Watching, from the Edge of Extinction - Softcover

Stearns, Beverly Peterson; Stearns, Stephen C.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0300084692 ISBN 13: 9780300084696

Publisher: Yale University Press, 2000

Synopsis

To those struggling on the frontlines to save endangered plants and animals, the crucial challenge is to confront the biological causes of those species’ decline. But just as threatening to their survival are obstacles erected by human politics, greed, corruption, folly, and hypocrisy. In this mesmerizing book, Beverly and Stephen Stearns tell the stories of people who have worked directly with disappearing species in Europe, Africa, North America, and Oceania. They are stories of passion and commitment, of competence and selflessness. They are also stories that alarm, for even as unheralded heroes are working to reverse what often seems to be a species’ inevitable march toward extinction, incompetent or self-interested parties are often working against them.

The authors interviewed people who work with endangered species as diverse as Mediterranean monk seals, large blue butterflies, African wild dogs, native Hawaiian crows, Texas salamanders, and rare plants on Mauritius. These dedicated individuals, in discussing how they view their work, the problems they encounter, and their thoughts on the broader significance of extinction, reveal that the causes of extinction are unique to each species—sometimes subtle and complex, at other times obvious and simple. Yet an extinction always represents an irretrievable loss of evolutionary potential and a diminishing of the beauty, diversity, and value in our own lives. The dramatic lessons of this book shed new light on the problems of endangered species and offer hope that we may yet change the fate of those species that totter on the edge of extinction.

About this title

From Kirkus Reviews

Intelligently affecting stories of animals reduced to rarity, what leads to their predicament, and the people and ideas working to ward off extinction. Considering the current wave of extinctionroughly estimated at two species per dayjournalist Beverly Stearns and her husband Stephen (Zoology/Univ. of Basel, Switzerland) ask how much of it is natural, how much attributable to poaching, indiscriminate harvesting, disease, predators, habitat loss, and competition with exotics. What is the significance of a creatures disappearance? The Stearnses have taken a small but diverse sample to elucidate the many roads to extinction; in their ten cautionary tales, with protagonists ranging from snails to dodos to wild dogs, the deleterious role of humans is always in evidence. Some episodes show punctuated equilibrium meeting a dead end, but for the most part we see people with principles, who think about evolutionary potential and the effect of species loss on our values, battling the greedy, corrupt, and hypocritical, who think about personal power, money, and ego display. The more pungent stories include the tale of a landowner fighting to protect the Hawaiian crow (`alala) after incompetent researchers from the National Audubon Society bungle their fieldworkthough the details of how the clever crow got into such a fix remain unclear. Other intriguing tales show the English large blue butterfly losing its improbable adoptive parents (red ants) through human ignorance and then being reintroduced, trailing in its wake pale dog-violets and pearl-bordered fritillaries. The saga of the Barton Springs salamander proves to be a Texas tale of ordinary folk, town meetings, and a Boy Scout turned environmental lawyer going to bat against a multinational corporation with politicians in its pocket and billions to throw about, to protect a unique pale pink salamander. This survey of representative extinction dramas makes one thing clear: The fate of endangered species is not sealed. Though they try hard for journalistic objectivity, its clear where the authors sympathies lie as they chart different courses that can reduce the human contribution to extinction. -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

From Publishers Weekly

Beautifully written and lovingly illustrated, this powerful report on endangered speciesAand on the efforts of conservationists, scientists and activists to save themApersonalizes the ongoing saga of mass extinctions of animals and plants around the globe. Stephen Stearns, a zoology professor in Switzerland, and his wife, Beverly, a freelance journalist, relate stories that are inspiring, heartbreaking, touching, infuriating. Their dispatches from the environmental frontlines are peopled with unsung heroes, like marine biologist Aliki Panou, fiercely protective in her efforts to save Mediterranean monk seals that hide in remote caves in Greek islands in order to avoid tourists, fishermen's nets and developers' dynamite; biologist Jeremy Thomas, who since 1983 has led a project to reintroduce the spectacular large blue butterfly into Britain; and environmentalist Wendy Strahm, working to save hundreds of rare plants and animal species overrun by an exploding human population on the island of Mauritius. The authors detail inadvertent man-made disasters, like the introduction of the Nile perch into Lake Victoria, which led to the extinction of hundreds of species of fish, jeopardizing traditional livelihoods. Yet much more often, the destruction is deliberate or due to indifference, caused by wanton habitat destruction, poaching, indiscriminate hunting and fishing, the greed of private interests, and governmental and public disinterest. By focusing on people whose work and lives have been linked with disappearing species, these survival tales summon readers to respect the uniqueness of earth's other inhabitants. This important, often shocking report shows that loss of the planet's biodiversityAexemplified by the collapse of entire ecosystemsAultimately affects everyone. Drawings and photos.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Yale University Press
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0300084692
• ISBN 13: 9780300084696
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 288