Wild LA: Explore the Amazing Nature in and Around Los Angeles - Couverture souple

Hood, Charles; B. Pauly, Gregory; G. Goldman, Jason; M. Higgins, Lila; County, Natural History Museum Of Los Angeles

Couverture souple

ISBN 10 : 1604697105 ISBN 13 : 9781604697100

Editeur : Timber Press, 2019

Synopsis

“Put on your hiking shoes, pack your binoculars, and rediscover the City of Angels.” ―Westways Magazine Los Angeles may have a reputation as a concrete jungle, but in reality, it's full of amazing wildlife. You just need to know where to find it! Equal parts natural history, field guide, and trip planner, Wild LA has something for everyone. It looks at the factors that shape local nature―including fire, floods, and climate―and profiles over 100 local species, from easy-to-spot squirrels and praying mantids to more elusive green sea turtles, bighorn sheep, and mountain lions. Also included are descriptions of day trips that help you explore natural wonders on hiking trails, in public parks, and in your own backyard.

A propos du livre

À propos de l?auteur

The Natural History Museums of Los Angeles County include the Natural History Museum in Exposition Park (NHM), the La Brea Tar Pits in mid-Wilshire/Hancock Park, and the William S. Hart Museum in Newhall. They operate under the collective vision to inspire wonder, discovery, and responsibility for our natural and cultural worlds. The museums hold one of the world’s most extensive and valuable collections of natural and cultural history―more than 35 million objects. Using these collections for groundbreaking scientific and historic research, the museums also incorporate them into on- and offsite nature and culture exploration in L.A. neighborhoods, and in a slate of community science programs. This creates a new natural history museum experience that explores the past, but increasingly addresses the present and the future.

À propos de la quatrième de couverture

Get ready for the field trip of a lifetime, led by the experts from the Natural History Museums of Los Angeles County. Discover mammoths underneath Wilshire Boulevard, glimpse bobcats in Griffith Park, and stalk red-eared slider turtles in a Franklin Canyon pond. Meet dozens of local residents, mostly of the animal and plant kind. Equal parts nature guide and trip planner, Wild LA unveils the hidden nature in every park and canyon—and even your own neighborhood.

Extrait. © Reproduit sur autorisation. Tous droits réservés.

This is a book that celebrates the nature all around us each and every hour of every day. Despite jokes that Los Angeles is a concrete wasteland, the truth is that it’s actually an area of astounding biological diversity, with many powerful and interesting stories about how the “wild” and the “urban” are more interconnected than most people guess.

What do we mean by “LA nature”? When we refer to “Los Angeles” or “our area,” we mean much more than city or county limits—our focus is on the Los Angeles River and San Gabriel River watersheds (plus some of the smaller coastal watersheds draining the Santa Monica Mountains). A watershed is an area whose streams, gullies, creeklets, and canyons all drain into the same place. If rain falls on the ground and eventually flows to the Pacific Ocean via the San Gabriel River, then this ground is within the San Gabriel watershed. “Our area” includes most of LA County, some of Orange County, and slivers of Riverside County and Ventura County. Our focus is on most of the Santa Monica and San Gabriel Mountains, the San Fernando Valley, the San Gabriel Valley, and all of the main Los Angeles Basin from Malibu to northern Orange County. This is not a beach and tide pool book (though we do explain how to see wild sea turtles in Long Beach). Instead, we’re interested in nature on land—in our creeks, rivers, ponds, and air—all the plants and bugs and other animals you can discover from high in the mountains all the way down to the sand.

Biologists and naturalists have strong opinions, but the four writers of this book had to agree on some ground rules. We wanted it to be different from the usual natural history guide—easier to read, easier to understand. Our mission was to create a book that could live on your shelf, but also fit in your backpack when you’re out exploring. The book has three main parts. The first section reviews the ecology and natural history of the LA area in ten easy-to-read chapters organized by topic. There are chapters on the roles of fire and water, for example, and an exploration of wildlife after dark.

The middle section is the field guide. We selected over one hundred species not because they are beautiful, native to California, or endangered—although many of them are—but because they’re important to the LA nature story and they’re the plants and animals you’re most likely to notice on your nature adventures. Some species you may not have seen yet, but some you surely have—we hope this book will help you identify and understand why their presence in the city is so fascinating.

The final section is field trips. We chose our twenty-five trips because they’re accessible for a broad range of nature lovers. Most parts of Los Angeles are covered; any LA reader should live fairly close to at least one site—hopefully less than half an hour away.

A note on the common species names. Scientists capitalize animal names in different ways. Scientists who specialize in birds, lizards, snakes, and amphibians use capitals (Acorn Woodpecker), but scientists who specialize in mammals, insects, fungi, and plants don’t (striped skunk). To be conversational and make the book consistent, we lowercase everything except for place names and proper names. All scientific names follow the usual rules: written in italics, with the genus name uppercase and specific name lowercase. So, the acorn woodpecker is Melanerpes formicivorus, which means “black creeping ant eater.”

We hope this book inspires you to take a closer look at the wildness around you. We highlight plenty of Los Angeles’s wilder spots, like Griffith Park and the San Gabriel Mountains, but our main message is that nature is everywhere. It’s in your backyard, it’s beside your porch light, it’s on the sides of the freeway, and it’s atop the highest downtown skyscrapers. Scientists have only recently begun to fully appreciate the abundance and diversity of wildlife in urban areas. How lucky is it that we have a front row seat to nature’s newest discoveries?

Détails de l'édition

• Éditeur: Timber Press
• Date d'édition: 2019
• Langue: anglais
• ISBN 10: 1604697105
• ISBN 13: 9781604697100
• Reliure: Broché
• Nombre de pages: 332
• Coordonnées du fabricant: non disponible
• Personne responsable: non disponible