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Book Review
Conservation’s frontiers
KUMARAN SATHASIVAM
TIGERLAND AND OTHER UNINTENDED DESTINATIONS: Eric Dinerstein; Universities Press (India) Private Limited; 3-6-747/1/A and 3-6-754/1, Himayatnagar, Hyderabad-500029. Rs. 375.
Wildlife today is facing threats everywhere. Even within living memory, populations of many animals were far greater than they are now. Climate change, habitat destruction, hunting and pollution are all contributing to their alarming decline. It requires little foresight to imagine their extinction. But countering the forces working against the natural world is not simple. The task is beset with many problems that appear insurmountable. Success stories are few and far in b
etween. The future appears very gloomy for wild animals in general. In this depressing state of affairs, this book opens with the message that there is hope.
“With species going extinct at the rate of one hundred per day, the chapters that follow could easily be advertised as a lament to the end of nature…” writes Eric Dinerstein in the introduction, “… Instead, this book offers a more hopeful vision of what success would look like in various ecoregions if the dreams of conservation-minded biologists came true.” How important hope and faith are! Without these we would simply stop trying to save wildlife, considering its disappearance inevitable.
Extended adventure
Growing up in New Jersey, Dinerstein the boy was no naturalist. He was meandering rather aimlessly through a course in college when he moved to a farmhouse located amidst woods, swamps and abandoned pastures. Here his interest in nature was triggered one day when he disturbed a heron as he was walking along a stream. This interest grew rapidly until it began steering his studies and gave him a career. He is today Chief Scientist and Vice President for Science at WWF-US. His work has taken him to locations spread all over the world where rare animals live and their habitats threatened. In this book he writes about his experiences in these far-flung places.
The first chapter is set in Nepal, where he had an extended adventure in the 1970s as a Peace Corps volunteer. In the next, the setting is Costa Rica with Dinerstein a graduate student and enrolled in a tropical ecology course. In the subsequent chapters of the book, the location is Kashmir, followed by New Caledonia, Venezuela, Tanzania, the Galápagos Islands and Montana. Accordingly, the animals that are the focus of these stories are varied: tigers, bats, snow leopards, giant otters, wildebeest and American bison— delectable ingredients indeed.
Narrative style
His style of serving the fare is through narrative and anecdotes, into which he mixes the background information: the historical abundance of a species, the human influence, the decline and the conservation effort. As the book proceeds, there is a waning of the “action” component, and though the descriptions are vivid, the perspective becomes more distant. The writing becomes little more than a bland journal or travel account, with a narration of the conservation story involved. He appears to have had less time later in his career to be “‘solitary, moving slowly, and with the mind empty, free of the mental tail-chasing that passes for conscious thought,” which is perhaps inevitable. At any rate, the writing suggests that his earlier experiences impressed him more deeply.
In each chapter we meet people working to protect the wildlife of the world, people who prove that individuals can make a difference. His writing is laced with humour — this is humour of the flavour that draws a quick smile or a quiet chuckle, rather than a guffaw or a long-drawn laugh. The book does describe the hopeful vision of success in various eco-regions that it promises, but it stops short of being inspiring. It offers a good read nevertheless.
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