Anne T. and Robert M. Bass Professor of Natural Sciences Nathaniel Thoreau Wheelwright appeared on Maine Public Radio on Wednesday, October 11, 2017, to talk about his new book urging more people to become naturalists.

Wheelwright was a guest on Maine Public’s daily call-in show Maine Calling, along with Bernd Heinrich, Emeritus Professor of Biology at the University of Vermont and co-author of The Naturalist’s Notebook (Storey Publishing,  2017).

The book aims to help more people become connected to nature by encouraging them to keep a five-year journal, recording the changes they see around them.

Wheelwright told program host Jennifer Rooks he began paying close attention to nature when he was a child growing up on a farm in western Massachusetts. He recalled how he and his four older brothers were so rambunctious their parents would kick them out of the house after breakfast and invite them back in at dinner time (with sandwiches provided through an open window for lunch). “We spent our days out in the woods, and that’s when I started noticing the natural world and fell in love with it.”

The authors are donating 100 percent of their royalties from the book to groups such as Maine Audubon and the Forest Society of Maine to support conservation and environmental education.

There will be book launches of The Naturalist’s Notebook at Maine Audubon’s Gilsland Farm headquarters on Oct. 26, 2017 (6:30 p.m) and at Brunswick’s Curtis Memorial Library on Nov. 1, 2017 (7 p.m).

 Listen to Nat Wheelwright and Bernd Heinrich on Maine Calling.

Learn more about The Naturalist’s Notebook.