Natural History, United States, Ecology, Animal behavior 

Like all forms of life that manage to survive, man has the capacity to adapt himself to the changing conditions of his environment; but man also has the ability to change, control and adapt the environment to his needs. How wisely is he using that awesome power?

The authors of this book - in a remarkable integration of magnificent photography, painstaking scholarship and firsthand observation - explore some of the basic ecological questions of our time. Nothing in nature is certain except change - but natural change usually is slow and almost imperceptible. Modern industrial needs have led to the quick destruction of habitats evolved over immense periods of geologic time, each habitat in balance with others and with the whole of the natural world. On a global scale, there is an acceleration of change now taking place which has never been witnessed before. Nor are its consequences fully understood.

With the human population on the rise, it is more than ever necessary for man to understand the natural world of which he is a part. How do plants and animals interact? How do food chains form? How is man affected when some of the animals in the food chain become poisoned? Is it rational to exterminate predators when the result is overpopulation, disease and starvation of the very game we seek to protect?

It is through study of ecology of man's world that solutions to growing problems may be found - problems of future food shortages, and of managing the atmosphere, the waters, and the land with all of its manifold forms of life, including man.

The authors spent four years in the preparation of Our Vanishing Wilderness. They traveled over 60,000 miles to record the majestic beauty of our landscapes and to catch the rare close-ups of wildlife that are included here.

Shelly Grossman, considered one of the great contemporary nature photographers, has had his work featured in numerous magazines and other publications in America and Europe. For the past 15 years he has concentrated his efforts in the field of natural history, working closely with many distinguished naturalists. Mr. Grossman used his camera to explore the land and wildlife of three continents. The American Society of Magazine Photographers hailed his pictures displayed in the book, Birds of Prey of the World (1964) as a milestone in photography of this kind. In 1967 he wrote and illustrated a best-selling children's introduction to ecology, The Struggle for Life in the Animal World.

Mary Louise (Mrs. Shelly) Grossman has been a close student of wildlife in its natural environment since childhood. She was born in Fargo, North Dakota, where her father was head of the Department of Zoology at the state college. During the past four years, in preparing this book, she has traveled the length and breadth of the country with her photographer-husband, climbing mountains and wading swamps to observe at firsthand what is happening to the American wilderness. She is co-author, along with John N. Hamlet, of Birds of Prey of the World. Shelley and Mary Louise Grossman are presently producing films on nature and conservation.

John N. Hamlet has devoted a lifetime to the study of animals and animal behavior in the field. Raised on a South Dakota ranch, Mr. Hamlet graduated from North Dakota State College in 1936. For the next 14 years he worked as a trouble-shooter for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Because of his knowledge of animal behavior he was "borrowed" by the National Foundation For Infantile Paralysis, and became director of the Foundation's Primate Research Center at Pritchardsville, South Carolina. In this capacity, he was responsible for the trapping of 5,000 Cynomolgus monkeys in the Philippines and Borneo; the animals were used in experiments that made possible the Salk polio vaccine. Since 1968, Hamlet has served as Chief Naturalist and Director of Homosassa Springs in Florida.

Taken from the inside flaps.