“The Kodiak Brown Bear Trusts’ new book provides a roadmap to policy makers and the average citizen seeking to find sound conservation answers to complex environmental challenges. Kodiak Bears & the Exxon Valdez offers a moving and readable account about the largest environmental accident in U.S. history and how diverse stakeholders rallied to achieve a remarkable success in one of the earth’s last great places.”
- Gregg Patterson, ESPN Outdoors
“Our planet is full of stories about wildlife in peril. Everywhere, it seems, forest is cleared for human use, animals are killed for bushmeat or to protect agriculture, and manmade pollutants upset wildlife metabolisms. However, in the midst of ill winds, Kodiak Bears & the Exxon Valdez is a breath of fresh air.”
- People, Land & Water, March, 2001 U.S. Department of Interior
Author's Note
When news flashed about the supertanker Exxon Valdez hard aground at Bligh Reef in Prince William Sound, few in Kodiak imagined their world would be engulfed by ecological and economic catastrophe. Kodiak Bears & the Exxon Valdez retells the dramatic story of how Kodiak’s rich maritime resources were impacted by the black tide and how people first coped with the disaster then rallied to pull off one of America’s most exciting conservation victories. Kodiak Bears & the Exxon Valdez’s story is told by the people who lived it and provides the public and policymakers an insider’s account of one of the most enduring legacies of the Exxon Valdez disaster.
Reviews
“The important story of how an environmental disaster was turned into a conservation success. Required reading for all those who want to turn lose-lose situations into opportunities for both wildlife and people.”
- Ted Kerasote, author Bloodties, and “Environment” columnist for Sports Afield Magazine
“In our reconstructions of conservation history, we are too often left to deal with fragmentary comments and a frustrating lack of detail. Tim Richardson’s and Dave Cline’s attentive compilation of the challenges facing a diverse assemblage of political, economic and public interests in the aftermath of the Exxon Valdez oil spill is a substantial exception! Rarely has the full drama of an environmental catastrophe been exposed in such real time detail; rarer still do we witness such a success in the protection of human interests simultaneous with a safeguarding of the natural world. Kodiak Bears & the Exxon Valdez is one of a handful of true-life accounts about how human ingenuity and cooperation can turn an environmental catastrophe into a future of promise for wildlife, wildland and people.”
- Shane Mahoney, Chief of Wildlife Ecosystem Research, Province of Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada
“The book recalls that fateful summer of the spill and the effect on bears, fish and people who share the islands. It also credits individuals and organizations instrumental in restoration efforts after the spill, giving an overdue thanks to their work over the years to protect Kodiak today. The list of national and international hunting and wildlife groups involved in preservation of the archipelago is astonishing, a real eye-opener to outside influence on this part of the world.”
- Kodiak Daily Mirror, February 5, 2001
“Kodiak Bears & the Exxon Valdez depicts the uncertain governmental response to the spill and the public fear and chaos in its aftermath. Stories of interagency politics and intensive public relations ploys by Exxon Corporation contrast with the specter of thousands of death seabird carcasses and soiled beaches from Prince William Sound to the Alaska Peninsula… Anyone interested in brown bear conservation issues in Alaska or Kodiak Island specifically will find the paperback a value…. The book makes a convincing case for conserving Kodiak lands.”
- International Bear News, May 2001
“Kodiak Bears & the Exxon Valdez shows how an entire ecosystem, the Kodiak Archipelago of Alaska, can be preserved by incorporating a variety of human uses within the management plan, including both subsistence and sport hunting and fishing, as well as nature tourism. Through a cooperative effort of local Native people, state and federal agencies, and conservationists with a vision, an environmental disaster has been transformed into an environmental success story.”
- Professor John Reiger, Ohio University, author, American Sportsmen and the Origins of Conservation.