Product Description
Storyteller has a wealth of titles at every Book Band Level, making it ideal for developing children's reading and writing skills simultaneously. Key Skills: The books are ideal for guided reading and writing. They are also great for independent reading and writing. Suitable as take home readers. The writing cards are excellent for shared, interactive and guided writing. The non-fiction titles in particular, are good for children who are high-interest, lower ability. ... Read more

Product Description
This digital document is a journal article from Biological Conservation, published by Elsevier in 2007. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Media Library immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Description:
Tropical mammals represent some of the most threatened species, but also the least known because they tend to be difficult to study. To objectively evaluate the conservation status of these species, standardized methods are urgently required. The sun bear Helarctos malayanus is a case in point: it is cryptic, difficult to detect and consequently classified on the IUCN Red List as Data Deficient, and the highest priority for bear conservation research. In this study, we apply a detection/non-detection sampling technique using camera trap data with environmental covariates to estimate sun bear occupancy from three tropical forest study areas with different levels of degradation and protection status in Sumatra. Sun bear detections, and encounter rates, were highest in one of the primary forest study areas, but sun bear occupancy was highest in the degraded forest study area. Whilst, sun bears were recorded at a greater proportion of camera placements in degraded forest, these records were often on only one occasion at each placement, which greatly increased the final occupancy estimate. Primary forests with their large fruiting trees undoubtedly represent good sun bear habitat, but our results indicate that degraded forest can also represent important habitat. These forests should therefore not be considered as having limited conservation value and assigned to other uses, such as oil palm production, as has previously happened in Sumatra. Estimating occupancy between years will yield information on the population trends of sun bears and other tropical mammals, which can be used to provide more reliable conservation assessments. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (6)

vision quest
The book was informativeand interesting. The first 66 pages provided a nice overview on vision quest and what to expect.

Five Stars, Excellent Book
I really liked this book.I keep having to re-buy it because I keep giving my copy away.

It wasn't too preachy or loaded with new-age hooey, and the different experiences related gave me good ideas for my own vision quests.I've done two in Colorado and one in Arizona at times in my life when I really needed to get into the wilderness and re-orient myself on what truly mattered and was important to my past, present, and future.

The book helped me articulate some of the most important questions to ask myself, and how to keep the experience meaningful but not cluttered to the point of distraction.Now I go out with sleeping bag, tarp, water purifier and bottles, journal, pens, whistle, lighter, map, compass, and a harmonica.That's it.My next VQ will be in Idaho.

I've guided others along the journey as well, and am getting ready to do so again soon.The rockpile method of communication described in the book is unbeatable in terms of allowing people to stay in touch and safe without treading on one another's private experiences.Be well, and be safe!Eat the view...

New Age Phony Shamanism
Please avoid this book by all means. I'm not sure how the author justifies this book as being a guide to the Vision Quest. There is NOTHING in this book that is even remotely similar to the Vision Quest Ceremomy of the American Indians. This is an insult and a rip-off of our spirituality.

If you want to learn the true meaning behind the sacred ceremonies of the Lakota peoples, then I would most strongly recommend your read The Sacred Pipe: Black Elk's Account of the Seven Rites of the Oglala Sioux: Black Elk, Holy Man of the Oglala or Black Elk Speaks: Being the Life Story of a Holy Man of the Oglala Sioux or Black Elk Speaks: Being the Life Story of a Holy Man of the Oglala Sioux by Black Elk, John Gneisenau Neihardt, Vine, Jr. Deloria.

Reviving lost parts of humanity
This book clearly speaks to people who increasingly find something missing- either through a tiny crack or glaring hole - in their life; perhapsdirection, karma, a clearer sense of what this is all about, whatever youwant to call it.

I only considered a vision quest a sci-fi novelty,something good for stories, not real life. This book changed thatperception forever. The author describes the process and the results manypeople found as they went through thier own vision quest.

I plan ongoing on one in 2001 through a related organization.This book clearlycommunicated a possible solution to that 'missing something' many peoplefeel these days.

The only minor criticism I have is that in my opinon,the authors poetic, mystic and self-agrandizing descriptions and metaphorsgo a little overboard - a little heavy-handed for my taste... perhapsthat's only since I haven't been on a vision quest, I don't know. This inno way diminishes the clear and no-holes-barred message delivered straightand to the point for the majority of the book. Don't let this stop you -it's worth every penny and more...

VisionAlone, Wisdom Apart
There is a mountain we all must climb.Some of us never see the mountain. Some of those that do see cannot make the climb.This is a very personalcollection of stories of individual journeys - journeys that attempt tosolidify the bond between the body and the mind.It is also a universalpattern, as we begin to see in "Vision Quest", that we who callourselves "human", must find and connect with our personalmythos.Always different in its instantiation, always the same in itsrequirement.And always there.

This book is published by Fireside Books,a part of the Simon&Schuster empire.They are also the publisher of"Coyote Medicine", which I panned pretty heavily in a review lastyear for being unsubstantial and largely anecdotal in its evidences. "Vision Quest" is also anecdotal, which means that Foster andLittle could have cut and paste, publishing those stories they saw fit totell their side, and leave out the rest.However, there are two thingsthat are quite different about their style which makes this book a smashingsuccess.First, they held nothing back, so far as I can tell.Some oftheir customer's journeys weren't success stories at all.Some were clearfailures, and some were still just hanging on to bare existence.Theirmessage still came through.The second point is that these stories canonly be told in this fashion.Science is not clearly in the picture here -skirting the edge.There's no way one can publish statistics on thistopic, saying "of so many voyagers, x percent achieved totalsuccees".No, this book is about mythology.And as false as thestories are that comprise mythology, their lessons are deeply engrained inthe body - no, the spirit - of every one who dares to be human.

Reading"Kinds of Minds", by Daniel Dennett, may make some of what Ispeak of more clear.Humans differ from other animals because of ourrecursive patterns of thought.This recursion - the ability to subject themind to analysis by that same mind - is both a blessing (in that it helpedwith our survival), and a curse (in that endless recursion into a blackhole of despair is a definite possibility).Your mythos is the terminatorto this endless analysis.Some call this "God". Some of us haveno name for it, but all the same, it must be there.Foster and Littlerecognize this, and at the same time, they are quite sensitive to the liveson the edge of our grand society who need, but do not have, thisconnection.

Knowing full well that the connection itself does not assurea comfortable place, they nonetheless have created a venue for people tomake this voyage of self discovery.This book is a brief recounting ofmany of those voyages.It is also an invitation to the rest of us tofollow wherever that path leads.

Read this book. ... Read more