The most recommended books on conservation biology

Who picked these books? Meet our 29 experts.

29 authors created a book list connected to conservation biology, and here are their favorite conservation biology books.
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Book cover of Gathering: Memoir of a Seed Saver

Amy Goldman Fowler Author Of The Melon

From my list on food gardening written by women.

Why am I passionate about this?

Amy Goldman is a gardener, author, artist, philanthropist, and well-known advocate for seed saving, plant breeding, and heirloom fruits and vegetables. Her mission is to celebrate and catalogue the magnificent diversity of standard, open-pollinated varieties, and to promote their conservation. Amy gave up a career as a clinical psychologist to follow her first love which was kitchen gardening. In her own words from Heirloom Harvest: “I have romantic leanings and tend to follow my heart… In hindsight, I know my heart steered me straight, and toward a future I could never have imagined…My passion for the fruits of the earth has deep roots….”

Amy's book list on food gardening written by women

Amy Goldman Fowler Why did Amy love this book?

Gathering: Memoir of a Seed Saver is a heartwarming story about the heirloom seed movement in America, charmingly told, with evocative details, by one of its prime movers. In 1975, Diane Ott Whealy, co-founded the Seed Savers Exchange (SSE), the nation’s premier non-profit seed-saving organization, with a gift of seeds passed down from her beloved paternal grandparents. The story goes from there. That heirloom fruits and vegetables are now ubiquitous in gardens and on kitchen and restaurant tables across the land, owes much to the dedication of Diane and her former husband, the SSE board, staff, membership, and supporters.

What Diane helped create is about a big idea: collecting, growing, and sharing heirloom seeds and plants to promote their conservation. Get the inside scoop in Gathering. I owe my own evolution as a gardener and advocate to my affiliation with SSE over the past 30 years. 

By Diane Ott Whealy,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Gathering as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Daughter of Iowa farmers, Missouri homesteader, and mother of five, Diane Ott Whealy never anticipated that one day she would become a leader in a grass-roots movement to preserve our agricultural biodiversity. The love for the land and the respect for heirloom seeds that Diane shared with her husband, Kent Whealy, led to their starting Seed Savers Exchange in 1975.

Seed Savers Exchange, the nation's premier nonprofit seed-saving organization, began humbly as a simple exchange of seeds among passionate gardeners who sought to preserve the rich gardening heritage their ancestors had brought to this country. Seeds that Ott Whealy herself…


Book cover of Diary of a Young Naturalist

Mark Abley Author Of Strange Bewildering Time: Istanbul to Kathmandu in the Last Year of the Hippie Trail

From Mark's 3 favorite reads in 2023.

Why am I passionate about this?

Author Father Traveler Nature lover Jam maker

Mark's 3 favorite reads in 2023

Mark Abley Why did Mark love this book?

Who could have expected a 14-year-old autistic boy, regularly bullied at school, to write with enthusiasm and eloquence about the natural world? Yet that’s exactly what the Irish teenager Dara McAnulty does.

He has a flair for language and a wild passion for other life forms. Whether he’s writing about dandelions (“A blaze of uplifting yellow to brighten even the greyest of days”), spiders (“They’re such a beguiling sight – it hurts me to think how people so carelessly kill them”), or birds (“Sparrow song, a coven of cackling. A raucous, glorious racket”), he wears his big heart on his sleeve.

Reading this book rekindled my own love of nature. It also taught me many lessons about autism. 

By Dara McAnulty,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked Diary of a Young Naturalist as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

WINNER OF BOOK OF THE YEAR, NARRATIVE NON-FICTION BRITISH BOOK AWARDS 2021

Rediscover the natural world with the multi-award winning phenomenon and youngest ever major literary prize winner in UK history.

'Miraculous memoir . . . profoundly moving' Observer

'Dara is an extraordinary voice and vision: brave, poetic, ethical, lyrical' Robert Macfarlane

'It's a diary but essentially timeless . . . It's really, really special' Chris Packham

ALSO WINNER OF: THE WAINWRIGHT PRIZE FOR NATURE WRITING 2020, AN POST IRISH BOOK AWARD FOR NEWCOMER OF THE YEAR 2020, BOOKS ARE MY BAG READERS AWARDS FOR NON-FICTION 2020; SHORTLISTED FOR: WATERSTONES…


Book cover of Wilding: The Return of Nature to a British Farm

Joann S. Grohman Author Of Keeping a Family Cow: The Complete Guide for Home-Scale, Holistic Dairy Producers

From my list on self-sufficiency in the oncoming global crisis.

Why am I passionate about this?

Home food production & self-sufficiency was Joann Grohman’s lifelong enthusiasm. With a young, hungry family of eight children, she started milking cows by hand and did so until she was almost 90 years old. She simply could not imagine life without a family cow, a remarkable animal that makes grass into nutritious milk and cream that can feed people, pigs, and chickens, as well as provide manure to grow vegetables. When asked if having a cow means feeling stuck on the farm, she countered that a cow supports a beautiful life that can be found in no other way. 

Joann's book list on self-sufficiency in the oncoming global crisis

Joann S. Grohman Why did Joann love this book?

