Watching, from the Edge of Extinction

by Beverly Peterson Stearns, Stephen C. Stearns

To those struggling on the frontlines to save endangered plants and animals, the crucial challenge is to confront the biological causes of those species’ decline. But just as threatening to their survival are obstacles erected by human politics, greed, corruption, folly, and hypocrisy. In this mesmerizing book, Beverly and Stephen Stearns tell the stories of people who have worked directly with disappearing species in Europe, Africa, North America, and Oceania. They are stories of passion and commitment, of competence and selflessness. They are also stories that alarm, for even as unheralded heroes are working to reverse what often seems to be a species’ inevitable march toward extinction, incompetent or self-interested parties are often working against them.

The authors interviewed people who work with endangered species as diverse as Mediterranean monk seals, large blue butterflies, African wild dogs, native Hawaiian crows, Texas salamanders, and rare plants on Mauritius. These dedicated individuals, in discussing how they view their work, the problems they encounter, and their thoughts on the broader significance of extinction, reveal that the causes of extinction are unique to each species—sometimes subtle and complex, at other times obvious and simple. Yet an extinction always represents an irretrievable loss of evolutionary potential and a diminishing of the beauty, diversity, and value in our own lives. The dramatic lessons of this book shed new light on the problems of endangered species and offer hope that we may yet change the fate of those species that totter on the edge of extinction.

Genres: Nature, Science

288 pages, Paperback

First published March 11, 1999

Reviews

[Kim Zinkowski · Rating 4 out of 5]

B+. Very interesting essays.

[Ryan · Rating 2 out of 5]

A compilation of first hand accounts of conservation in the field ranging from butterflies to seals and hunting dogs, each told by the scientists involved, with the common thread of them bearing witness as species were wiped out before their eyes, hence the apt title. Its a mixed bag overall as some of the chapters were quite dry, being more like diary entries than a compelling story, while others had a better flow. These stories bring to light the dismal plight of (surprisingly) some of the more charismatic animals like chimps and wild dogs, how they are slowly but surely disappearing from places one would think safe (Ivory Coast and Tanzania). And this was during the 80s and 90s! One wonders what the status is today, and hope that the local population declines had halted or at least slowed since then.