Eric Wagner – författare

What the fates of seabirds reveal about the changing ocean and our shared futureEvery spring, thousands of rhinoceros auklets return to Destruction Island off Washington’s coast, where they dig burrows, lay eggs, and raise their chicks. Small, gray, and adorned with a curious horn on their bill, these funny-looking birds have become an unlikely but vitally important indicator for the health of oceans and the Pacific ecosystem as a whole.In Seabirds as Sentinels, Eric Wagner joins a team of scientists who have been tracking the lives of auklets and other seabirds to gauge the effects of climate change in the region. The North Pacific—sometimes called the Blue Serengeti—is one of the most productive ecosystems on Earth, supporting salmon, whales, seals, and countless other species, including people. Yet its waters are changing in unprecedented ways. Mass die-offs of birds, hordes of jellyfish blanketing beaches, and the sudden appearance of tropical species all point to an ocean in flux.Wagner intersperses accounts of research expeditions with deep dives into phytoplankton, forage fish, lighthouses, ocean currents, and other important elements in the Pacific Ocean’s tangled ecological web. Readers travel into auklet burrows by fiber-optic camera and witness the eerie arrival of seabirds under cover of night, seeing firsthand how these birds have tried to adapt to widespread environmental upheaval. Weaving together natural history, marine science, and the myriad stories that humans tell about their environments, Seabirds as Sentinels helps us keep a close watch on the uncertain future of the oceans that sustain us all.

Innovations in Adolescent Substance Abuse Interventions focuses on developmentally appropriate approaches to the assessment, prevention, or treatment of substance use problems among adolescents. Organized into 16 chapters, this book begins with an assessment of adolescent substance use; theory, methods, and effectiveness of a drug abuse prevention approach; and problem behavior prevention programming for schools and community groups. Some chapters follow on the community-, family- and school-based interventions for adolescents with substance use problems. Other chapters explain psychopharmacological therapy; the assertive aftercare protocol for adolescent substance abusers; and twelve-step-based interventions for adolescents.

Most of us wouldn’t think to look for penguins in a hot desert, but every year along a windswept edge of coastal Patagonia, hundreds of thousands of Magellanic penguins gather to rear their young at Punta Tombo, Argentina. It is the largest penguin colony in the world outside of Antarctica, and for the past three decades, biologist Dee Boersma has followed them there.Eric Wagner joined her team for six months in 2008, and in Penguins in the Desert, he chronicles that season in the remarkable lives of both the Magellanic penguins of Punta Tombo and the scientists who track their every move. For Boersma, the penguins are ecosystem sentinels. At the colony’s peak, more than a million birds bred there, but now less than half as many do. In confronting this fact, Boersma tackles some of the most urgent issues facing penguins and people today. What is the best way to manage our growing appetite for fish? How do we stop catastrophic oil spills from coating birds? How will we address the looming effects of climate change?As Wagner spends more and more time with the penguins and the scientists in the field, other equally pressing questions come to mind. What is it like to be beaten by a penguin? Or bitten by one? How can a person be so dirty for so many months on end? In a tale that is as much about life in the field as it is about one of the most charismatic creatures on earth, Wagner brings humor, warmth, and hard-won insight as he tries to find the answer to what turns out to be the most pressing question of all: What does it mean to know an animal and to grapple with the consequences of that knowing?