Grizzly Years by Doug Peacock

Grizzly Years by Doug Peacock

"An exciting natural history and, more important, a striking metaphor in its impassioned outcry against senseless waste of life on earth--human life included. "
--Peter Matthiessen

For nearly twenty years, alone and unarmed, author Doug Peacock traversed the rugged mountains of Montana and Wyoming tracking the magnificent grizzly. His thrilling narrative takes us into the bear's habitat, where we observe directly this majestic animal's behavior, from hunting strategies, mating patterns, and denning habits to social hierarchy and methods of communication. As Peacock tracks the bears, his story turns into a thrilling narrative about the breaking down of suspicion between man and beast in the wild.

Grizzly Years, Baja, and Walking It Off: A Veteran's Tale of War and Wilderness are among Doug Peacock's works. The Essential Grizzly: The Mingled Fates of Man and Bears, which he co-wrote with Andrea Peacock, is his most recent book. Peacock was the real-life model for Edward Abbey's George Washington Hayduke, a crippled Vietnam soldier and Green Beret medic. He's written extensively on topics ranging from grizzly bears to buffalo, from the Sonoran desert to British Columbia's fjords, and from Siberian tigers to Nepal's blue sheep. For his work on a new book on archeology, climate change, and the peopling of North America, Peacock was designated a 2007 Guggenheim Fellow and a Lannan Fellow.

He frequently speaks about wilderness and veterans issues at schools such as The Hotchkiss School, California Academy of Sciences, Scotts Community College in Iowa, Texas A&M University, Middlebury College, University of Minnesota, Ohio University, University of Montana, The Thacher School, University of Kansas, and others. Doug was the subject of Peacock's War, a feature film on grizzlies and Vietnam that aired on PBS's Nature and the Discovery Channel and won the Telluride Mountainfilm and Snowbird film festivals. He has been on the Today Show, Good Morning America, NBC Evening News, PM Magazine, Sesame Street, American Sportsman, and Democracy Now, among others. Doug is a co-founder of the Wildlife Damage Review, Vital Ground, and Round River Conservation Studies, as well as a board member of Round River Conservation Studies and the Raincoast Conservation Society, all of which are dedicated to large-scale landscape conservation.

Raincoast primarily works on the coast of British Columbia, creating partnerships with First Nations to eliminate trophy brown bear hunts, end salmon aquaculture, and reform logging practices. Round River works on a broader scale, collaborating with indigenous peoples and governments in Africa, North, South, and Central America to design regional conservation strategies that maintain and enhance intact ecosystems (while also providing environmental science training to college students who do much of the field work). Doug received the Soldier's Medal, the Vietnamese Cross of Gallantry, and the Bronze Star for his service in Vietnam. He currently resides in Emigrant, Montana.