Dan Dagget’s book, Gardeners of Eden, Rediscovering Our Importance to Nature, has been called “the most important environmental manifesto since Aldo Leopold’s Land Ethic.” In Gardeners Dagget reveals new scientific discoveries that show our species has played, and in some cases continues to play, as vital a role in sustaining many of the Earth’s ecosystems as species we think of as Nature’s keystones. In other words, says Dagget, in some cases, humans are as important to Nature as wolves, beavers, and honeybees.

Dagget supports this by startling claim by revealing the roles humans played in the creation and sustenance of ancient Edens such as the Amazon and the Bison Plains of North America. He then brings these revelations up-to-date by chronicling a collection of eye-opening examples in which humans play roles just as important as those ancient Gardeners in the Edens of the contemporary American West. From this he offers the refreshing insight that these examples show the way to a new environmentalism that enables us to heal Nature by re-engaging ourselves in it rather than removing ourselves from it.

You can get your copy of Gardeners of Eden by calling the University of Nevada Press at 1-877-682-6657, via amazon.com, or by ordering it at your local bookstore.