This book has had a huge impact in the UK, kickstarting a revolution in land management. Ms. Tree's husband inherited a very large estate in southern England, and they tried hard to continue farming in the usual way, raising grain. After a series of failures, economic and otherwise, they finally decided that something radically different would have to be tried and took on the challenge of allowing their land to revert to nature.

The book has been described as 'thrilling, inspiring, and deeply moving,' and it's all of that and a real page-turner.

By Isabella Tree,

Why should I read it?

9 authors picked Wilding as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

'A poignant, practical and moving story of how to fix our broken land, this should be conservation's salvation; this should be its future; this is a new hope' - Chris Packham

In Wilding, Isabella Tree tells the story of the 'Knepp experiment', a pioneering rewilding project in West Sussex, using free-roaming grazing animals to create new habitats for wildlife. Part gripping memoir, part fascinating account of the ecology of our countryside, Wilding is, above all, an inspiring story of hope.

Winner of the Richard Jefferies Society and White Horse Book Shop Literary Prize.

Forced to accept that intensive farming on…


Book cover of The Home Place: Memoirs of a Colored Man's Love Affair with Nature

Jack E. Davis Author Of The Gulf: The Making of an American Sea

From my list on placed-based nature writing.

Why am I passionate about this?

I'm a writer and professor of environmental history who divides his time between two “villes,” Gainesville, Florida, and Harrisville, New Hampshire. On April 16, 2018, while in my campus office excoriating a graduate student for his sloppy writing, I learned that my book The Gulf: The Making of an American Sea won the Pulitzer Prize in History. The chastened student subsequently revised his work and turned in a perfect paper, and I’ve been trying to live up to the distinction of the prize ever since. My first effort to do so will appear in the form of my latest book, The Bald Eagle: The Improbable Journey of America’s Bird.

Jack's book list on placed-based nature writing

Jack E. Davis Why did Jack love this book?

Like Rachel Carson, Lanham is a scientist who avoids the stilted style of his profession. His book was also a finalist for the John Burroughs Medal, and like Janisse Ray, he published with Milkweed Editions, a powerhouse publisher in environmental literature. As a black man and lover of nature, Lanham describes himself as an “unusually colored fish out of water.” Growing up in rural South Carolina, he was surrounded by woods and wetlands that beckoned his curiosity on solitary wanderings. Everything captivated him: insects, reptiles, rocks, plants, and, especially, birds. When baptized in his grandmother’s authoritarian religious faith, he questioned the ritual but not the algae and “little black commas of tadpoles” in the devotional waters. Sometime after, he came to believe in Nature’s worthiness for worship, a faith that forms the heart of this elegant book. 

By J. Drew Lanham,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked The Home Place as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

"In me, there is the red of miry clay, the brown of spring floods, the gold of ripening tobacco. All of these hues are me; I am, in the deepest sense, colored." From these fertile soils of love, land, identity, family, and race emerges The Home Place, a big-hearted, unforgettable memoir by ornithologist and professor of ecology J. Drew Lanham.

Dating back to slavery, Edgefield County, South Carolina-a place "easy to pass by on the way somewhere else"-has been home to generations of Lanhams. In The Home Place, readers meet these extraordinary people, including Drew himself, who over the course…


Book cover of Faith of Cranes: Finding Hope and Family in Alaska

Dave Atcheson Author Of Dead Reckoning: Navigating a Life on the Last Frontier, Courting Tragedy on Its High Seas

From my list on true Alaskan stories of adventure and inspiration.

Why am I passionate about this?

To me there is a connection to something larger than myself, an overriding sense of spirit that I only seem to encounter in the outdoors, beneath the canopy of old-growth forest, or within the gaze of ancient snow-capped peaks. Since arriving in Alaska over 30 years ago it is something I have continually sought among this state’s striking landscape and in many of my own adventures here. It's an attitude, a sensibility I also seek in the stories I read, an authenticity tied to place, but also an inclination toward hope and optimism, even a tenuous one, that we can all relate to; a sentiment I have always tried to incorporate into my own writing.

Dave's book list on true Alaskan stories of adventure and inspiration

Dave Atcheson Why did Dave love this book?

Faith of Cranes leans more on the inspiration than being an outright adventure, but an adventure it is. It’s a quiet, lilting, beautifully written memoir about home and community, and a former wildlife biologist’s attempt to recover his own sense of hope amidst the ravages of climate change. His story is adeptly tied to the history and lifecycle of the sandhill cranes he chronicles throughout the book, as well as his community, its natural beauty and the eccentric neighbors he shares it with. Ultimately, with the birth of his daughter, his hope is restored, at least to a point.  

By Hank Lentfer,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Faith of Cranes as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

 

Faith of Cranes weaves together three parallel narratives: the plight and beauty of sandhill cranes, one man's effort to recover hope amid destructive climate change, and the birth of a daughter.



CLICK HERE to download the first chapter from Faith of Cranes


"Faith of Cranes is a love song to the beauty and worth of the lives we are able to lead in the world just as it is, troubled though it be. Lentfer's storytelling achieves its joys and universality not via grand summations but via grounded self-giving, familial intimacy, funny friendships, attentive griefs, and full-bodied immersion in the Alaskan…


Book cover of Gathering: Memoir of a Seed Saver
Book cover of Diary of a Young Naturalist
Book cover of Wilding: The Return of Nature to a British Farm

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