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Author of Coyote America to give talk in Las Cruces

  The Southwest Environmental Center is proud to bring author and environmental historian Dan Flores to Las Cruces. Mr. Flores will give a talk entitled Coyote: Biography of an American Original on Tuesday, September 13th, at 7 pm at the Rio Grande Theater in downtown Las Cruces.

Mr. Flores was born and raised in Louisiana but has been a resident of the American West – West Texas, Montana, now the Santa Fe area of Northern New Mexico – for more than 35 years. He spent most of his university career at the University of Montana in Missoula, where he was A. B. Hammond Professor of the History of the American West. His writing career has produced ten books to date, including Coyote America and American Serengeti, and numerous articles and essays. His more recent works focus mostly on nature writing and the “biographies” of animals like bison, wolves, wild horses, and especially the epic story of North America’s fascinating and now most widespread small wolf, the coyote.

His latest book Coyote America has been widely praised as both an environmental and a deep natural history of a true American original, the coyote. It traces the five-million-year-long biological story of an animal that has become the “wolf” in our backyards, as well as its cultural evolution from a preeminent spot in Native American religions to the hapless foil of the Road Runner. A deeply American tale, the story of the coyote in the American West and beyond is a sort of Manifest Destiny in reverse, with a pioneering hero whose career holds up an uncanny mirror to the successes and failures of American expansionism.

Cosponsors of his Las Cruces talk reflect the broad appeal of Mr. Flores’ scholarship to diverse audiences. They include (so far): Foundation for Las Cruces Museums; Doña Ana Arts Council; Rio Grande Theater; Southern New Mexico Group of the Sierra Club; New Mexico Wilderness Alliance; NMSU Department of Biology; NMSU Department of Fish, Wildlife, and Conservation Ecology; NMSU Public History Program; Jornada Veterinary Clinic; El Paso Zoo Conservation Fund; and Hotel Encanto.

Mr. Flores’ talk is free and open to the public. He will be available to sign copies of his books immediately after the talk. The Rio Grande Theater is located at 211 North Main Street in Las Cruces. For more information, contact (575) 522-5552 or Kallie@wildmesquite.org.

The Southwest Environmental Center works to protect and restore wildlife and their habitats in the Southwest, through advocacy, education and on-the-ground restoration efforts. Learn more about our efforts to protect Mexican wolves, restore the Rio Grande, end wildlife killing contests, and our other initiatives atwildmesquite.org.