The most recommended books about threatened species

Because…the ending is amazing! Well, not only the ending, but wow, the ending.

Many middle grade novels deal with loss and grief, but none better than this one, with a catharsis that’s totally organic and fully earned. Inspired by Miller’s experience of his own mother’s heart transplant, this coming-of-age story follows Graham in his quest to spot the Snail Kite, an elusive bird his ill mother has always wanted to see.

Family and friendship are at the heart of the story, but along the way, readers learn lots of tantalizing truths about birds, those symbols of hope and promise.  

As an avid outdoors person and nature-lover, I found this gripping tale of Yellowstone wolves to be informative, inspiring, and sad all at the same time. 

The book combines fascinating biology about wolves and ecosystems with stories about the scientists and volunteers who work to protect them. I found myself empathizing with individual wolves almost like people; each has such a distinct personality. 

There’s a palpable tension throughout the book due to hunters’ guns bristling outside of Yellowstone’s protective borders. Ultimately, that begets tragedy.  

This beautifully illustrated picture book is dedicated to 15 endangered animals out of the 41,000 species on the International Union of Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List and explains why they’re in danger and what we can do. It features the most hunted and trafficked creature on the planet, the pangolin whose scales are made of keratin – the same as our nails – but are boiled to make pointless ‘medicines’ with zero effectiveness. Other creatures are the long-nosed crocodile, the peacock tarantula, and the snow leopard. With 60 percent of species being wiped out since the 1970s, perhaps it’s time for radical thinking. Should animals like tigers and cheetahs start charging companies for their images, spots, and stripes to raise money to protect what remains of their environments?

Serious writing about animals going extinct and how we are all to blame doesn’t necessarily resonate with everyone. Different communication approaches are needed.

In this book, writer Douglas Adams, and Zoologist Mark Cawardine document their travels to see very rare and endangered species like the Kakapo and the blind river dolphin. Never shying away from the realities faced by these species, this book has a wonderful, engaging lightness of touch that rides above the richness and wisdom underpinning the stories being told.

I love this book, not least because it makes me realize that, despite being very much a nature lover’s book, we need more narratives about nature that can appeal to people who don’t necessarily love nature but do enjoy entertaining, amusing, witty writing.

While researching my most recent book I wanted to explore the various ways people have interacted with wildlife throughout history. Mooellam’s book proved exactly what I was looking for. Fun and readable, it was a pleasant counterbalance to some of the hefty tomes I consulted, and yet it left me with much to think about.

This is a wonderfully imaginative book. It examines how Britain, a nation of nature lovers with over 1 million members of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, has become one of the most damaged and denuded countries on the planet. Although depressing in parts when looking at the depths of our global biodiversity crisis, this book explains how we can turn this around, heal our land, bring back wildlife, and ensure vibrant rural communities. 

The Tourist Trail is an eco-thriller featuring an unlikely but thoroughly entertaining cast of characters—among them a whale rescuer, a penguin researcher, an FBI agent, a computer tech, and an animal-rights activist—whose lives come together in the wild and dangerous waters of the Southern Ocean. All of these characters have secrets that are slowly revealed, and the alternating points of view pull readers toward a cinematic ending. The Tourist Trail is about endangered species and oceans at risk, but most of all, it’s about animals and the human heroes who devote their lives toward saving them—it’s not only an unputdownable mystery but a compassionate and heartfelt ode to our oceanic animals who need saving.

Alice Henderson is a new author in the environmental mystery subgenre, and this book is the first of a series. It’s clear from the novel’s start that wildlife biologist Alex Carter is not welcome in the rural Montana area, and the spooky setting of a remote lodge occupied only by the biologist seems almost reminiscent of The Shining at times. But for me, that creepiness is offset by interesting descriptions of the wild areas and the work of a wildlife biologist studying reclusive wolverines. A few details in the pursuit scene near the book’s conclusion strike me as a bit over the top, but overall, I enjoy this thrilling adventure in the wild, and I look forward to reading Henderson’s next book. 

For anyone who loves birds and nature like I do, seeing a wild California Condor soaring over a jagged rock face is a peak experience. Reading John Nielsen’s Condor makes this all the more meaningful as he chronicles the species’ decline over the last ten thousand years, as well as the equally dramatic story of its recovery.

It’s hard to believe there was controversy as recently as the 1980s over the need to save the Condor. Nielsen describes the competing interests, with detailed profiles of the key players.

For me, the most emotionally gripping part of the book was Nielsen’s description of the epic struggle of “Igor,” the last condor not in captivity, to remain free. It’s true that the scientists’ plan to increase the condors’ numbers by allowing them to breed safely in zoos ultimately succeeded. But I couldn’t help rooting for Igor as, time and again, he evaded… show more.

Cli-fi is a tricky subgenre to nail, but if there’s anyone who can manage to thread the needle between furious excoriation of the human species while serving up healthy dollops of wit and wisdom it’s Beauman, whose boundless imagination wordplay is put to good use in this dystopian near future dark comedy.

The plot follows Halyard, an environmental impact coordinator and Resaint, a biologist, in a quest to find the last Venomous Lumpsucker. Halyard wants to find it because he’s been short-selling ‘extinction credits’ (something you absolutely know companies would trade if the infrastructure existed), and Resaint has determined that its high intelligence means finding a survivor could rescue Halyard from the pit he’s dug himself.

They embark on a madcap globetrotting adventure wherein Beauman turns his incisive wit to skewering extrapolated visions of the environmental damage capitalism is currently wreaking on our planet. This book had me alternating between… show more.