Pictures Worth Saving - two coffee table books highlight endangered or extinct species - Brief Article

E: The Environmental Magazine, Nov, 1999 by J.H.

Adorn your coffee table with two new books that combine stunning photography with an urgent message about preserving our wild heritage.

In Swift as a Shadow, photographer Rosamund Purcell's images of the embalmed remains of extinct and endangered animals serve as a beautiful and haunting eulogy to the birds and animals eradicated by humans throughout the modern era.

Accompanying text documents the survival struggles of such familiar species as the California Condor, and the almost unheralded demise of those now gone, such as eastern North America's only parrot, the Carolina Parakeet. Available for $20 from Houghton Mifflin.

Rather than highlighting individual species, the World Wildlife Fund stresses the importance of preserving globally-important hotspots of biodiversity--the Global 200. To marshal support for these species-rich ecoregions, Living Planet: Preserving the Edens of the Earth presents images taken by famous outdoor photographers Frans Lanting, Galen Rowell and David Doubillet. The book, which includes a foreword by Walter Cronkite, sells for $40 from Crown Publishers.