Manning’s (Afoot in the South, not reviewed) compendious tour of ten wildlife refuges clarifies the tribulations of such establishments, as well as their critical importance. As the debate on the application of island biogeography to wildlife management muddles on, Manning takes a moment to visit a handful of refuges to see how things are going: are these sanctuaries meeting the protective expectations they were designed for? Does their modest size and fragmentation foreclose on their value? According to Manning, these places are our last best hope: they may need some fine-tuning, they need to factor in new variables as they appear, yet their importance to wildlife is plain as day. Without the El Rosario Preserve in Michoac†n, Mexico, one of the two monarch butterfly populations would vanish; that the Mexican government needs to better compensate local wood harvesters for the protection of the oyamel forest is part of the process. And while a lack of balance between coyotes and pronghorn antelope is diminishing the effectiveness of Oregon’s Hart Mountain Refuge, and cattails, carp, and geese are vexing Wisconsin’s Horicon Refuge, they are laboratories in which nature reveals its fluid and mysterious ways. On the other hand, a problem-free example of environmental safeguarding is the Bonaire Marine Park, where strict laws shield the coral reefs from the damage other reefs are victim to, such as pollution and anchor damage and starfish plagues due to nutrient runoff. The brevity of this work takes a toll on Manning’s prose, which can get gluey, and occasionally he affects a painful hayseed quality: “Katrina Davis, the office manager at Bon Secour, has long, brown hair, a big smile, and a story to tell.” Then again, the concision serves to amplify his point that paradise can be small to a bird or a buffalo. Though Manning’s contribution is dwarfed by David Quammen’s Song of the Dodo, it’s in the tradition of much wildlife management: another small, incremental benefit to be valued.
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-89587-183-1
Page Count: 208
Publisher: John F. Blair
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1999
A quirky wonder of a book.
A Peabody Award–winning NPR science reporter chronicles the life of a turn-of-the-century scientist and how her quest led to significant revelations about the meaning of order, chaos, and her own existence.
Miller began doing research on David Starr Jordan (1851-1931) to understand how he had managed to carry on after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake destroyed his work. A taxonomist who is credited with discovering “a full fifth of fish known to man in his day,” Jordan had amassed an unparalleled collection of ichthyological specimens. Gathering up all the fish he could save, Jordan sewed the nameplates that had been on the destroyed jars directly onto the fish. His perseverance intrigued the author, who also discusses the struggles she underwent after her affair with a woman ended a heterosexual relationship. Born into an upstate New York farm family, Jordan attended Cornell and then became an itinerant scholar and field researcher until he landed at Indiana University, where his first ichthyological collection was destroyed by lightning. In between this catastrophe and others involving family members’ deaths, he reconstructed his collection. Later, he was appointed as the founding president of Stanford, where he evolved into a Machiavellian figure who trampled on colleagues and sang the praises of eugenics. Miller concludes that Jordan displayed the characteristics of someone who relied on “positive illusions” to rebound from disaster and that his stand on eugenics came from a belief in “a divine hierarchy from bacteria to humans that point[ed]…toward better.” Considering recent research that negates biological hierarchies, the author then suggests that Jordan’s beloved taxonomic category—fish—does not exist. Part biography, part science report, and part meditation on how the chaos that caused Miller’s existential misery could also bring self-acceptance and a loving wife, this unique book is an ingenious celebration of diversity and the mysterious order that underlies all existence.
A quirky wonder of a book.Pub Date: April 14, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5011-6027-1
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Jan. 1, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
Unsentimental nature writing that sheds as much light on humans as on eels.
An account of the mysterious life of eels that also serves as a meditation on consciousness, faith, time, light and darkness, and life and death.
In addition to an intriguing natural history, Swedish journalist Svensson includes a highly personal account of his relationship with his father. The author alternates eel-focused chapters with those about his father, a man obsessed with fishing for this elusive creature. “I can’t recall us ever talking about anything other than eels and how to best catch them, down there by the stream,” he writes. “I can’t remember us speaking at all….Because we were in…a place whose nature was best enjoyed in silence.” Throughout, Svensson, whose beat is not biology but art and culture, fills his account with people: Aristotle, who thought eels emerged live from mud, “like a slithering, enigmatic miracle”; Freud, who as a teenage biologist spent months in Trieste, Italy, peering through a microscope searching vainly for eel testes; Johannes Schmidt, who for two decades tracked thousands of eels, looking for their breeding grounds. After recounting the details of the eel life cycle, the author turns to the eel in literature—e.g., in the Bible, Rachel Carson’s Under the Sea Wind, and Günter Grass’ The Tin Drum—and history. He notes that the Puritans would likely not have survived without eels, and he explores Sweden’s “eel coast” (what it once was and how it has changed), how eel fishing became embroiled in the Northern Irish conflict, and the importance of eel fishing to the Basque separatist movement. The apparent return to life of a dead eel leads Svensson to a consideration of faith and the inherent message of miracles. He warns that if we are to save this fascinating creature from extinction, we must continue to study it. His book is a highly readable place to begin learning.
Unsentimental nature writing that sheds as much light on humans as on eels.Pub Date: May 5, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-06-296881-4
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Ecco/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Feb. 29, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2020
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