Stinging Trees & Wait-A-Whiles: Confessions of a Rainforest Biologist Hardcover - 2000
by William Laurance
In a book that goes beyond the scientific research, a colorful biologist offers a personal and hilarious account of his field work in the Australian rainforest, describing his efforts at conservation and the zany characters--plant, animal, and human--that he encountered in the outpost of Millaa Millaa. 50 halftones. 16 color plates. 4 maps.
First line
The illuminated raindrops were like sparkling crystals.
From the rear cover
The last traces of Australia's tropical rainforest, where the southeasterly winds bring rain to the coastal mountains, contain a unique assemblage of plants and animals, some primitive, many that are found nowhere else on earth. And fifteen years ago, they also contained Bill Laurance, a budding ecologist seduced by the nature of the landscape in north Queensland. Laurance isn't your typical scientist: he wears cut-offs instead of white coats, enjoys the occasional food fight, and isn't afraid to speak his mind, even if it gets him into trouble, as it often did in the Australian rainforest and as he recounts in his marvelous Queensland journal Stinging Trees and Wait-a-Whiles.
As Laurance writes in the preface, the book is "not a typical account about scientific research--at least I hope not, for my colleagues' sake. Rather, it is a story about the joys and agonies of fieldwork, about zany characters and a wild clash of cultures." Laurance did his fieldwork and encountered these characters and cultures in a tiny town of loggers and farmers, a place where conservation issues have a direct impact on individual lives. He found himself at the center of a bitter battle over conservation strategies and became not only the subject of small-town gossip but also the object of many residents' hatred. Keeping ahead of his high-spirited young volunteers, hounded by the drug-sniffing local policeman, and all the while trying to further his own research amid natural and unnatural obstacles, Laurance offers us a personal and hilarious account of fieldwork and life in the Australian outpost of Millaa Millaa. Stinging Trees and Wait-a-Whiles is a biology lesson, a conservation primer, and an utterly energetic story about an impressionable young man who wound up at the epicenter of an issue that tore a small town apart.Details
- Title Stinging Trees & Wait-A-Whiles: Confessions of a Rainforest Biologist
- Author William Laurance
- Binding Hardcover
- Edition First Edition
- Pages 196
- Volumes 1
- Language ENG
- Publisher University of Chicago Press, Chicago, Illinois, U.S.A.
- Date September 1, 2000
- Illustrated Yes
- Features Bibliography, Dust Cover, Glossary, Illustrated, Maps, Table of Contents
- ISBN 9780226468969 / 0226468968
- Weight 1.09 lbs (0.49 kg)
- Dimensions 9.27 x 6.26 x 0.84 in (23.55 x 15.90 x 2.13 cm)
-
Themes
- Cultural Region: Australian
- Topical: Ecology
- Library of Congress subjects Ecology - Fieldwork - Australia - Millaa, Millaa Millaa (Qld.)
- Library of Congress Catalog Number 00020543
- Dewey Decimal Code 577.340
Media reviews
Citations
- Booklist, 09/15/2000, Page 196
- Kirkus Reviews, 08/15/2000, Page 1169
- Library Journal, 08/01/2000, Page 149
- Publishers Weekly, 08/11/2000, Page 0
- Scitech Book News, 12/01/2000, Page 62
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