Overview

As climate change encroaches, natural habitats are shifting while human development makes islands of even the largest nature reserves, stranding the biodiversity within them. The Spine of the Continent profiles the most ambitious conservation effort ever made: to create linked protected areas from the Yukon to Mexico. Backed by blue-ribbon scientific foundations, the Spine is a grassroots, cooperative effort among NGOs large and small and everyday citizens. It aims not only to make physical connections so nature will persist but also to make connections between people and the land. In this fascinating and important account, Mary Ellen Hannibal travels the length of the Spine and shares stories of the impassioned activists she meets and the critters they love.

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<p> This is the biography of a big conservation idea - connected wild lands and nature-friendly landscapes the length of the Rockies - and of the scientific and conservation pioneers making it actually happen. Mary Ellen Hannibal gives us an engrossing and inspiring story. The Spine of the Continent comes to life through those who are making it happen. This is a page-turner of science, action, and hope. - Thomas E. Lovejoy, Biodiversity Chair, the Heinz Center for Science, Economics and the Environment<p> The bad news is that human impacts are tearing nature apart at the seams. The good news is that conservation biology has quantified why we have to heal these wounds in our life-support systems, and how to do it. Scientists, NGOs, and regular people are joining in a geographical, social, and political effort to sustain wilderness along the Rocky Mountains--the most significant stretch of wilderness left on the continent. If we are to get any kind of handle on the extinction crisis that is decimating biodiversity, it will be by protecting the habitats that sustain it, along the Spine of the Continent. This is an engaging and entertaining book, and it is an important one. --Paul R. Ehrlich, Bing Professor of Population Studies, Stanford University and author of The Dominant Animal <p>A fine overview of wide-angle environmentalism. Hannibal explores the ambitious Spine of the Continent Initiative, a massive project to protect wildlife and land by connecting expanses of acreage across North America. -- Kirkus Reviews <p> The Spine of the Continent initiative may be the most daring and important conservation effort of our era, knitting the islands of natural beauty we've preserved (or ignored) during the last century into a connected, functioning ecosystem to sustain us all. Mary Ellen Hannibal delivers a compelling and personal narrative about science, nature, the extinction crisis -- and the men and women determined to restore America's most epic landscapes. --Edwa

This is the biography of a big conservation idea - connected wild lands and nature-friendly landscapes the length of the Rockies - and of the scientific and conservation pioneers making it actually happen. Mary Ellen Hannibal gives us an engrossing and inspiring story. The Spine of the Continent comes to life through those who are making it happen. This is a page-turner of science, action, and hope. - Thomas E. Lovejoy, Biodiversity Chair, the Heinz Center for Science, Economics and the Environment The bad news is that human impacts are tearing nature apart at the seams. The good news is that conservation biology has quantified why we have to heal these wounds in our life-support systems, and how to do it. Scientists, NGOs, and regular people are joining in a geographical, social, and political effort to sustain wilderness along the Rocky Mountains--the most significant stretch of wilderness left on the continent. If we are to get any kind of handle on the extinction crisis that is decimating biodiversity, it will be by protecting the habitats that sustain it, along the Spine of the Continent. This is an engaging and entertaining book, and it is an important one. --Paul R. Ehrlich, Bing Professor of Population Studies, Stanford University and author of The Dominant Animal A fine overview of wide-angle environmentalism. Hannibal explores the ambitious Spine of the Continent Initiative, a massive project to protect wildlife and land by connecting expanses of acreage across North America. -- Kirkus Reviews The Spine of the Continent initiative may be the most daring and important conservation effort of our era, knitting the islands of natural beauty we've preserved (or ignored) during the last century into a connected, functioning ecosystem to sustain us all. Mary Ellen Hannibal delivers a compelling and personal narrative about science, nature, the extinction crisis -- and the men and women determined to restore America's most epic landscapes. --Edwa

Author Information

Mary Ellen Hannibal's is the author of Evidence of Evolution. She has written for many publications, including the San Francisco Chronicle, Esquire, and Elle. A 2011 Alicia Patterson Foundation Fellow, she lives in the California Bay Area.

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