Three Rivers: The Yukon's Great Boreal Wilderness is a gorgeous coffee-table book about a wilderness area so vast and so crucial to planetary survival it defies comprehension. Previously unknown to the outside world, the Yukon's Three Rivers watershed is emerging as an environmental issue of global importance--a key piece of the boreal region.

The boreal forest is like a green banner draped around the northern hemisphere. It is the world's largest expanse of intact forest, covering nearly 11 percent of our planet's surface. Every breath we take is in part a gift from this immense, earth-circling ecosystem.

Now the renewed Mackenzie Valley pipeline proposal, the Alaska Pipeline and escalating energy and mineral exploration in the north all threaten this last world-scale refuge of natural values--and conservationists around the world are mobilizing to defend it. Three Rivers focuses on one of the most strategic undisturbed regions left in the world, an oceanic wilderness that is under threat from gas and mining development.

Packed with awe-inspiring photography, art and writings by such notables as Courtney Milne, Margaret Atwood and John Ralston Saul, this sumptuous volume offers an unforgettable tour of a natural wonderland so rich in grizzly bears, wolves, caribou, peregrine falcons and wildflowers most will have difficulty believing such a place still exists. Three Rivers is a prize to be cherished by anyone who appreciates great photography, fine writing and untrammelled nature, and a must-have for anyone who takes an interest in the fate of our beleaguered but still awe-inspiring planet.