Wildlife Confessional

The Wildlife Confessional anthology is a window into the wildlife profession, a career peopled by state and federal biologists, game wardens, land managers, consultants, students, professors, interns, researchers, students, and the community of peers who have built their careers (and sometimes, their lives) around working with wildlife. The authors whose stories have been collected here represent men and women from all walks of wildlife biology and take place across North and Central America, from the Gulf of Alaska to San Ignacio, Belize; from the tropics of the Hawaiian Islands to the deserts of Arizona; and in the desert springs, coastal bluffs, national parks, stock ponds, pickup trucks, traplines, doctors’ offices, rooftops, outhouses, and bombing ranges scattered everywhere in between.

Includes contributions by published authors Marcy Cottrell Houle (Wings for my Flight, One City’s Wilderness and The Prairie Keepers: Secrets of the Grasslands), J. Drew Lanham (The Home Place: Memoirs of a Colored Man’s Love Affair with Nature and “9 Rules for the Black Birdwatcher,” featured in Orion Magazine in 2013), and Matthew Bettelheim (illustrated children’s book Sardis and Stamm).

The Wildlife Confessional’s account of Dr. Charles Jonkel’s work with polar bears – “Kick It in the Ice Hole” – is based on the oral histories collected by the Great Bear Foundation about polar bear pioneer Jonkel and his life and compliments their 2017 big screen documentary Walking Bear Comes Home: The life and work of Chuck Jonkel, which was released at the 2017 International Wildlife Film Festival.