On Monday, February 26, 2018 the Natural History Society Book Club will discuss  The Sixth Extinction by Elizabeth Kolbert. We will meet at the Pink House, next to the Port Townsend Carnegie Library, from 3:30-5:00.

Author Elizabeth Kolbert describes the currently occurring mass extinction, the sixth in the history of the world. The species going extinct is human beings, who Kolbert describes as having altered life on Earth as no other organism has before. She shows that the sixth extinction is likely to be mankind’s most lasting legacy, compelling us to rethink the fundamental question of what it means to be human.

Jefferson Land Trust Natural History Society book club will discuss One Square Inch of Silence by Gordon Hempton on Monday, January 22, 2018.  We will meet at the Pink House next to the Port Townsend Carnegie Library from 3:30-5:00.

Acoustic ecologist Gordon Hempton warns us that natural silence is the fastest-disappearing resource in the U.S.  His book recounts his road trip across the country in a 1964 VW bus, recording and measuring natural sounds from one side of the country to the other.    He talks with people he meets along the way about the role of quiet in their lives.  His destination is Washington, D.C. where he meets with federal officials to talk about the need for natural silence preservation.

The “one square inch of silence” is an actual place, located in one of America’s last naturally quiet places, in the Hoh River area of Olympic National Park.

The Jefferson Land Trust Natural History Society book club will meet on Monday, December 4, 2017 — a combined meeting for the months of November and December.  We will meet at the Pink House, next to the Carnegie Library in Port Townsend, from 3:30-5:00.

The book selection for the last meeting of 2017 is Shadows of Our Ancestors: Readings in the History of Klallam-White Relations, edited by Jerry Gorsline.

This book is a collection of readings on the diverse experiences of the S’Klallam tribe in their interactions with Europeans on the Olympic Peninsula. It goes into detail about their way of life before European contact, the first known European sighting of the S’Klallams, the Treaty of 1855, and other later interactions between the Europeans who settled in the area the S’Klallams had inhabited for generations. The readings are drawn from oral testimony, letters, journals and the research of anthropologists and historians.

The Natural History Society book club’s selection for October 2017 is The Olympic Rain Forest: An Ecological Web by Ruth Kirk and Jerry Franklin.  We will meet on Monday, October 23, 3:30-5:00 at the Pink House (next to the Port Townsend library).

Ruth Kirk and Jerry Franklin examine the unique ecological web of the temperate-zone rain forest that exists in the two thousand miles of coast from Coos Bay, Oregon, to the Gulf of Alaska.  The forest’s productivity and sheer biomass per square mile are among the world’s greatest.  The Olympic Rain Forest reveals the beauty and intricacy of the forest while summarizing scientific understanding of the components of this ecological web and their interactions.  Numerous photographs capture the grandeur of this magnificent forest.

The Natural History Society book club’s selection for September 2017 is The Oyster War: The True Story of a Small Farm, Big Politics, and the Future of Wilderness in America by Summer Brennan.

The book club will meet on Monday, September 25, 3:30-5:00. For further information and location, contact Jean at jltnatural@saveland.org

The Oyster War is the story of a long battle about wilderness protection of land in the Point Reyes, CA area, including Drakes Estero.  Included in that area was an oyster farm first established in the 1930s. The National Park Service informed the owner of the oyster farm that its lease would not be renewed past 2012, and the rancher vowed to keep the farm in business, even if it meant taking his fight to the Supreme Court.  Environmentalists, national politicians, scientists, and the Department of Interior all joined in the long battle that had the potential to influence the future of wilderness for decades to come.