Whenever I visit the UK, I am invariably asked about my experiences with large animals. Bears, moose, puma, wolves – they’re all a source of curiosity to enquirers from a land where the largest wild land mammal most people will ever see is a Fox. I welcome such opportunities to talk of North America’s charismatic megafauna, of course, as it gives me the chance to in turn learn more about how the British people see the wildlife of their own land.
In Mark Avery’s Sunday book review for this week, he takes up the work of an author whose bi-continental life has provided her with experiences of the wildlife of both the British Isles and North America: Philippa Forrester‘s On the Trail Of Wolves. Mark seems to have found the book “sensitive description of the place, the people and the issues.” As a life-long resident of the American west, I hope to one day give the week a reading myself, to discover what Ms. Forrester has discovered in researching it, and to assess how what she presents may agree with or differ from my own experiences in this admittedly contentious aspect of wildlife – human balance.
Links to Mark Avery’s Sunday book reviews appear in The Well-read Naturalist by special arrangement. You can find all of Mark’s past reviews as well as a wide-ranging collection of his other writings on his Standing Up for Nature website. Mark’s opinions regarding the books he reviews are his own.
