MOBILE, Ala. (AP) - A new book tells the story of one of the nation’s premier wilderness areas, the Mobile River basin, and the challenges it is facing.
“Saving America’s Amazon: The Threat to Our Nation’s Most Biodiverse River System” by Mobile writer, filmmaker and conservationist Ben Raines is being published Tuesday by Simon & Schuster.
The book focuses on an area that’s often considered the continent’s most ecologically diverse river system, and it discusses how development and lax enforcement of environmental regulations are driving some species to extinction.
“The book is a call to arms to protect the most diverse river system in North America, which happens to be in Alabama,” Raines said in an email.
Stretching nearly 250 miles (402 kilometers) from the Tennessee Valley to the Gulf of Mexico, Alabama is home to twice as many species per square mile as any other state, Raines said. Many of those animals live in the vast Mobile River basin, which covers most of Alabama and parts of Georgia, Mississippi and Tennessee.
Yet Alabama ranks last nationally in spending for environmental protection and has more extinctions than five surrounding states combined, according to Raines.
“Ultimately, Alabama cannot go on forever being both the king of diversity and the king of extinctions,” he said.
Acclaimed biologist and Alabama native E.O. Wilson wrote a foreword for the book.
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