Free (ADE-DRM ePub) Into Africa [Wildlife Research Fieldwork Conservation Travelogue]

[ATDrake]

Into Africa by notable University of Minnesota ecology professor Craig Packer (Wikipedia) is his fieldwork memoir of a particular journey to East Africa circa 1991, doing behavioural and other research into lions and primates (and conservation efforts, oh my!) as well as explaining issues related to their co-existence with humans and such, and his encounters of the people he met and interacted with along the way (including collaboration with the famed Jane Goodall (Wikipedia; we don't seem to have a dancing banana smiley like other forums do, why not?)), free courtesy of the University of Chicago Press.

This is their featured Free Book of the Month for September, and looks very nice indeed, being both a very readable-looking travelogue combined with what seem like rather accessible insights into biology, ecology, and conservation issues.

Currently free throughout September directly @ the publisher's promotional page (ADE-DRM ePub available worldwide in return for your valid email address).

And this has been the selected 3rd (non-repeat) free ebook thread of the day.

Because I just love it when we get science-y freebies and travelogues, and this is a very nifty-looking science-y travelogue (and set partially in Kenya and with lions in it, which gives it a few more of my favourite things, so ) which looks like awesomely informative and enjoyable edutainment.

Enjoy!

Description
Craig Packer takes us into Africa for a journey of fifty-two days in the fall of 1991. But this is more than a tour of magnificent animals in an exotic, faraway place. A field biologist since 1972, Packer began his work studying primates at Gombe and then the lions of the Serengeti and the Ngorongoro Crater with his wife and colleague Anne Pusey. Here, he introduces us to the real world of fieldwork—initiating assistants to lion research in the Serengeti, helping a doctoral student collect data, collaborating with Jane Goodall on primate research.

As in the works of George Schaller and Cynthia Moss, Packer transports us to life in the field. He is addicted to this land—to the beauty of a male lion striding across the Serengeti plains, to the calls of a baboon troop through the rain forests of Gombe—and to understanding the animals that inhabit it. Through his vivid narration, we feel the dust and the bumps of the Arusha Road, smell the rosemary in the air at lunchtime on a Serengeti verandah, and hear the lyrics of the Grateful Dead playing off bootlegged tapes.

Into Africa also explores the social lives of the animals and the threats to their survival. Packer grapples with questions he has passionately tried to answer for more than two decades. Why do female lions raise their young in crèches? Why do male baboons move from troop to troop while male chimps band together? How can humans and animals continue to coexist in a world of diminishing resources? Immediate demands—logistical nightmares, political upheavals, physical exhaustion—yield to the larger inescapable issues of the interdependence of the land, the animals, and the people who inhabit it.

[ATDrake]

Just a reminder that this is the last day to pick this up if you haven't already.