Tigers in the Snow - Hardcover

Matthiessen, Peter

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0865475768 ISBN 13: 9780865475762

Publisher: North Point Pr, 2000

Synopsis

Dramatic full-color photography complements a close-up study of the endangered Siberian tiger that describes the big cat's role in its environment and the joint efforts of Russian researchers and U.S. wildlife biologists to preserve the endangered animal. 25,000 first printing.

About this title

Review

Indigenous to Asia, and once widely distributed across the continent, the tiger is yet another of the world's creatures to come perilously close to extinction in the last century. Where a hundred years ago the population of Panthera tigris and its cousins stood at more than 100,000, a 1995 census put the total at less than 5,000. And, writes Peter Matthiessen, a longtime student and champion of endangered wildlife, "most biologists and conservationists ... would set that number even lower."

Working with the noted wildlife biologist and photographer Maurice Hornocker, Matthiessen recounts his travels into the Russian Far East and Manchuria in search of one of the rarest of the big cats, Panthera tigris altaica, the Siberian tiger. Once shielded, and not by design, by Communist policies that restricted travel in and development of its wilderness habitat, the Siberian tiger is increasingly threatened throughout much of its range as the dense old-growth forests of the Pacific seaboard fall to Japanese logging companies; at the same time, the tiger is still hunted for parts used by Chinese apothecaries (drinking the essence of a tiger is thought to bring renewed sexual vigor to aging men). Matthiessen, whose text brims with a righteous rage on the tiger's behalf, is able to report a few success stories, as Russian, Chinese, and American biologists work to conserve habitat in the wild country memorialized by V.K. Arseniev's Dersu the Trapper, a memoir that informs Matthiessen's own book. But his book is also full of tragedy, of terrible stories that help press a case for why the Siberian tiger should be protected everywhere in its domain.

Matching a thoughtful, well-crafted text with remarkable photographs of tigers in the wild, this is a book that, with luck, will help spur renewed interest in making the world safe for wildlife of all kinds. --Gregory McNamee

About the Author

Peter Matthiessen is the acclaimed author of numerous works of fiction and non-fiction. His accomplishments as a naturalist and explorer have resulted in more than a dozen books on natural history and the environment, including The Tree Where Man Was Born, which was nominated for the National Book Award, and The Snow Leopard, which won it. His equally distinguished career as a fiction writer has produced a collection of stories and eight novels, among them At Play in the Fields of the Lord, which was nominated for a National Book Award, Far Tortuga, and the Everglades trilogy, which includes his most recent book, Bone by Bone.

About this edition

• Publisher: North Point Pr
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0865475768
• ISBN 13: 9780865475762
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 185