Shadow Landscape: Stories from the Field

by Leslie Patten

Overview

What do pikas, honey bees and grizzlies all have in common?

Naturalist Leslie Patten explores the vanishing world of American wildlife, some common to city backyards, others found only in remote spaces of our country.

Each story is a new tale. From California to the Southwest to the Rocky Mountain West, Patten relates encounters with wolves, bighorn sheep, and even mysterious howls from banshees. Along the way, as Patten learns of our outdated attitudes and laws towards America’s vanishing wildlife, she explores new paradigms that could lead to healthy wildlife; our wildlife that are in the public trust.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940165059155
Publisher:	Leslie Patten
Publication date:	10/18/2021
Sold by:	Smashwords
Format:	eBook
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

Leslie Patten is a well-known landscape designer in the Bay Area of California. Her work has been featured in Mill Valley’s Outdoor Art Club Garden Tours, in the Marin Independent Journal, Marin Art & Garden Center tours, the Garden Conservancy, and Marin County Stormwater Pollution Prevention Program tours. She grew up in the Los Angeles area and went to college at the University of Santa Cruz. After college she spent the next thirty years living all over Northern California, in Lake, Sonoma, Marin, San Francisco, and Santa Cruz counties. She has hiked and backpacked all over the state, including desert, mountain, and coastal regions, gaining her familiarity with native plants and their habitats.

Leslie’s background is in horticulture and botany, but she also has naturalist training and worked for over eight years at a museum lab preparing wildlife specimens of museum quality. She has assisted with spotted owl studies, as well as wolf and grizzly bear studies as a citizen scientist. Her knowledge of tracking, wildlife, and native plants of the West greatly enhances her ability to create successful designs and wildlife gardens. Low water gardens has been her specialty in the Bay Area for over twenty years, but she also has designed tropical, English, and Zen gardens. Her expertise is best described as a habitat specialist.

She now splits her time between the wilds of northwest Wyoming and the Bay Area. Her ongoing blog can be seen at www.thehumanfootprint.wordpress.com. Her business website with photos of many jobs can be viewed at www.ecoscapes.net.

Table of Contents

Preface......................................................................09

Part I - The Shadow Landscape...................................13

A Pika Visits.................................................................... 15

Gil and the Bees............................................................... 23

Dickinson Park................................................................. 43

The World of Fungi.......................................................... 55

Wild Cats......................................................................... 69

The Pond.......................................................................... 85

Part II - End of the Wild............................................99

Wolves in the Crosshairs................................................ 101

Grizzlies in a Windowless Room................................... 119

Coyote: The Fall Guy...................................................... 131

Bighorn's Gordian Knot................................................. 145

Editorial Reviews

"Patten's ability to entice you into her stories by painting pictures in your mind is a gift. All the while taking you on a trip that places you, the reader, in the backcountry sharing vulnerable wildlife experiences that expose hardship and promote coexistence."-Marc Cooke, Wolves of the Rockies

"Intimate and fascinating glimpses into wild lives as elucidated by a passionate and knowledgeable observer. The stories not only entertain, but also raise critical questions about the precarious future of nature and our place in it." -Keli Hendricks,Project Coyote, Ranching With Wildlife Coordinator

From the Publisher