Conservation In Practice - Books

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April-June 2005 (Vol. 6, No. 2)

Some books reviewed in our book review section are available through Amazon.com. To make your purchase easier we have included a link when available. When you purchase a book through this service on our website Conservation In Practice receives a portion of the purchase price.
The Remarkable Life of William Beebe: Explorer and Naturalist By Carol Grant Gould Island Press, 2004 Reviewed by Eric Dinerstein The Mount Rushmore of modern-day conservation biology is easy to imagine. From left to right gaze the likenesses of E.O.Wilson, Dan Janzen, Gordon Orians, John Terborgh, and Michael Soul?. The pure field biologists who have left their mark on our discipline, George Schaller and Jacques-Yves Cousteau, deserve space as well. But who preceded them? When you quiz students or amateur naturalists to identify our forefathers, most draw blanks after naming Aldo Leopold. Now, thanks to this delightful biography by Carol Grant Gould, a towering figure has been resurrected from near anonymity, a man who combined the great gifts of all those on our Mount Rushmore: the unique William Beebe. Beebe’s greatest feat — descending in a tiny bathysphere a half-mile beneath the surface of the ocean in the 1930s — won him worldwide acclaim. But it may also have unjustly overshadowed his pioneering work in natural history and what became the fields of ornithology, ichthyology, community ecology, and conservation biology. Beebe’s passion for nature emerged at an early age. He collected and learned the names of insects, birds, and marine organisms. Taxonomy became his diligent pursuit, and as a teenager, he was recognized as someone of great promise by the leading biologists of his day. In 1893, at the age of 16 , Beebe penned this line in his journal: “To be a Naturalist is better than to be a King.” His desire to study an entire ecosystem from top to bottom instead of single species and to focus on species interactions became the hallmark of his idea of science. Exploring the islands of Lake George, New York, he came up with the idea that islands would be well suited for study: “It would be great fun to take one of these small islands (or better still a tropical one) and work up the fauna and flora thoroughly,” he wrote. We now have the source of inspiration for the pioneering work of E. O. Wilson and Dan Simberloff in the Florida Keys, the studies on Barro Colorado Island by the scientists of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, or, more recently, the work of John Terborgh and his colleagues on the population interactions of plants and vertebrates on islands created by hydro-projects in Venezuela. The Remarkable Life of William Beebe is divided into four parts: Naturalist, Ornithologist, Marine Biologist, and Tropical Biologist. There are many wonderful anecdotes in each section that capture the joys of the eureka moments in natural history, moments that must have been commonplace for a biologist with an eye as keen as Beebe’s. I loved most the accounts of Beebe in the Himalayas in search of the magnificent pheasant species of this region. I will never again look upon a wild pheasant without thinking of Beebe’s heroic travels to document the biology of this fascinating group of birds. Just as Beebe skillfully illuminates the life histories of so many tropical species and their complex interactions, Gould lights up the life of this poorly known savant of the natural world. There is no higher compliment to pay a biographer than the observation that she never seems to stand in the way of the reader’s getting to know her subject. Gould points out that Beebe’s intuition about nature was way ahead of the textbooks. This biography should be one of the texts used in every introductory course in conservation biology and community ecology along with Beebe’s own works. At last, students will read passages that inspire and show them the roots of our science: “Some day, if we do not delay until the destroying hand of man is laid over this whole region, we may hope partially to disentangle the web. Then, instead of a seeming tangle of unconnected events, all will be seen in their real perspective: The flower adapted to the insect; the insect hiding from this or that enemy; the bird showing off its beauties to its mate or searching for its particular food. These things can never be learned in a museum or zoological park or by naming a million more species of organisms. We must ourselves live among the creatures of the jungle and watch them day after day, hoping for the clue as to the why — the everlasting why of form and color, action and life.” Back to Books Index >>
Nature’s Strongholds: The World’s Great Wildlife Reserves By Laura and William Riley Princeton University Press, 2005 Reviewed by Evan Johnson Where can you see breeding pairs of wandering albatross (Diomedea exulans)? South Georgia Island. What’s the best time of year to visit Etosha National Park in Namibia? The dry season, April-October. In Nature’s Strongholds, veteran authors Laura and William Riley open the doors to 600 of the world’s best places for wildlife and offer a diverse abundance of information that seems bigger than the book’s pages could hold. In illuminating, accessible language, they describe the natural history and ecological significance of these singular places and how and when to visit them, often including details about threats to the wildlife and habitat. But behind its travel-guide utility, this book — lush with photography — is an inspiring testament to the survival of the world’s most spectacular wildlife. It will whet your appetite for travel, although at 672 pages, you’d have to give up your binoculars to fit it into your backpack. Back to Books Index >>
Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural History of Mosses By Robin Wall Kimmerer Oregon State University Press, 2003 Reviewed by Adelheid Fischer For many people, mosses are little more than wallpaper in the forest, says Robin Wall Kimmerer. So in 2003 she set the record straight by publishing Gathering Moss. This spring, her slender volume full of lyrical, clear-eyed writing about the lifeways of these so-called primitive plants won the coveted John Burroughs Medal for outstanding natural history writing. Kimmerer, an associate professor at the State University of New York, Syracuse, also is Native American. As such, she holds dual citizenship in the worlds of both scientific information and traditional knowledge. Her fluency in these two realms allows Kimmerer to move easily from elegant descriptions of the reproductive strategies of mosses to discussions of their traditional uses, from diapers and menstrual pads to insulation for bedding and shoes. At a time when mosses are being stripped from U.S. forests by the truckload for the horticultural trade, Gathering Moss makes a case for giving these humble plants the attention they richly deserve. Back to Books Index >>