A serious, engrossing look at issues influencing state and federal conservation policy, though not for readers looking for a...
Veteran science writer Stolzenburg (Rat Island: Predators in Paradise—and the World's Greatest Wildlife Rescue, 2011, etc.) tracks the two-year journey of a mountain lion from his home in South Dakota's Black Hills to a Connecticut parkway only 70 miles from New York City.
The 3-year-old, approximately 140-pound big cat had traveled more than 2,000 miles before his untimely death in 2011 on a heavily trafficked highway. His journey—most likely in search of a mate—provides the scaffolding for the author's broader story of how mountain lions have been driven to the verge of extinction by misguided, selfish policies and groundless fears that promote their extermination. This lion, writes Stolzenburg, had been one of a decreasing number of survivors “as hunters' quarry, public enemy, and roadkill candidate, dodging the armed sportsmen and police and the vehicular predators.” In 1914, Congress appropriated money at the behest of cattle raisers and sheep farmers to provide bounties for mercenary hunters, who had the mandate to rid the country of predators. In the 1960s, conservationists succeeded in eliminating bounties, and hunting seasons were established. As a result, a small colony of the lions have survived in the Dakota Hills, but powerful ranchers still agitate for their complete extermination. Myths abound about the extent of the danger the lions pose to humans and pets when they wander down from the hills. In the 1970s, writes the author, there were 16 attacks on people, resulting in three deaths. Though many more sightings were reported, most of those proved to be mistaken. Stolzenburg does not minimize the importance of removing these wild animals from populated areas, but he argues persuasively that an extermination policy is unnecessary and repugnant on moral grounds. Moreover, the lions play an important ecological role, keeping down the populations of deer and rabbits, which, when left unchecked, strip forests of vegetation.
A serious, engrossing look at issues influencing state and federal conservation policy, though not for readers looking for a feel-good tale.Pub Date: April 12, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-62040-552-9
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
Whether you call this a personal story or nature writing, it’s poignant, thoughtful and moving—and likely to become a...
An inspired, beautiful and absorbing account of a woman battling grief—with a goshawk.
Following the sudden death of her father, Macdonald (History and Philosophy/Cambridge Univ.; Falcon, 2006, etc.) tried staving off deep depression with a unique form of personal therapy: the purchase and training of an English goshawk, which she named Mabel. Although a trained falconer, the author chose a raptor both unfamiliar and unpredictable, a creature of mad confidence that became a means of working against madness. “The hawk was everything I wanted to be: solitary, self-possessed, free from grief, and numb to the hurts of human life,” she writes. As a devotee of birds of prey since girlhood, Macdonald knew the legends and the literature, particularly the cautionary example of The Once and Future King author T.H. White, whose 1951 book The Goshawk details his own painful battle to master his title subject. Macdonald dramatically parallels her own story with White’s, achieving a remarkable imaginative sympathy with the writer, a lonely, tormented homosexual fighting his own sadomasochistic demons. Even as she was learning from White’s mistakes, she found herself very much in his shoes, watching her life fall apart as the painfully slow bonding process with Mabel took over. Just how much do animals and humans have in common? The more Macdonald got to know her, the more Mabel confounded her notions about what the species was supposed to represent. Is a hawk a symbol of might or independence, or is that just our attempt to remake the animal world in our own image? Writing with breathless urgency that only rarely skirts the melodramatic, Macdonald broadens her scope well beyond herself to focus on the antagonism between people and the environment.
Whether you call this a personal story or nature writing, it’s poignant, thoughtful and moving—and likely to become a classic in either genre.Pub Date: March 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0802123411
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Grove
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
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