THE WORLD'S WILD PLACES, by Colin Prior, with 60 panoramic color photographs, Firefly Books, 224 pages, $49.95

Colin Prior's large-format photography book documents our world's vanishing wildernesses; it is a visually exquisite plea for the future of our planet's wild places.

Employing a panoramic-format camera (6 by 17, much wider than a standard 35mm), Prior captures the beauty of each location in rich, saturated color; 60 of the photographs are two-page panoramas measuring some two feet wide.

Therefore, this publication is more than just a collection of pretty pictures — Prior wants to alert us to the very real danger that these unique and precious places may soon be lost forever.

"Take a look at the real map," Prior writes of the Congo forest, "not the one from a geography textbook."

According to the author, the real map shows not a pristine forest but logging concessions running into millions of hectares, plus mining concessions, hunting concessions, and the "urban sprawl of great cities like Nairobi oozing out across the surrounding plains like a random amoeba."

Closer to home, Prior's images of sandstone arches in Utah and the canyons of Arizona fare well when positioned against the ubiquitous photographs produced for these same locations. His panoramic vistas elicit a sigh as we wander, page by page, through these familiar places.

Other areas visited by the author and his camera are: lakes in Alaska, mountains in Nepal, national parks in Africa, islands in the Philippines, deserts of south Australia, a glacier in Argentina and rivers in Belize.

"The World's Wild Places" is not a heavy-handed attempt at forcing us to adopt environmental conservation, but we are so enamored of the images we do become concerned about the destructive, changing face of our planet.

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