Chris Thomas is an ecologist and evolutionary biologist who is interested in how people are changing the Earth’s biodiversity. He has written over 300 scientific articles on topics as varied as showing that animal species have shifted their distributions closer to the poles as the climate has warmed, how butterflies navigate fragments of remaining habitats as they move through human-altered landscapes, and how invasive plants are increasing rather than reducing biological diversity. Chris is today Director of the Leverhulme Centre for Anthropocene Biodiversity at the University of York in England. His popular book Inheritors of the Earth: How Nature Is Thriving in an Age of Extinction was among The Times, Economist & Guardian Books of the Year for 2017.
It is accepted wisdom today that human beings have irrevocably damaged the natural world. Yet what if this narrative obscures a more hopeful truth? In Inheritors of the Earth, Chris D. Thomas overturns the accepted story, revealing how nature is fighting back. Many animals and plants actually benefit from our presence, raising biological diversity in most parts of the world and increasing the rate at which new species are formed, perhaps to the highest level in Earth's history.
Thomas takes us on a gripping round-the-world journey to meet the enterprising creatures that are thriving in the Anthropocene, from York's ochre-coloured comma butterfly to hybrid bison in North America, scarlet-beaked pukekos in New Zealand, and Asian palms forming thickets in the European Alps. He questions our irrational persecution of so-called 'invasive species', and shows us that we should not treat the Earth as a faded masterpiece that we need to restore. After all, if life can recover from the asteroid that killed off the dinosaurs, might it not be able to survive the onslaughts of a technological ape?
Elizabeth Kolbert is a fantastic
writer, in this book encapsulating the challenges that biodiversity faces in
modern times. She entwines narratives about endangered species, about the
people trying to discover why they are threatened, and contemplating how - if
at all - it might be possible to repair some of the damage. A sixth extinction
would indeed be an extraordinary outcome of the evolution of humans - if it
comes to pass. Understanding how it may be emerging is something every
concerned (and not so concerned) person should know. Where Elizabeth Kolbert
succeeds so well is by revealing such a potentially dismal tale in such a
fascinating and engaging way. It is a pleasure to read.
Over the last half a billion years, there have been five mass extinctions of life on earth.
Scientists around the world are currently monitoring the sixth, predicted to be the most devastating extinction event since the asteroid impact that wiped out the dinosaurs.
Elizabeth Kolbert combines brilliant field reporting, the history of ideas and the work of geologists, botanists and marine biologists to tell the gripping stories of a dozen species - including the Panamanian golden frog and the Sumatran rhino - some already gone, others at the point of vanishing.
The sixth extinction is likely to be mankind's most…
This book is full of surprises, taking
on the thorny issue of where different species come from, where people think
they belong, and what people are doing about it. Written in an entertaining
way, Ken Thompson takes on those who hate and try to kill species simply
because they perceive them to be in the wrong place. First, he establishes the
science, pointing out that many species evolved in places that you wouldn't
guess…. Camels did not evolve in western Asia or North Africa originally, but I
won’t spoil the story.
Most species evolved somewhere but today survive
somewhere else. This is obvious to someone like Thompson, whose career
has been based in Sheffield in England, which was at the edge of an ice sheet a
mere 20,000 years ago. Virtually all of the species that live in and
around Sheffield today only colonised the area in the last 10,000 years or so,
a blink of an eye in geological terms. They evolved somewhere else. Full of anecdotes, and fascinating natural history, Ken Thompson takes aim at a
cadre of scientists - invasion biologists - who take a holier-than-thou
attitude to where species should be allowed to live and who, amazingly, have
persuaded policymakers to try and keep ‘foreign species’ out of their native
lands, wherever possible.
Ken Thompson reveals not only the contradictions of
this stance but the impossibility as well as the stupidity of this stance. If you are interested in natural history, conservation, or how people are
changing the world, this is a great read.
The ecologist and author of Do We Need Pandas? “presents a stimulating challenge to our perceptions of nature” and non-native species (George Monbiot).
You may be surprised to learn that camels evolved and lived for tens of millions of years in North America—and also that the leek, national symbol of Wales, was a Roman import to Britain, as were chickens, rabbits and pheasants. These classic examples highlight the issues of “native” and “invasive” species. We have all heard the horror stories of invasives wreaking havoc on ecosystems. But do we need to fear invaders?
This is entertaining, a mixture of
exasperation at the bizarre behaviour of some conservationists, excitement
about the natural world, and environmental hope. Conservation has for too long
tried to maintain a ‘just so’ version of the world, confining wildlife to
particular places, and managing ecosystems to generate just the ‘right’ set of
species living in a particular place. George Monbiot asks why?
His tale
of visiting a nature reserve in the Welsh hills left me crying with laughter,
the managed landscape overgrazed by fluffy white balls of wool (sheep), a dull
vision, until just outside the reserve he spots a grassy bank beyond the reach
of the tearing teeth - and there he sees a profusion of flowers, in stark
contrast to the brown land inside the reserve. Of course, there was probably a
good reason for the management, and I would have undoubtedly been furious if I
had been the reserve manager, but Monbiot makes a point.
