witness heart-warming friendships among white settlers and Native Americans while also meeting wildlife slaughtering ne’er do wells, fun-loving nomads, racist ferrymen, grizzled mountain men, trickster trappers, and ambushing poachers.
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Then—as our story moves through the?Industrial Revolution?and into modern times—merchants and developers start to dominate with their tawdry acts of wiping out entire bird rookeries for women’s hats, ditching and draining south Florida’s wilderness, blasting away mountaintops for coal, damming pristine rivers, destroying coastal shorelines, and fracking entire landscapes into oblivion.?
Emphasizing optimism, the last part of the book features the human resiliency that has allowed us to overcome the many existential threats—the Civil War, the Great Depression, the Dust Bowl, Nazi Germany, the Cold War, COVID-19—we have faced as a Nation. Strategic resolution begins with making?Sustainable Design,?Low Impact Development (LID), and?Best Management Practices (BMP’s)?the catch phrases for achieving world-wide?Harmonic Equilibrium Design (HED)?and?Smart Growth. Our story culminates with the onset of the?Renewables Revolution?featuring Congressional approval of the?Climate Crisis Resolution Act?(CCRA)?and the?Biodiversity Restoration Act?(BRA)—joint legislation which finally puts these twin crises to rest for the benefit of all future generations of Americans.
As an aside to the main story, our readers will get to know the heroes who spawned and nurtured our Nation’s bold conservation movement. People like John Muir, Harriett Hemenway, Roger Tory Peterson, Marjory Stoneman Douglas, Ding Darling, Aldo Leopold, Rachel Carson, Bob Marshall, David Brower, and Gaylord Nelson—who instilled within us the courage and will power to do the right things. Near the end of the book, we also feature the current leaders of the environmental battles against the climate crisis and biodiversity loss—including such luminaries as Bill McKibben, Al Gore, James Balog, Mark Jacobson, Elizabeth Kolbert, Naomi Klein, Naomi Oreskes, Katherine Hayhoe, Reverend Sally Bingham, and—yes—even Pope Francis.
As a father-daughter team—co-authoring our second book together—this story reflects our direct knowledge of multi-generations pursuing similar causes. Mariah and I are both environmental scientists and experienced climate communicators. I hold a graduate degree in wildlife management and have an extensive background protecting America’s natural resources. This is my fifth published book, but my first foray into applying my factual knowledge base to a fictional story. Mariah has a graduate degree in environmental management and is pursuing a Ph.D. in Science Communication. She teaches corporate sustainability strategies at Boston University’s esteemed Questrom School of Business.