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The authors have produced a fascinating and controversial look at wildlife law and policy. The book includes impressive research and learned presentations on key issues, their historical roots—philosophical and legal—and the implications for modern wildlife policy. They challenge established thinking on a host of matters including important topics such as the public trust doctrine and the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Their conclusions and prescriptions are controversial, thought provoking, but grounded in history. I found particularly interesting the exploration of the roots of modern environmentalism—Rousseau, the Transcendentalists, John Muir—and the contrast with the traditional Western view of nature. If you want to delve into history and challenge contemporary thought about wildlife law and policy, you ought to read this book.

William Horn
Former Member of the National Academy of Sciences Environmental Sciences Board
Former Assistant Secretary of the Interior for Fish, Wildlife and Parks

Few people know or understand the vital role that the law of animals has played over the ages in organizing our understanding of individual liberty, private property rights, and government regulation. With a special nod to the sport of falconry, Murrin and Webster thoroughly canvass this complex topic from its Roman law origins to its modern regulatory state, and show how from a strong classical liberal perspective, much modern regulation has deviated from sound principles of state regulation. What looks to be a narrow field of human endeavor casts light on some of the most difficult questions of political theory.

Richard Epstein
Laurence A. Tisch Professor of Law, New York University School of Law
Peter and Kirsten Bedford Senior Fellow, Hoover Institution
James Parker Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus of Law and Senior Lecturer, University of Chicago Law School

Bill Murrin and Hal Webster, Jr. take us on a fascinating journey through the history, philosophy, and principles underlying American wildlife law and regulation. Along the way they provide a new perspective of natural resource management, which will contribute to the ongoing debate of how best to preserve the environment while protecting individual rights.

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
President, Waterkeeper Alliance
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Price: $22.95

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The focus of Wildlife Law, Regulation, and Falconry addresses the abuses of wildlife management at the Federal level through the lens of the art and sport of falconry since it is here the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service has extended its power way beyond any recognizable limits – providing an observation point for us to analyze abusive government – but it is not confined to the subject of falconry. The book takes the reader through the history of wildlife management from Roman antiquity, through the British feudal period, and finally to the U.S. in order to demonstrate both useful and abusive regulatory systems in the context of wildlife use. The book addresses the causes, as opposed to the symptoms, of the current draconian regulations natural resource users labor under. This is done in the context of the true purpose of law and government, i.e., governing for the benefit of all versus for special interests, which are often polar opposites
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