"'People have approached us and said, 'Ah, that's nice, because now the Great Barrier Reef is fine,' [marine biologist Mark Vermeij] told me, 'And it's like, 'What on earth are you f-ing taking about?"
It's a commonly shared belief in the scientific community that we are in the midst of our planet's sixth great extinction event. Unlike the preceding five, however, this one can be attributed to a single culpable species - us. Through the combined effects of habitat loss, overharvesting, invasive species, and, most recently, global climate change, our world is in danger of losing many of its most unique, extraordinary species. Beloved Beasts, written by Michelle Nijhuis of The Atlantic, is not the story of those animals. At least, not directly. Instead, it's the story of the people who have, in a lineage stretching back over a century, worked to reverse the course and save Earth's wildlife.
Excepting the book's first chapter, a detour into the history of taxonomy (because you can't save species unless you know what a species is, after all), the author presents a series of historical vignettes from the history of wildlife conservation, starting with the fiercely-opinionated William T. Hornaday, the Smithsonian taxidermist who, in between essentially founding the National Zoo AND the Bronx Zoo, managed to find time to save the American bison from extinction, and working up to the present day. Often, one chapter feeds into another, the conservationists focused on in one going on to mentor (or, in some cases, oppose) the one that follows in the next. For some reason, that might have been my favorite part of the book, learning about the interconnectedness of the history of conservation.
Ms. Nijhuis is an accomplished science writer, and she does a great job of presenting the complex science of conservation biology, including the struggles that many species face in rebuilding their numbers, in a manner that is easy reading for the general public. She does an even better job exploring the politics of conservation and how decision-making and changing values lead to different conservation outcomes. Some of the best parts of the book are the ones in which presents conservationists in opposition to one another with conflicting approaches to saving a species, or priorities as to which species to save.
It's an unfortunate truth that sometimes the conservation movement attracts folks who have a love for the natural world that sometimes manifests itself as dislike for humans (either in their entirety or in general categories), and Ms. Nijhuis does not shy away from the periodic bursts of ugliness from some of her protagonists. Anyone who's read much about Hornaday knows that if he appears in a book, Ota Benga is only going to be a few pages behind him, and the racism of early twentieth-century conservation is explored. Uglier still is the more "scientific" racism of eugenics that followed later in the century, culminating in some biologists supporting atrocities up to the Holocaust. It is perhaps fitting that the book ends with community conservation meetings in rural Africa, showing the complete inversion of the field, changing from decrees issued by rich white academics from ivory towers in museums and universities to a ground-up approach led by the people living alongside wild animals.
I found Beautiful Beasts in the science section of my local library, but it could have been just as home in the history section. Come to think of it, I think I like it there more. There are so many books which have been written about the scientific issues of wildlife conservation - population biology, land requirements, sustainable use. I really do believe that, as a species, we have the science part of saving species down fairly well, while acknowledging the continually expanding frontiers of what is possible (the author devotes part of a chapter to assisted reproduction and cloning, such as what is being pursued at the San Diego Zoo Safari Park with northern white rhinos). What we really need to get a handle on is the most important and most unpredictable variable in the whole mess - the people.
Beloved Beasts: Fighting for Life in an Age of Extinction at Amazon.com
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