Here's a sobering look at the human race's impact on its environment, from the authors of Origins (1977) and Origins Reconsidered (1992). In addition to his work in unearthing the remains of early hominids, Leakey spent five years as director of Kenya's Wildlife Services, fighting the spread of elephant poaching. Many of his insights in this book arise from the recognition that our species now has the power to bring about the extinction of a majority of our fellow inhabitants of the planet. Of course, mass extinctions are not rare in the fossil record; there have been at least five occasions when nearly two-thirds of living species disappeared from the face of the earth. Most were killed off by natural disasters, whether on the scale of the meteor impact believed to have ended the age of dinosaurs or an isolated habitat being destroyed by a change in local climate. But beginning with the late Pleistocene, the impact of human beings becomes evident. The extinction of large mammalsincluding mammoths, mastodons, giant ground slothsin North America just over 10,000 years ago was almost certainly due to hunting by the newly arrived ancestors of today's Native Americans. Now the encroachment of human activities on the tropical rain forests (where a vast majority of living species reside) threatens to escalate the death toll to a level comparable to the five great prehistoric extinctions. The authors urge us to take action to prevent this catastrophe and present strong evidence that we are far richer leaving the forests undeveloped than we can ever be by letting them fall prey to monoculture and corporate use. Eloquently argued and rigorously supported by scientific evidence, this is a powerful document in the fight to preserve our natural heritage while there is still time. (20 b&w photos and line drawings, not seen) (Author tour)
Pub Date: Oct. 6, 1995
ISBN: 0-385-42497-3
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1995
IN THE NEWS
A new exposÇ points out the threat of chemical pollutants that mimic the hormones in our bodies, undercutting the natural cycles of growing organisms. Dumanoski is a science reporter for the Boston Globe; Colborn and Myers are two of the environmental scientists who have pioneered the study of the biological effects of pollution. In the late 1980s, while studying the effects of pollution on the Great Lakes, Colborn began to recognize a pattern: the impairment of reproductive or growth cycles in various organisms. The evidence includes gull populations in which males are so scarce that females have taken to nesting together, eagles that have lost interest in mating, and alligators with deformed sexual organs. The culprits were PCBs, dioxin, DDE (a DDT breakdown product)—persistent chemicals that concentrate in the body fat of animals toward the top of the food chain and, ultimately, in human beings. Despite efforts to ban use of the chemicals, they are already ubiquitous in the environment—in everything from arctic ice to mother's milk—and some of them will not break down for centuries. Several studies indicate lowered sperm counts in human males over the last 50 years, quite possibly an effect of the increased use of the suspected chemicals. Dumanoski effectively dramatizes the story of Colborn's findings, explaining both the biochemical reactions and their environmental importance. On the difficult question of how to combat the pervasive threat, the authors have several suggestions: monitoring the quality of drinking water, not eating fish from waters known to be contaminated, avoiding animal fat in the diet, eating organic produce, avoiding contact between food and plastics. On a governmental level, increasing vigilance and regulation is a step in the right direction. The authors' warning may seem alarmist to many, but in view of the potential threat to humanity as a whole, it would be folly to ignore it. (Author tour)
Pub Date: March 18, 1996
ISBN: 0-525-93982-2
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1996
A comprehensive overview of the Amazon Basin's riparian ecology and of the economic development that threatens to destroy it. ``As the new century approaches,'' the authors write, ``the Amazon is being transformed by deforestation, urban growth, mining, dams, and widespread exploitation of its natural resources.'' Yet in world coverage of these events, they maintain, the Amazon serves as a backdrop; they offer the astonishing fact that more is known about the Amazon as a whole than about a handful of its tributaries, thanks to a lack of thoroughgoing ecological investigations of the entire region. This book, by three leading authorities on the Amazon, provides a summary of what is, in fact, known. Among the sobering matters that the authors cover is the destruction of Brazil's Atlantic rainforest over the centuries, ``a poignant lesson in the dangers of ignoring the need for conservation and rational management of natural resources.'' They examine the history of jute and rubber production, which brought the first wave of European and mestizo colonists into the Amazonian interior a century ago, and describe current economic trends, especially the clearance of rainforest for livestock grazing. Along the way, they offer a guided tour of the Amazon's rich and varied ecological zones, noting that ``most of the Amazon's legendary biodiversity is not . . . expressed in the vertebrates,'' but in insects, in the preservation of whose floodplain habitat lies the key to determining how to save the larger rainforest. That determination is pressing, because the destruction of that region ``could happen in just decades. . . . Unless action is taken within the next few years, it may be too late. The task would then be restoration, not preservation.'' A fine contribution to Amazonian studies and to the literature of environmental advocacy. (90 color photos, 3 b&w photos, 2 maps)
Pub Date: Feb. 8, 1996
ISBN: 0-231-10420-0
Page Count: 216
Publisher: Columbia Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1996
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