Reindeer Chronicles

And Other Stories from the Growing Grassroots Movement to Follow Nature's Lead and Heal the Earth

256 pages

English language

Published May 23, 2020 by Chelsea Green Publishing.

ISBN:
978-1-60358-865-2
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5 stars (3 reviews)

Award-winning science journalist Judith D. Schwartz takes us first to China’s Loess Plateau, where a landmark project has successfully restored a blighted region the size of Belgium, lifting millions of people out of poverty. She journeys on to Norway, where a young indigenous reindeer herder challenges the most powerful orthodoxies of conservation―and his own government. And in the Middle East, she follows the visionary work of an ambitious young American as he attempts to re-engineer the desert ecosystem, using plants as his most sophisticated technology.

Schwartz explores regenerative solutions across a range of landscapes: deserts, grasslands, tropics, tundra, Mediterranean. She also highlights various human landscapes, the legacy of colonialism and industrial agriculture, and the endurance of indigenous knowledge.

The Reindeer Chronicles demonstrates how solutions to seemingly intractable problems can come from the unlikeliest of places, and how the restoration of local water, carbon, nutrient, and energy cycles can play a …

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Change is Possible

5 stars

I made a video review: sunbeam.city/system/media_attachments/files/109/003/050/194/362/756/original/0d0cad431b57cf3a.mp4

This book looks at the work that goes into ecosystem restoration, exploring case studies from across north-central china, the Sinai, Yemen, New Mexico, Spain, and many others. What's striking is that the work is not simply planting trees or protecting animal species. Each story is deeply focused on the humans who need to come together, collaborate, resolve conflicts or plan for a complex future.

This reflects the reality that humans are not "outside" of nature, or separate from it. We are deeply enmeshed in our ecosystems, and the damage we see to the world stems from our failure to recognize that fact. In many places, our conflicts over water (see the story about New Mexico) as much result from our own land management policies as the broader trends of climate change. I really appreciated book's focus on the humans involved in ecosystem restoration, looking …

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