Larger-than-life book showcases stunning case studies of world's leading eco sanctuaries

News Release

According to Michael Tobias and Jane Gray Morrison, protecting innocence is perhaps humanity’s deepest procreative instinct, and celebrating nature our highest calling. In SANCTUARY: Global Oases of Innocence (Council Oak/On-Sale Date: September 1, 2008/978-1-57178-214-4/$60.00), Tobias and Morrison profile globally significant sanctuaries at the forefront of an emerging multinational movement to sanctify nature and save her last pristine places–a vital step toward the total renewal of the biosphere.
SANCTUARY is an urgent reminder that the extinction of life on Earth has accelerated up to 25,000 times its normal, natural rate, putting our modern consumer culture in a league with supervolcanic eruptions and catastrophic asteroid impacts earlier in Earth’s history. Pictured on its pages are species whose numbers are so low that every last individual is known by name. From microbes to mammals, the academically-acclaimed conservationist couple re-examines humanity’s role in the natural order of life on Earth, and our responsibility as a sentient species to consciously care for creation in ways that integrate best science, public policy, spiritual values and sustainable economics.
 
From wildlife habitats set aside to save rare species on the brink of extinction to urban shelters set up to rescue abused farm animals, SANCTUARY takes you on an epic photographic journey to many of the world’s most extraordinary sanctuaries, complete with in-depth science-based case studies that inspire a sense of awe at both nature’s beauty and the damage we have already done to her. But far from a tome of doom and gloom, SANCTUARY celebrates living examples of one of humanity’s highest callings to transform modern societies based on extraction and exploitation into a unified global culture of economic and ecological restoration.
 
SANCTUARY showcases the continuing work of such animal protection luminaries as Michael Aufhauser, Brigitte Bardot, Gene Baur, and Howard Buffett. Over 800 color photographs take readers on a 360-page journey through over 20 countries visiting sanctuaries in Alaska, Austria, Bahrain, Bhutan, Borneo, Brunei, California, France, India, Japan, Malaysia, Manhattan, Namibia, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Singapore, Suriname, South Africa, Thailand, the United Arab Emirates, the United States and Yemen. It is a museum-quality book written to inform policymakers and scientists and inspire a new generation of activists to be the change that creates a better world.

“SANCTUARY is a gorgeous coffee table tome that will leave readers breathless from the expeditionary nature of the photos and text, and the emotional story-telling at the core of these unique journeys,” said co-author Michael Tobias, president of the Dancing Star Foundation. “The book’s startling juxtapositions and deeply uplifting message–amid so much bad environmental news–is like nothing that has been published.”

ABOUT THE MOVEMENT

The Sanctuary Movement in the West was inspired largely by longstanding English law that has protected London’s 6,000-acre Epping Forest for a millennium, a unique level of protection afforded a primeval forest back in the 12th century. The modern movement was revived in the 20th century by American churches offering safe harbor to political, intellectual and religious refugees. This sociopolitical incarnation is more commonly called the New Sanctuary Movement. SANCTUARY, the book, presents a parallel dimension of the movement that is committed to current forms of creative, non-violent activism integrating animal rights, conservation biology and spiritual ecology. Since the creation of Yellowstone National Park in 1872, over 1,200 other national parks have been created around the world. There are today more than 114,000 public and private protected areas and fragments, many with ecological corridors re-connecting them.
 
ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Michael Tobias is a global ecologist, author, filmmaker and president of the Dancing Star Foundation. As the author of 37 books and writer/director/producer of over 100 films pertaining to environmental, cultural, social or scientific issues, he has been called the “Carl Sagan of the humanities.” Tobias obtained his Ph.D. in the History of Consciousness at the University of California-Santa Cruz. Tobias has been a professor at such universities as Dartmouth College, the University of New Mexico–where he held the Garrey Carruthers Chair of Honors–and the University of California-Santa Barbara where he was a Visiting Professor of Environmental Studies and Regents’ Lecturer. His research has taken him to 80 countries where he has specialized in an interdisciplinary approach to critical environmental issues involving historical, scientific, ethical and philosophical frameworks for policy research and documentation, demographic analysis, ecological anthropology, biodiversity conservation, art history, comparative literature, the history of ideas, sustainability issues, animal protection and non-violent activism. Tobias’ countless films have helped shape public policy in numerous instances from green space land reform bills in Ohio to clean-up protocols for the U.S. bases in Antarctica, from hydrogen as an alternative clean energy source to oversight of regulations regarding supertankers. In 1996, Tobias received the “Courage of Conscience Award” for his commitment to animals. In 2004 he was awarded the Parabola Focus Award for his lifetime body of work. His most recent trilogy of feature films, Mad Cowboy, No Vacancy, and Hotspots for Public Broadcasting are, collectively, a comprehensive overview of the human condition.

Jane Gray Morrison has been making films about the environment ever since retiring at a young age as an opera singer in Europe. In more than 30 countries she has brought to public focus issues pertaining to biodiversity loss, animal protection, pollution, human health and explored stunning interdisciplinary approaches to mitigating conflicts, whether in Ireland, India, China or the Antarctic. Morrison produced the ten-hour epic docu-drama, Voice of the Planet, for Turner Broadcasting, which involved filming for two years in 25 countries. The series was a veritable biography of the earth, starring William Shatner and Faye Dunaway, and detailed such themes as water, chemical and oil pollution, animal cruelty, deforestation, the population explosion, the history of imagination in the wilderness, alternative energy and ecological anthropology. In later films, Morrison has chronicled the crisis of industrialized agriculture, the crisis of human consumerism and its impact on habitat, and biodiversity loss. Her expertise ranges from the behavioral ecology of burros to ecological restoration issues in New Zealand, ecological aesthetics, and family planning. Many of these topics have emerged in her several books. As Executive Vice President of Dancing Star Foundation for nearly a decade, Morrison has worked with partners in two dozen countries in an effort to help increase protections for threatened habitats, as well as overseeing domestic sanctuaries protecting rescued farm animals. Morrison also oversees a program sponsored by Dancing Star Foundation at UCLA Medical School that brings together new and vital research and education with the goal of ending cancer through integrative oncology innovation.
 

For more information and hi-res images please visit:
SANCTUARY-TheBook.org
 
SANCTUARY
Global Oases of Innocence
By Michael Tobias and Jane Gray Morrison
Council Oak Books/ On-sale date: September 1, 2008
$60.00 / ISBN 978-1-57178-214-4
 
For additional information please contact:
Paul West, Publicist/Dancing Star Foundation
+1 541/359-1886 (direct), Media@DancingStarFoundation.org


Please visit us on the worldwide web: DancingStarFoundation.org

Dancing Star Foundation is a nonprofit public benefit corporation based in California. Its mission is focused on international biodiversity conservation, global environmental education, and animal protection. The Foundation is involved in active ecological restoration efforts, field research, filmmaking and publishing, lectures and symposia. The foundation works with numerous partners around the world to help raise awareness about the importance of environmental stewardship, ecological ethics and conservation biology. The Foundation focuses on the interdisciplinary humanities and social justice movements as they concern humankind's relationship–in many guises–to the natural world, and is also concerned with indigenous peoples, human rights and holistic health; recognizing that healthy individuals make for a healthy planet. The goal of Dancing Star Foundation is to help sensitize people throughout the world to the critical importance of biodiversity, animal protection and conservation; and to instill a respect for all life, which can be demonstrated by even the most modest gestures of kindness, compassion and love in our everyday lives.