Bermuda’s fascinating flora and fauna are showcased in an elegant coffee-table book published by the Bermuda Zoological Society. With more than 260 colour photographs and an authoritative and engaging text detailing both the beauty and fragility of the island’s natural environment, The Natural History of Bermuda promises to be a keepsake edition, as well as a useful reference for both professional and amateur naturalists.

Written by Canadian professor emeritus and research scientist Dr. Martin L. H. Thomas, who has spent the past 30 years studying Bermuda’s biodiversity, the 256-page book details the scope of natural life on the island and the need to protect it. Thomas examines the diversity of Bermuda’s environment and the plants and creatures within it—while sounding a serious warning about modern threats to vulnerable and disappearing species.

Thomas traces the development of Bermuda’s unique ecosystem, from the island’s geological birth through the evolution of its varied natural habitats, to the state of its environment today. The book’s 21 chapters detail the island’s habitats and plant and animal species, including national parks, urban natural history, forests and marshes, bird and bat life, frogs, lizards and turtles, coastal wildlife, dunes, caves and coral reefs.

Throughout, Thomas’s message is the importance of educating all Bermudians about their natural heritage to best protect it for the future. “Bermuda’s wonderful heritage of natural history is disappearing at an alarming rate,” Thomas writes in the book’s preface. “It is my sincere hope this book will raise the level of knowledge on the current state of the biological health of the islands, and thereby encourage the conservation measures so urgently needed.”

A former research scientist at the Canada Department of Fisheries and Oceans, Thomas taught biology at the University of New Brunswick for 25 years before retiring in 1995 to study and write. He is a prolific writer of scientific papers on marine, freshwater and terrestrial ecology and the author of five Project Nature field guides for Bermuda schools. Thomas has also published two previous books on Bermuda, The Ecology of Shoreline and Shallow-Water Marine Communities of Bermuda and Marine and Island Ecology of Bermuda. He lives in Port Williams, Nova Scotia, but visits the island frequently on research trips.

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The Natural History of Bermuda"