Extreme conservation : life at the edges of the world

Summary: "On the Tibetan Plateau, there are wild yaks with blood cells thinner than those of horses' by half, enabling the endangered yaks to survive at 40 below zero and in the lowest oxygen levels of the mountaintops. But climate change is causing the snow patterns here to shift, and with the snows, the entire ecosystem. Food and water are vaporizing in this warming environment, and these beasts of ice and thin air are extraordinarily ill-equipped for the change. A journey into some of the most forbidding landscapes on earth, [this book] is an eye-opening, steely look at what it takes for animals like these to live at the edges of existence. But more than this, it is a revealing exploration of how climate change and people are affecting even the most far-flung niches of our planet." -- From Amazon.com summary.

Record details

ISBN: 9780226366265
ISBN: 022636626X
ISBN: 9780226366432
Physical Description: print
xxi, 376 pages, 16 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations (some color), maps ; 24 cm
Publisher: Chicago ; The University of Chicago Press, 2018.
Copyright: ©2018

Content descriptions

Bibliography, etc. Note:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 343-348) and index.

Formatted Contents Note:

The intersection of continents : Beringia's silent bestiary -- Motherless children in black and white -- Before now -- Beyond Arctic wind -- Where worlds collide -- Muskoxen in ice -- When the snow turns to rain -- Sentinels of Tibetan plateau -- Below the margins of glaciers -- The ethereal yak -- Birthplace of angry gods -- Gobi ghosts, Himalayan shadows -- Counting for conservation -- To kill a saiga -- Victims of fashion -- In the valley of Takin -- Pavilions where snow dragons hide -- Adapt, move, or die -- The struggle for existence -- A postapocalyptic world: Vrangel -- Nyima.