A young boy relates his adventures during the year he spends living alone in the Catskill Mountains including his struggle for survival, his dependence on nature, his animal friends, and his ultimate realization that he needs human companionship.

"Two years ago, Sam ran away from New York City to live in the Catskill Mountains. Now his younger sister Alice has joined him and is quietly living in a tree house of her own nearby. Their peaceful life is shattered when a conservation officer confiscates Sam's falcon, Frightful, and Alice suddenly vanishes. Sam leaves his home to search for Alice, hoping to find Frightful, too. But the trail to the far side of the mountain may lead Sam into great...

As she grows through the first years of her life in the Catskill Mountains of New York, a peregrine falcon called Frightful interacts with various humans, including the boy who raised her, a falconer who rescues her, and several unscrupulous poachers, as well as with many animals that are part of the area's ecological balance.

For over a century, wolves were persecuted in the United States and nearly became extinct. Gradually reintroduced, they are thriving again in the West, much to the benefit of the ecosystem.

Presents a tribute to the efforts of dedicated volunteers who helped save the American bald eagle from extinction, including the story of a young boy who helped hatch an eaglet.

Chronicles a year in a bear's life as she responds to the instinctive calls to mate, dig a den for hibernation, awaken with the spring thaw and bear her cubs.

"In the mid-1800s seventy-five million buffalo roamed in North America. In little more than fifty years, there would be almost none." The death of the buffalo and the settlers' farming and ranching practices endangered the prairie, as drought made the farmland crumble to dust. To help repair the land, the buffalo had to be saved.

In 1848, ten-year-old Toozak, a Yupik Eskimo, sees a whale being born and is told by a shaman that he and his descendants must protect that whale, which Toozak names Siku, as long as it lives.

Because protecting spotted owls has cost Borden's father his job as a logger in the old growth forest of northern California, Borden intends to kill any spotted owl he sees, until he and his father find themselves taking care of a young owlet.

Oksi, daughter of Frightful, the peregrine falcon, and her journey from hatchling to adulthood.