In his new book “Deep Time Reckoning; How Future Thinking Can Help Earth Now” from MIT Press, Prof. Ialenti examines the challenges involved in thinking at a timescale far beyond that of our own, and perhaps even our own species’ frame of existence.
When it comes to remaining stands of European forest, the Białowieża Forest of eastern Poland and western Belarus is the one most often cited in regard to the importance of its conservation, the significance of the ecological research that takes place within it, and the political controversies in which it occupies a central flashpoint.
Following upon their publication of José R. Castelló’s 2016 “Bovids of the World” and 2018 “Canids of the World,” Princeton University Press has now let the cat out of the bag with their publication of his most recent taxonomic family-level field guide “Felids and Hyenas of the World: Wildcats, Panthers, Lynx, Pumas, Ocelots, Caracals, and Relatives.”
For the number of species within the category deemed to be of conservation concern, the amount of attention paid – particularly by the general public – to the world’s freshwater fishes is breathtakingly small. Unless a species is of interest to the sporting community or aquarist hobbyists, is introduced to a new area where it is identified as a threat to the native species or deemed a nuisance to the local humans, or its existence in a particular geographic location involves it in a legal dispute, the outcome of which could ensure or prevent a large corporation from increasing its profits, one rarely hears or reads much news pertaining to the planet’s freshwater fish species.