Why do we,
humans, think that there should somehow be an ‘approved’ version of nature
(often one that only existed because our ancestors managed it a certain way in
centuries past) and that we should constantly intervene to make it like
that. Why not just trust animals and plants to live and grow where they
can, with the shackles off, and allow nature to take its place in and around
us. Since writing the book, the idea of rewilding has indeed started to
take off. This book is still a wonderful read, venting frustration and
explaining why giving nature a chance makes sense.
To be an environmentalist early in the twenty-first century is always to be defending, arguing, acknowledging the hurdles we face in our efforts to protect wild places and fight climate change. But let’s be honest: hedging has never inspired anyone.
So what if we stopped hedging? What if we grounded our efforts to solve environmental problems in hope instead, and let nature make our case for us? That’s what George Monbiot does in Feral, a lyrical, unabashedly romantic vision of how, by inviting nature back into our lives, we can simultaneously cure our “ecological boredom” and begin repairing centuries of…
This is my favourite ever environmental
book. Superbly written in an engaging narrative, Emma Marris explores the
complex realities and contradictions of living in a world where the human and
non-human components can no longer be separated. And she finds that this
mixture is not so bad. If the only way that we can keep wild nature the way it
used to be (or rather, the way we usually mistakenly imagine it to have been)
is to manage it ever more intensively, then we might as well accept the
inevitable. Humans are part of our planet, not separate, and the reality is
that all nature everywhere has at least partly been touched by the hand of
humans, and in this sense, we are already living in a planetary garden.
She
describes it as rambunctious because wildlife does not simply sit back and take
the medicine, it grows and lives where it can and when it can, a version of
human-modified nature that is always likely to be rather more out of our
control than under our thumb. And if everywhere has already been altered by
people, why not intervene a bit more, in imaginative ways, like rewilding,
transporting species to save them from climate change, and recreating extinct
species from fragments of their ancient DNA. I can’t recommend this book
highly enough. You will think a bit, and possibly a lot, differently once
you have read it.
“Remarkable . . . Emma Marris explores a paradox that is increasingly vexing the science of ecology, namely that the only way to have a pristine wilderness is to manage it intensively.” -The Wall Street Journal
A paradigm shift is roiling the environmental world. For decades people have unquestioningly accepted the idea that our goal is to preserve nature in its pristine, pre-human state. But many scientists have come to see this as an outdated dream that thwarts bold new plans to save the environment and prevents us from having a fuller relationship with nature. Humans have changed the landscapes…
You have heard of extinction for sure -
people are on the streets protesting about it. But what about
de-extinction? Maybe. But perhaps not in sufficient detail to really
understand what the issues are, ranging from ethical to environmental, through
to the sheer joy at the prospect of actually being able to go and see something
that looks pretty much like a wooly mammoth. Britt Wray does a tremendous job
of tiptoeing through the ideas and potential pitfalls of bringing extinct
species back to life, justifying its inclusion as one of the best books of the
year (2019) by The New Yorker. Yet, there are real challenges. Where are we supposed to put herds of mammoths? Shouldn’t we try to save
the endangered species that still survive before we heap resources into trying
to bring back passenger pigeons? And so on.
The conundrums keep
coming. But, this is a new science and it is undoubtedly going to happen
- at least for a few species - and so everyone who is interested in science,
biodiversity, or the environment should start to think about the pros and cons
of this approach, and its implications. For myself, I’ll be on the first plane
available to go and see a mammoth (-like) animal but others may be less than
enthusiastic and fear for the consequences. This is an exciting new area, and
this book is a great way in.
NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR by The New Yorker and Science News
What happens when you try to recreate a woolly mammoth-fascinating science, or conservation catastrophe? Jurassic Park meets The Sixth Extinction in Rise of the Necrofauna, a provocative look at de-extinction from acclaimed documentarist and science writer Britt Wray, PhD.
In Rise of the Necrofauna, Wray takes us deep into the minds and labs of some of the world's most progressive thinkers to find out. She introduces us to renowned futurists like Stewart Brand and scientists like George Church, who are harnessing the powers of…
The constellation we know as Taurus goes all the way back to cave paintings of aurochs at Lascaux. This book traces the story of the bull in the sky, a journey through the history of what has become known as the sacred bull.
Each of the sections is written from the perspective of the mythical Taurus, from the beginning at Lascaux to Mesopotamia, Ancient Egypt, and elsewhere. This is not just a history of the bull but also a view of ourselves through the eyes of the bull, illustrating our pre-literate use of myth, how the advent of writing and the urban revolution changed our view of ourselves, and how even bullfighting in Spain is a variation on the ancient sacrifice of the sacred bull.
The constellation we know as Taurus goes all the way back to cave paintings of aurochs at Lascaux. In I Am Taurus, author Stephen Palmer traces the story of the bull in the sky, starting from that point 19,000 years ago - a journey through the history of what has become known as the sacred bull. Each of the eleven sections is written from the perspective of the mythical Taurus, from the beginning at Lascaux to Mesopotamia, Ancient Egypt, Greece, Spain and elsewhere. This is not just a history of the bull but also an attempt to see ourselves through…
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