Bird versus Bulldozer
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A Quarter-Century Conservation Battle in a Biodiversity Hotspot
Audrey L. Mayer
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Format: HardcoverPrice: $30.00
An examination of the struggle to conserve biodiversity in urban regions, told through the story of the threatened coastal California gnatcatcher
The story of the threatened coastal California gnatcatcher is a parable for understanding the larger ongoing struggle to conserve biodiversity in regions confronted with intensifying urban development. Because this gnatcatcher depends on vanishing coastal sage scrub in Southern California, it has been regarded as a flagship species for biodiversity protection since the early 1990s. But the uncertainty of the gnatcatcher’s taxonomic classification—and whether it can be counted as a “listable unit” under the Endangered Species Act—has provoked contentious debate among activists, scientists, urban developers, and policy makers.
Synthesizing insights from ecology, environmental history, public policy analysis, and urban planning as she tracks these debates over the course of the past twenty-five years, Audrey L. Mayer presents an ultimately optimistic take on the importance of much-neglected regional conservation planning strategies to create sustainable urban landscapes that benefit humans and wildlife alike.
Audrey L. Mayer is a professor of ecology and environmental policy in the College of Forest Resources and Environmental Science at Michigan Technological University. Her research focuses on the intersection of ecology and public policy.
“In Audrey Mayer, the California gnatcatcher has found its brilliant biographer, who in Bird versus Bulldozer identifies the myriad ways this small bird has protected Southern California’s once-rich biodiversity.”—Char Miller, author of Not So Golden State: Sustainability vs. the California Dream
“In lively prose, Mayer brings us up to date on the long-running California gnatcatcher controversy, and articulates valuable lessons it teaches for conservation in today’s urbanizing, climate-challenged, world.”—Holly Doremus, University of California, Berkeley
Publication Date: March 9, 2021
9 b/w illus.
