Yellowstone to Yukon Freedom to Roam: A Photographic Journey

by Florian Schulz

Book Overview

200 full-colour scenes of a landscape and it's wild inhabitants by an award-winning photographer. Original essays by noted writers, biologists and conservationists

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0898869897
• ISBN13: 9780898869897
• Release Date: January 2005
• Publisher: Mountaineers Books
• Length: 196 Pages
• Weight: 3.35 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 12.3" x 11.2"

Customer Reviews

Yellowstone to Yukon

I first heard the phrase "wilderness corridor" when I lived in California's Bay Area in the early 1990s. At that time, the concept was used in conjunction with a bike trail linking the entire Bay Area from Antioch to Oakland. One of the benefits of such a trail, , we were told, would be allowing wildlife to roam freely throughout the suburbs. I don't recall how that particular issue played out, but the idea was--and is--a good one. Animals don't understand or follow man-drawn boundaries. They roam in territory that most likely has been roamed by their ancestors for thousands of years. Animals are guided by instinct, and man's attempts to limit them to national parks and protected areas is doomed to failure. And so the Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative, or Y2Y, was born. In her Publisher's Notes, Helen Cherullo explains the concept as a "dream of a small group of biologists and conservationists--to link the existing parks in the United States and Canada with connected corridors into one intact ecosystem," stretching from Yellowstone National Park, along the Rocky Mountains and through the Yukon. It is 460,000 square miles of untouched land--the last undisturbed parcel of land in the two countries, according to Cherullo, extending 1,990 miles from Cokeville, Wyo., to the Arctic Circle. This area of land, the Y2Y Ecoregion, is the home of grizzlies, 118 fish species, 10,000 golden eagles and hundreds of bald eagles, to mention but a few of its inhabitants. It is the traditional land of 31 indigenous Native or First Nation (in Canada) peoples, who have inhabited the area for more than 10,500 years. Less than 3 million people occupy the land at this time, but that is changing rapidly. Florian Schulz, a photojournalist who has long championed conservation, tells the reader that the United States and Canada are making the same mistakes his native Europe did--all of that continent's "true wilderness" is gone, cut down for human use and cleared to develop man's idea of civilization. It's a mistake, Schulz says, that should not be repeated. So he rounded up some of the world's most noted scientists: geneticist David Suzuki, wildlife biologist Douglas H. Chadwick, and biologist Karsten Heuer, as well as authors and journalists, to document the vast resources, the wildlife and the dangers of approaching development. Interspersed with stunning photography and Schulz's observations, this oversize art book is both visually stunning and a good read. While obviously a conservation treatise, the book is so filled with magnificent anecdotes, facts, scientific studies and theories, as well as marvelous pictures of Nature and her children in all their glory, that one cannot just plop it on the coffee table and forget it, as we do with most "art" books. This one begs to be read, to be perused carefully. The photos call for our attention and admiration, the stories and concerns of the writers compel us to pay attention and take a stand. The current practice

Two hundred full color images showcase that landscape along with the people, animals, and plants tha

Yellowstone To Yukon: Freedom To Roam is a coffee-table photography book that takes the reader along with Florian Schulz on a visual journey of the Northern Rocky Mountain landscape. Two hundred full color images showcase that landscape along with the people, animals, and plants that inhabit it. Enhanced with original thematically appropriate essays by Douglas Chadwick, Karsten Heuer, Ted Kerasote, David Quammen, Rick Bass, and others, Yellowstone To Yukon is a testament to the need for conservation of one of our country's still wild, free, and open places where "bison move across prairies, wolves converge on the hunt, elk bugle across valleys, river otters fish the streams, and grizzlies roam the mountains". Yellowstone To Yukon is a welcome and very highly recommended addition to personal, academic, and community library Environmental Studies and Photography collections.