🎉   Please check out our new website over at books-etc.com.

Seller
Your price
£23.35
RRP: £28.95
Save £5.60 (19%)
Dispatched within 3-5 working days.

Relicts of a Beautiful Sea

Survival, Extinction, and Conservation in a Desert World

By (author) Christopher Norment
Format: Hardback
Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, United States
Published: 30th Sep 2014
Dimensions: w 156mm h 235mm d 24mm
Weight: 456g
ISBN-10: 1469618664
ISBN-13: 9781469618661
Barcode No: 9781469618661
Trade or Institutional customer? Contact us about large order quotes.
Synopsis
Along a tiny spring in a narrow canyon near Death Valley, seemingly against all odds, an Inyo Mountain slender salamander makes its home. "The desert," writes conservation biologist Christopher Norment, "is defined by the absence of water, and yet in the desert there is water enough, if you live properly." Relicts of a Beautiful Sea explores the existence of rare, unexpected, and sublime desert creatures such as the black toad and four pupfishes unique to the desert West. All are anomalies: amphibians and fish, dependent upon aquatic habitats, yet living in one of the driest places on earth, where precipitation averages less than four inches per year. In this climate of extremes, beset by conflicts over water rights, each species illustrates the work of natural selection and the importance of conservation. This is also a story of persistence - for as much as ten million years - amid the changing landscape of western North America. By telling the story of these creatures, Norment illustrates the beauty of evolution and explores ethical and practical issues of conservation: what is a four-inch-long salamander worth, hidden away in the heat-blasted canyons of the Inyo Mountains, and what would the cost of its extinction be? What is any lonely and besieged species worth, and why should we care?

New & Used

Seller Information Condition Price
-New£23.35
+ FREE UK P & P

What Reviewers Are Saying

Be the first to review this item. Submit your review now