Yorkshire Dales (Collins New Naturalist Library, Book 130)

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A definitive natural history of the Yorkshire Dales, covering the range of wildlife habitats, rich cultural heritage and ecological history of one of our best-loved National Parks.
The Yorkshire Dales National Park is a special place: its outstanding scenery and the diversity of habitats is perhaps unrivalled in any other National Park in Britain. This rich biodiversity has been a great attraction to naturalists for over two centuries. But to fully appreciate the present-day plant and animal communities, their status and the constraints upon them, it is important to understand the geology and landscape history of the National Park, including the role that human populations have played in modifying the environment.

In this long-anticipated New Naturalist volume, John Lee introduces the National Park, exploring both its geology and geomorphology, and describing the role of early naturalists and the Yorkshire Naturalists Union in recording and understanding the natural history of the Dales. He describes the major habitats or groups of habitats which underline the ecological importance of the Dales.

Lee covers the earliest settlement times to the modern day, and he focuses in particular on the most iconic plant of the Dales, the Ladys Slipper Orchid, arguably the rarest of native British plants, which until recently was thought to be confined to a single plant in the Dales. Lee takes a historical approach, describing its near eradication and early attempts to conserve it including the establishment of a secret society concluding with recent scientific conservation approaches.

Reviews

A pleasant excursion into another of our National Parks in a very readable, engaged style. British Wildlife

Praise for the New Naturalist series:

Taken either individually or as a whole, they are one of the proudest achievements of modern publishing The Sunday Times

The series is an amazing achievement The Times Literary Supplement

The books are glorious to own Independent

Author Bio

For thirty years, John Lee has been guiding people through addiction, recovery, and grief and into strength, functionality and fulfillment. He wrote the bestseller The Flying Boy, as well as twenty other books. John earned his masters degree at the University of Alabama, and he worked on his doctorate at the University of Texas. He is founder and former director of the Austin Mens Center, who became a recognized leaderin the Mens Movement and an early pioneer in the field of recovery. He has keynoted hundreds of clinical conferences around the world. He lives in Austin, Texas.