The Nature of Russia

By John Massey Stewart

No Synopsis Available.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1852831383
• ISBN13: 9781852831387
• Release Date: January 1992
• Publisher: Boxtree Ltd
• Length: 192 Pages
• Weight: 2.51 lbs.

Customer Reviews

The Nature Of Russia

The Nature Of Russia is an excellent book of exhilarating mountainscape-landscape photographs and meaningful historical and current natural environment information. The inner front and back covers feature a Russian map showing the locations of Nature Reserves: (1) Askaniya-Nova (2) Barguzin (3) Barsa Kelmes (4) Caucasus (5) Central Siberian (6) Ilmen (7) Kabardino-Bakarsky (8) Kandalaksha (9) Kronotsky (10) Lazovsky (11) North Ossetia (12) Pechora-Ilych (13) Sikhote Alin (14) Teberda (15) Ust-Lensky (16) Wrangel Island. Chapters are: (1) The Land And The People (pages 8-27) (2) The Vast Space Of The Tundra (pages 28-53) (3) The Endless Forest (pages 54-79) (4) The Treeless Steppe (pages 80-101) (5) The End Of All The Earth (pages 102-119) (6) Myriad Streams, Rivers And Lakes (pages 120-147) (7) The Fiery Peninsula (pages 148-165) (8) North Meets South (pages 166-184). After describing the development of the fur trade in past centuries on pages 12-14, Peter the Great's forest-animal protection laws are described on pages 16-17. Page 87 describes the founding of Askaniya-Nova Nature Reserve, the oldest reserve in Russia, by Friedrich Falz-Fein in 1878, and by 1914, the reserve had 58 species of mammals and 402 types of birds, with herds of zebra, bison, lamas, gnus, antelopes, gazelles, camels, ostriches, and other exotic animals. Page 115 describes the successful introduction of bison into the Caucasus Nature Reserve from 1940-1968. In the modern age, the book maintains a critical tone toward the Communist government's projects and industry's negative effects on the natural environment; the book, however, does not describe the government's order to the army in killing off the Caspian tigers around the Caspian Sea so that farmers later planted rice and cotton and the failure of the Tigrovaya Balka national park to save the remaining tigers, with the last tiger being seen in 1958. In addition to great photographs of vast mountain ranges and the taiga, there are many wonderful close-up photographs of yak-cattle (page 20), a lynx (page 20), a huge mammoth tusk held by a man (page 26), the Arctic fox (page 38), a wolf (page 39), a Siberian tiger cub (page 178), and other animals and birds. At the end of each chapter, there is a written statement by a cameraman, who describes his working experience in the featured area. I especially liked Michael Pitts' conclusion of following tiger tracks on Sikhote Alin: "We were so close yet so far; it was impossible to continue that day as the light was fading but I looked after the tracks into the darkening forest before turning towards the lights of our hut upon the hill."