Living Planet: Preserving Edens of the Earth (Hardcover)

by World Wildlife Fund (Author), Frans Lanting (Photographer), Galen Rowell (Photographer), David Doubilet (Photographer), Noel Grove (Contributor)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review
The World Wildlife Fund has an ambitious goal. With its Living Planet campaign, WWF intends to preserve a bit of every major ecosystem type in the world. From Borneo to Ethiopia, Angola to Oregon, these conservation areas are a serious effort to prevent the complete destruction of rare and unique wildlife habitat. The project's goals are stated in the introduction to Living Planet:

By conserving the broadest variety of the world's habitats, we can conserve the broadest variety of the world's species and most endangered wildlife.... Regardless of where they are located, Global 200 ecoregions are all unique expressions of biological diversity, each with its own highly distinctive species, ecological processes, and evolutionary phenomena.

To chronicle this "conservationist's vision of Noah's ark," WWF sent three extraordinarily talented nature photographers around the world. Frans Lanting specializes in intimate animal portraits, Galen Rowell in capturing mountainous landscapes, and David Doubilet in the underwater world. Each photographer contributes unforgettable portraits of the beauty and wonder of Earth's most fragile places. Living Planet is a truly stunning testament to the difficulties and successes of the Global 200 project. Breathtaking photos introduce readers to the diversity of plant and animal life in the ecoregions. Here's a small sample: a pair of tortoises basking on an island in the Indian Ocean. An enclosed wall poster shows the ecoregions around the globe. And to complete the package, a portion of the proceeds from the sale of Living Planet goes to the World Wildlife Fund to help them continue their conservation work. --Therese Littleton

From Kirkus Reviews
The World Wildlife Fund has been working to preserve a selection of unique and biologically diverse terrestrial, freshwater, and marine habitats, a project called Global 200. This book of photographs is a paean to that endeavor. Its visually stunning, as the work of Galen Rowell, Frans Lanting, and David Doubilet is expected to be, and the text is well-intended, forgettable pap: ``We occupy an extraordinary planet, a spherical garden teeming with life.'' The thrust here is nature magnificent, shorn of tooth and claw and all the rough edges, in her finest clothes and most beguiling company: Lanting concentrates on the humors and conviviality found in plants and animals; Rowell works with the potentially outrageous effects of natural light on the landscape; and Doubilet shoots the otherworld of the marine subsurface. The unfortunate, and unintended, message percolating from these pages is that conservation organizations like the WWF have given up on man's instinctive willingness to do right by planet Earth. Like refugees running from the onslaught, they are grabbing their most precious tokens of remembrance and stealing them off to an uncertain future, while they can. -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Crown (September 7, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 060960466X
• ISBN-13: 978-0609604663
• Product Dimensions: 12.8 x 9.5 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,114,561 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

40 of 42 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A collection of stunning photography and thoughtful writing, October 14, 1999

By A Customer

This is an absolute must for those who enjoy the outdoors and care about the environment. The photography is nothing short of awesome, and the cause (World Wildlife Fund) is worthy of support. This is a great coffee table book and would make an excellent gift.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This Book Is A Celebration!, December 28, 2000

By	Dr Lawrence Hauser (NYC, NY USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

It would be difficult indeed to over-estimate the sheer beauty of the photographs printed on the pages of Living Planet. Of course the three photographers were off to a great start as the subject matter they are presenting is riveting. There are so many truly exotic (and still unspoiled) locales explored here. And so many diverse, truly impressive plant and animal forms documented.

But these three gifted photographers are superbly inspired practioners and so they are able to elevate the naturally exalted to an entirely new level of organisation. This is accomplished specifically, at least in part, by the use of super-saturated color in combination with consistently fresh and geometrically complex composition. The results, printed with great care by Crown Publishers, are extraordinary!

The photography is so visually stunning that it is easy to forget the purpose of this book which was published by the World Wildlide Fund. Thus the text, which is teeming with information, emphasises not the beauty of what has been captured on film. Rather it focuses on the steadily progressing ecological nightmare as humans-induced species extinction of animal and plant life proceeds around the globe in an unchecked and relentless manner. To quote briefly from the introduction by Walter Cronkite, "Earth is losing one-hundred species of animals, plants, insects and fungi every day. Experts estimate that the world has lost one-third of its biological wealth over the last thirty years." Astonishing facts the sobriety of which contrasts mightily with the visual celebration of life as depicted in this wonderfully elegant volume.

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An Interesting Book to Hit the Top, January 19, 2000

By A Customer

It was interesting to note that this book is among several top 10's in science. It must result from good educational institutions: I saw this book courtesy of my daughter and was able to spend time with it over the holidays. There is an urgent message here, as everyone knows and WWF is able to get important people on board, not only with endorsements but with their explanations of the threat the world's ecology is facing. This book does a good job of framing out the larger picture already set by books this year which have given compelling narratives also illustrating the biodiversity crisis-- Goodall's Reason for Hope, Johnson and Coates' Nabokov's Blues, and other books like Quammen's Song of the Dodo. Its good to see all these books getting attention. It is going to take a mammoth awareness to really move the world, most of whom will never see amazon.com and this review away from the global destruction that today is most often the norm.