Beloved Beasts
Fighting for Life in an Age of Extinction
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4.7 • 3 Ratings
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
Winner of the Sierra Club's 2021 Rachel Carson Award
One of Chicago Tribune's Ten Best Books of 2021
Named a Top Ten Best Science Book of 2021 by Booklist and Smithsonian Magazine
"At once thoughtful and thought-provoking,” Beloved Beasts tells the story of the modern conservation movement through the lives and ideas of the people who built it, making “a crucial addition to the literature of our troubled time" (Elizabeth Kolbert, author of The Sixth Extinction).
In the late nineteenth century, humans came at long last to a devastating realization: their rapidly industrializing and globalizing societies were driving scores of animal species to extinction. In Beloved Beasts, acclaimed science journalist Michelle Nijhuis traces the history of the movement to protect and conserve other forms of life. From early battles to save charismatic species such as the American bison and bald eagle to today’s global effort to defend life on a larger scale, Nijhuis’s “spirited and engaging” account documents “the changes of heart that changed history” (Dan Cryer, Boston Globe).
With “urgency, passion, and wit” (Michael Berry, Christian Science Monitor), she describes the vital role of scientists and activists such as Aldo Leopold and Rachel Carson, reveals the origins of vital organizations like the Audubon Society and the World Wildlife Fund, explores current efforts to protect species such as the whooping crane and the black rhinoceros, and confronts the darker side of modern conservation, long shadowed by racism and colonialism.
As the destruction of other species continues and the effects of climate change wreak havoc on our world, Beloved Beasts charts the ways conservation is becoming a movement for the protection of all species including our own.
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Efforts to prevent the loss of wildlife are "likely as old as the images of steppe bison painted on cave walls," writes journalist Nijhuis (The Science Writer's Essay Handbook) in this thorough history of wildlife conservation movements. She begins with the bison, a species nearly driven to extinction by humans in the late 1800s, and details how efforts to protect them led to the early conservation movement in America. From there, Nijhuis describes the Migratory Bird Treaty Act (which passed in 1918 and put an end to the plume trade, for which millions of birds were killed for their feathers) and outlines the work of environmentalist Aldo Leopold, who, during the Depression and Dust Bowl, advocated for an "ecological concept of habitat." Until then, Nijhuis observes, conservation "meant protecting animals from bullets, not protecting shrubbery and wetlands." As she lays out the origins of environmental groups including the World Wildlife Fund and Nature Conservancy, Nijhuis warns that organizations and governments are not doing enough to stave off mass extinction. To that end, she argues conservationists must "revive humans' sense of responsibility towards all species." Nijhuis's comprehensive survey is sure to delight nature enthusiasts and those concerned with disappearing species.
