Description: Showcased in nearly 400 spectacular color photographs, the natural beauty of Hispaniola is unveiled in this volume of essays--in both English and Spanish--that make known the islands fungi, plants, and animals by the experts who know them best.
Brief description: Eladio Fernández is a naturalist and a conservation photographer specializing in the fauna and flora of the Greater Antilles. Based in his native Dominican Republic, he is president of Sociedad Ornitologica Hispaniola, a conservation organization that works to save critically endangered birds. Fernández is also active in Societé Audubon d'Haïti, a sister organization based in Port-au-Prince, which works towards the preservation of Haiti's two remaining national parks, Pic Macaya and La Visite. He is a contributor to the field guide Birds of the Dominican Republic and Haiti.
Review Quotes: Haiti and the Dominican Republic share the second largest island in the Caribbean. Hispaniola includes the region's lowest and highest points: the hypersaline Lago Enriquillo, 40 m below sea level, and Pico Duarte, 3087 m. This wide altitudinal range and the island's 40 million-year history have fostered the Caribbean's greatest variety of habitat types and a diverse insular flora and fauna. Despite the impacts of an accelerated degradation of natural resources, pollution, and the rapidly expanding human population, Hispaniola retains a number of wild places. Fernández, a Dominican-based conservationist and photographer, takes the reader on a circuit of protected areas and biodiversity hotspots. His images include dramatic landscapes (such as Parque Nacional Lago Enriquillo), closer views of habitats (from mountain forests to estuaries and coastal mangroves), and field portraits of animals, plants, and fungi. Researchers provide introductory essays (in Spanish and English) on the island's birds, mammals, amphibians, reptiles, insects, vegetation, and the "woefully understudied" macrofungi. In his foreword, Edward O. Wilson notes both the beauty and vulnerability of this island biota and hopes that more will be done to save it.-- "Science" (11/23/2007 12:00:00 AM)