FROM THE DUST JACKET:

It is the extermination of the coyote -- a shrewd, wily, solitary scavenger -- that serves as the central theme of Jack Olsen's ragingly indignant, beautifully written and deeply moving book, perhaps the most gripping and important work of its kind since the publication of Rachel Carson's Silent Spring.

Poisoned, hunted, a bounty placed on their heads, their pelts nailed to fenceposts, the coyotes symbolize the heartless and brutal way in which man has made the West his own as if nature had no place there.

Jack Olsen describes how, in the vast stretches of the American West, the wildlife is being systematically exterminated for the profit of ranchers and stockmen ... with the cooperation of government agencies. Hardest hit of all the animals are the great predators -- wildcats, wolves, eagles, bears, mountain lions, coyotes -- all now on the verge of extinction.

By decimating those species which seem to him inconvenient or wasteful or unprofitable, man has laid waste his own heritage, sown the seeds of a poisoned earth, a dead land ... and gone far along in the destruction of his own humanity.

About the Author

Jack Olsen is one of the nation's most versatile writers, well known in both the magazine and book fields. A member of the National Audubon Society and the Museum of Natural History, he has long been especially concerned with matters of conservation and the environment. When portions of this book first appeared in Sports Illustrated, they elicited an immense, admiring and concerned reader response.

A newspaper reporter for many years, Mr. Olsen became a correspondent for Time magazine in the late 1950's and later its Midwest chief; since 1960 he has been a senior editor of Sports Illustrated. He has written a number of books, many of them with sports backgrounds; two of the most famous, however, are The Bridge at Chappaquiddick, an account of the tragedy in which Ted Kennedy was involved, and a World War Two novel, Silence on Monte Sole.

Mr. Olsen is married to the former Su Peterson and they live in Rollinsville, Colorado.

FROM THE BACK COVER:

In an era and a nation where erudition has become suspect, where hard-hattism is toasted at the White House, it is not surprising that the systematic contaminators of the American West have come to look upon scholars and scientists as their natural enemies. Anyone who does not adhere to the Mother Goose table of animal values (wolves and bears are evil, bunny rabbits and chipmunks are good, etc.) is bound to become the object of the poisoners' scorn. To their eternal credit, the little old ladies in tennis shoes* fight back; they write letters to the editor and they view with alarm and point with shame, but their power is as nothing compared to the combined might of the nation's stockmen and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. There have been congressional hearings without end on the subject, innumerable reports by wildlife scientists, and a vast bibliography of articles in publications like the Defenders of Wildlife News and the magazine of the National Audubon Society. The result has been negligible, and it remains negligible, even in a country where ecological breast-beating and hand-wringing have become a national pastime.

*"Little old ladies in tennis shoes" is the derisive term used by the stockmen about the conservationists.