Rivers ~ Hardback ~ David Young

Rivers ~ Hardback ~ David Young
$9
$12 about 6 years ago

Beautiful hardback about New Zealand's major rivers, featuring text from natural historian David Young and stunning photography from Aliscia Young. David tells the often complex story of each river or river system through the people who interact with that river, both historically and in modern times. This is very timely given the current public, political and cultural interests in our river systems. This beautiful gift book focusing on the amazing and diverse rivers of New Zealand showcases a great deal of the country, with great regional spread. Rivers examines the situation for our rivers today; it looks at what has happened to our rivers over recent years and what is happening today; it discusses the positives and the negatives, and it looks at the challenges our waterways face now and in the future. As well as being a celebration of our beautiful rivers, it also focuses on conservation aspects, with commentary on dairying pollution, ecology, conservation orders and Maori claims. River is a heavily revised and rewritten version of Faces of the River by David Young and Bruce Foster, published in 1986.Author BiographyDavid Young works as a professional writer, researcher and editor in the field of history and the environment - particularly print media. A former journalist, he was assistant editor of The New Zealand Listener and editor of the resource management journal Terra Nova. He has published widely in essays, articles, magazines and books. A Stout Research Fellowship at Victoria University of Wellington resulted in Woven by Water: Histories from the Whanganui River. History and conservation form the core of his work, which includes: Faces of the River; Our Islands Our Selves - a history of conservation in New Zealand; and Whio: Saving the endangered blue duck. Under the name David Carnegie Young he has written a novel, Coast, which also embraces themes of history, place and identity. In 2008 he received a Creative New Zealand-Fulbright residency to the University of Hawaii to study traditions relating to water sources in the Pacific. David is often a speaker on the topics of sustainability, environmental management and history. A past president of the Professional Historians' Association of New Zealand/Aotearoa, he also served for 15 years on the New Zealand board of the World Wide Fund for Nature. Rivers: New Zealand's priceless taonga is David's latest book, a major modernisation of his original, pioneering 1986 environmental history, Faces of the River in which he explored significant themes in our relationship to rivers. Twenty-seven years on the new book combines important stories from our past with detailed coverage of issues that have now taken on much greater significance: politics, ecology and Maori interests and the insistent new pressures of demand.