My wild life : a memoir of adventures within America's national parks

Title:

Author:

Wauer, Roland H.

ISBN:

9780896728851

Personal Author:

Wauer, Roland H.

Physical Description:

xxi, 250 pages : illustrations (some color) ; 21 x 20 cm

Series:

The Grover E. Murray studies in the American Southwest

Contents:

Crater Lake National Park, Oregon -- Death Valley National Monument, California and Nevada -- Pinnacles National Monument, California -- Yosemite National Park, California -- Zion National Park, Utah -- Big Bend National Park, Texas -- Southwest Regional Office -- Washington, D.C. -- Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Tennessee and North Carolina -- Virgin Islands -- Afterword -- Appendix: Scientific Names.

Abstract:

"A retired National Park Service employee details his life working within the national parks; including photographs of landscapes and wildlife within multiple parks"--Provided by publisher.

Personal Subject:

Wauer, Roland H.

Corporate Subject:

United States. National Park Service -- Officials and employees -- Biography.

BISAC Subject:

Nature / Earth

Subject Term:

Park rangers -- United States -- Biography.

National parks and reserves -- United States -- History -- 20th century.

National parks and reserves -- West (U.S.) -- History -- 20th century.

Natural history -- United States.

Natural history -- West (U.S.)

BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Personal Memoirs.

NATURE / General.

Available:*

Format	Library	Call Number	Status
Book	Searching... South Regional Library	363.6809 Wau	Searching... Unknown

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Summary

Few people have the opportunity to live and work in America's magnificent national parks, let alone in a wide diversity of those great parks. For thirty-two years, beginning when he was hired as a seasonal ranger until he retired in 1989, Roland H. Wauer's career took him to eight national parks, a regional office in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and to Washington, DC, as Chief of the Division of Natural Resources. In an "inside-out" look at his career, Wauer takes the reader on a wildlife adventure through a number of those parks, documenting his experiences with the birds and other animals in each one. An avid birder, he made significant contributions to what was known about bird populations and avian habitats, and he has worked on a number of research projects involving mammals, reptiles, and amphibians, fishes, invertebrates, and other wildlife species. Follow along with Wauer as he recalls flying squirrels, great gray owls, and Clark's nutcrakers at Crater Lake; Nelson's bighorns, prairie falcons, LeConte's thrashers, and sidewinders at Death Valley; flammulated and spotted owls at Zion; and mountain lions, javelinas, peregrine falcons, cave swallows, and Colima warblers at Big Bend.

Author Notes

In addition to his career with the National Park Service, Roland H. Wauer is the author of 25 books and more than 180 articles about the natural environment, primarily on birds and butterflies. He lives in Bryan, Texas.

Reviews (2)

Booklist Review

Naturalist and author Wauer began a long career with the National Park Service as a seasonal ranger at Crater Lake in 1957. Before retiring, in 1989, he served in numerous positions of increasing responsibility at parks across the country and at NPS headquarters in Washington, D.C. In each position, he kept journals, from which he has now written a detailed memoir. Although his main duties were conducting wildlife studies, presenting ranger talks, and occasionally taking tickets or directing traffic, he served as a catalyst to the awakening of the NPS to its role in wilderness preservation and the conservation of endangered species. Throughout his account, Wauer keeps the tone light, letting readers know the birds he saw at each park and the names of the naturalists and park officials with whom he worked, noting but not dwelling on the fights with political appointees in the Interior Department. With a bit of envy, readers may wish they had led such a life as Wauer's.--Roche, Rick Copyright 2014 Booklist

Library Journal Review

Wauer, author of 25 books, began his 32-year career with the National Park Service (NPS) in 1957, when the organization's emphasis was on parking and picnicking. Known for his expertise on birds, and later, butterflies, the author was in the vanguard for the change to a research-based approach to natural resource management of the parks. He worked to preserve the most endangered features and wildlife of places such as Crater Lake, Death Valley, Pinnacles National Monument, Zion, Big Bend, and the Great Smoky Mountains. Wauer writes in a technical style that includes little personal information-much of the book documents the people, conferences, and projects relating to his work-but he also provides interesting or humorous stories in each chapter and descriptions of his special encounters with birds and other wildlife. VERDICT Wauer nudged the NPS toward resource management, but his memoir largely reads like a scientific journal, making his book best suited to those interested in management of the national parks or in the specific areas listed above.-Sally Bickley, William F. White, Jr. Lib., Del Mar Coll., Corpus Christi, TX (c) Copyright 2014. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.