RAS Board Member Elizabeth Cherry is an environmental sociologist at Manhattanville College and published a book on birding as an environmental hobby with Rutgers University Press in 2019.
The book is available to order from Rutgers University Press, Barnes and Noble (in stores and online), and other online retailers.
Elizabeth is available to come speak at Audubon chapters, bird clubs, nature centers, and wildlife conservation organizations - please email her to discuss.
About the book:
One in five people in the United States is a birdwatcher, yet the popular understanding of birders reduces them to comical stereotypes, obsessives who only have eyes for their favorite rare species. In real life, however, birders are paying equally close attention to the world around them, observing the devastating effects of climate change and mass extinction, while discovering small pockets of biodiversity in unexpected places.
For the Birds offers readers a glimpse behind the binoculars and reveals birders to be important allies in the larger environmental conservation movement. With a wealth of data from in-depth interviews and over three years of observing birders in the field, environmental sociologist Elizabeth Cherry argues that birders learn to watch wildlife in ways that make an invaluable contribution to contemporary conservation efforts. She investigates how birders develop a “naturalist gaze” that enables them to understand the shared ecosystem that intertwines humans and wild animals, an appreciation that motivates them to participate in citizen science projects and wildlife conservation.