Working for Wildlife: The Beginning of Preservation in Canada

Twenty years ago, Working for Wildlife was published to wide acclaim. It remains the definitive history of the beginnings of wildlife consciousness in Canada. When Banff National Park was established by the federal government in the late 1880s, wildlife protection was not a top priority. By 1922, however, the government had hosted the first Dominion-Provincial Conference on Wild Life Protection, and wildlife preservation had become part of established government policy. Janet Foster shows how, in the early decades of this century, a small band of dedicated civil servants transformed their own goals of preserving endangered animals into active government policy. Today, the names of these individuals are scarcely known to most Canadians. Yet it was their commitment and dedication that charted the course of today’s ecological movement. This new edition of Foster’s important book will be welcomed by students of environmental studies, geography, and Canadian history, as well as by members of naturalist clubs and conservation societies. Lorne Hammond’s new material places the book in context and provides readers with a sense of what has happened in the field since.