Conservation leader Loring LaBarbera Schwarz tells why she got involved with Island Press. Do you feel the same? Make your gift today.

I have long considered Island Press the unsung hero of the environmental movement. I look at my bookshelf and can trace the progress of an era of conservation accomplishments as I scan the titles. My own copies are dog-eared and perhaps now out of date, but I consider these books and the rest of my Island Press collection as essential a part of my professional training as my degree. As the go-to resource for conservation professionals of all stripes, Island Press unified a disparate movement, cross-training those of us with curious minds (whose work may have been specialized but interests were not) by providing a rainbow of titles from water to farming to marine issues to urban planning. The impact of these titles, which layered new science with best practices with experience, helped to make our work shared and mainstream. Island Press became a silent partner in our long list of accomplishments. Books like Ecological RestorationDrafting a Conservation Blueprint, and Road Ecology created common language and communities of practice. The variety of titles that grew at Island Press seemed as diverse and complex as the earth we were all trying to protect. Island Press makes conservation accessible to all—whether it be a biography of a conservation hero, a story that humanized our work, or a technical tome used by climate change negotiators across the globe. –Loring LaBarbera Schwarz, Protected Areas Consultant, Director of Climate Change Program at Mass Audubon, editor of Greenways (Island Press, 1993)