The Clouded Leopard

'It is a violent overture, like the opening notes of an opera about war, a war between humans and the land.'
For many years and through many of the world's most remote regions, Wade Davis has travelled in search of the rare places where cultural diversity survives, untainted by the influences of globalisation and modernisation. The Clouded Leopard brings together the extraordinary travels that sprang from this quest.
In Peru, Davis spends time with the San Pedro cult and their shamans, in the frozen north of Canada he hunts narwhal with the Inuit. In Haiti, he unravels the complexities of the Vodoun religion and way of life. He describes the systematic destruction of the forests of Malaysia - far worse than that of the Amazon - and treks to the valleys of the Himalaya, where snow leopards and blue sheep still roam.
His travels emphasise the fragility of the planet yet also illuminate the places and people where the bond between landscape and spirit is preserved. Beautiful and disturbing, tragic and yet hopeful, The Clouded Leopard sends out a timely message that cannot be ignored.

Wade Davis is Explorer-in-Residence at the National Geographic Society - named one of their 'Explorers of the Millenium'. A Harvard-trained anthropologist and ethnobotanist, he has travelled widely and is the recipient of numerous awards, including the 2002 Lowell Thomas Medal, the Banff Mountain Book and Film Festival Award for adventure travel writing and the 2002 Lannan Foundation prize for literary non-fiction. In 2004 he was made an Honorary Member of the Explorer's Club.
He lectures widely in the UK, US and Canada and writes for publications including National Geographic, the New York Times, Outside, Harpers, Fortune, Conde Nast Traveller, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, International Herald Tribune, Toronto Globe & Mail and National Geographic Traveller. His books include the international bestseller, The Serpent and the Rainbow, as well as Shadows in the Sun, Light at the Edge of the World and One River.

Acknowledgements
Introduction
Cactus of the Four Winds
Hunters of the Northern Ice
Passion in the Desert
Dreams of a Jade Forest
The Clouded Leopard
The White Darkness
The Sheltering Sky
The Forests of Amazonia
White Blood of the Forest
The Art of Shamanic Healing
Plants of the Gods
Smoking Toad
Breaking Trail
In the Shadow of the Red Cedar
The End of the Wild