Michael E. Soulé

Michael Soulé is Professor Emeritus of Environmental Studies, University of California, Santa Cruz. A founder and first president of the Society for Conservation Biology and The Wildlands Network, Dr. Soulé has written and edited nine books on biology, conservation biology, and the social and policy context of conservation and has published more than 170 papers in journals. Soulé is a fellow of both the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Among his many honors, Dr. Soulé is the sixth recipient of the Archie Carr Medal and in the first class of recipients of The Edward O. Wilson Biodiversity Technology Pioneer Award.

Collected Papers of Michael E. Soulé

Early Years in Modern Conservation Biology

In the early 1970s, the environmental movement was underway. Overpopulation was recognized as a threat to human well-being, and scientists like Michael Soulé believed there was a connection between anthropogenic pressures on natural resources and the loss of the planet’s biodiversity. Soulé—thinker, philosopher, teacher, mentor, and scientist—recognized the importance of a healthy natural world and with other leaders of the day pushed for a new interdisciplinary approach to preserving biological diversity.

Marine Conservation Biology

The Science of Maintaining the Sea's Biodiversity

Humans are terrestrial animals, and our capacity to see and understand the importance and vulnerability of life in the sea has trailed our growing ability to harm it. While conservation biologists are working to address environmental problems humans have created on land, loss of marine biodiversity, including extinctions and habitat degradation, has received much less attention.

Continental Conservation

Scientific Foundations Of Regional Reserve Networks

The Wildlands Project is a far-reaching effort by scientists and activists to develop better ways of protecting nature, wilderness, and biodiversity. Its ultimate goal is to establish an effective network of nature reserves throughout North America -- core conservation areas linked by corridors, and buffered, where appropriate, by lands that may also serve economic objectives.

Continental Conservation represents the work of thirty leading experts-including Michael Soulé, John Terborgh, Reed Noss, Paul Paquet, Dan Simberloff, Rodolfo Dirzo, J.

Reinventing Nature?

Responses To Postmodern Deconstruction

How much of science is culturally constructed? How much depends on language and metaphor? How do our ideas about nature connect with reality? Can nature be "reinvented" through theme parks and malls, or through restoration?

Reinventing Nature? is an interdisciplinary investigation of how perceptions and conceptions of nature affect both the individual experience and society's management of nature.

Ghost Bears

Exploring The Biodiversity Crisis

In Ghost Bears, R. Edward Grumbine looks at the implications of the widespread loss of biological diversity, and explains why our species-centered approach to environmental protection will ultimately fail. Using the fate of the endangered grizzly bear -- the "ghost bear" -- to explore the causes and effects of species loss and habitat destruction, Grumbine presents a clear and inviting introduction to the biodiversity crisis and to the new science of conservation biology.

Landscape Linkages and Biodiversity

In Landscape Linkages and Biodiversity experts explain biological diversity conservation, focusing on the need for protecting large areas of the most diverse ecosystems, and connecting those ecosystems with land corridors to allow species to move among them more easily.