Laura Erickson's For the Birds

Saturday, March 21, 2009

101 Ways to Help Birds

This is rather shameless self-promoting, but I sure wish that, with the new State of the Birds report, people would take another look at 101 Ways to Help Birds. I cover removing unnecessary fencing (the #1 cause of mortality for female prairie-chickens!!) energy conservation and how all the methods of producing electricity cause serious harms to habitat, air and water quality, etc. [well, except solar]), suggestions for making windows safer for birds, what to do when you find a bird in trouble, the best ways to solve problems with birds, etc. I was covering a lot of these topics before others seemed to even notice them--there's a part about birds and airplanes, for example, and I was researching bird impacts with windows for years before the book came out in 2006. Anyway, it really is worth a read, whether you buy it, check it out from a library, stand in the aisle or sit in a chair and read it at your favorite bookstore, or read it piece by piece in Google Books. I put my heart and soul into it, and years of research and writing, and it would be lovely if it were selling better.

Editors at two very prestigious publishing houses wanted to publish it, but in both cases the marketing departments nixed the project saying no one wants to buy books about conservation. I'd love to prove the marketing departments wrong, but so far apparently they were right.