ECOS 32-1-86 Book Reviews

ECOS 32(1) 2011 ECOS 32(1) 2011 dangers involved. They “snap viciously mimicry’) spent 12 years exploring at any object that enters their mouth. the Amazon and brought back 8,000 Book It helps if this is not a finger. We ‘new’ species. learnt, after the odd minor mishap, to use small pliers”. What wonderful Some collecting was done by military Reviews understatement. Here is a man who officers during their campaigns. One faced tigers, lions, snakes, spiders, French officer used to glue cork inside charging elephants and angry bees. his helmet. Immediately before a battle He has eaten a plate of giant turtle against the Spanish he spotted a beetle, penises thinking they were asparagus, jumped down from his horse to secure recommends peeing through a plastic it, and pinned it to the cork to await tube to avoid mosquito attack, and identification later. thinks killer crabs are all in a days work. The book is full of wonderfully self- Species seeking was a dimension of effacing stories of hardship and drama. imperialism, and Conniff discusses this early in the book. He also describes the The man-eaters of the title are the tigers competitive nature of the naturalist of the Sunderbans, and Freeman finds (a trait still displayed today) and looks huge pug marks in the swamp so fresh at the problem of crediting discoveries he can watch as they fill with muddy to the right person. Should it be the water. He turns his back on a cow for explorer risking life and limb to acquire a second, looks back, and the cow has the specimen, the indigenous but gone, lifted bodily away by the tiger. usually anonymous person who guided Exciting, but I will re-read this book for animals and plants already well known him to it (explorers were nearly always the tortoises and blackbirds, the cranes to the people in the lands concerned. men) or the taxonomist back home who and marmots, and the dry humour and The privations and dangers they faced, named it? genuine passion that emerges from a and frequently succumbed to, are life full of adventure. almost unimaginable. The class-ridden society of the time favoured the stay-at-home scientist MANGROVES AND MAN-EATERS Mark Fletcher Their troubles did not end when they because the explorers themselves were and Other Wildlife Encounters embarked for home in Europe or America, often considered to be mere labourers Dan Freeman which is where they all started from. in the field. There were of course those, Whittles 2011, 224 pages THE SPECIES SEEKERS Specimen collections and notebooks like Darwin, who were famous as both Pbk, £18.99, ISBN 978-184995-009-1 Heroes, Fools, and the Mad Pursuit were sometimes lost in shipwrecks. collectors and scientists. The book of Life on Earth We learn that the Frenchman Jules describes an incident on his journeys There is a charming old fashioned Richard Conniff Verreaux spent 13 years in Africa, only when he realised that the Christmas modesty to the adventures in Dan WW Norton, 2011, 464 pages to become the sole survivor when the dinner he had just consumed consisted Freeman’s book about filming wildlife. Hbk, £19.99, ISBN 978-0-393-06854-2 ship with all his finds foundered within of a species of bird he was searching He describes facing death in almost site of the French coast. He wasn’t put for! He was reduced to retrieving the every chapter, yet seems to shrug off This book chronicles the exploits, tragic off by this - he later undertook a fresh remains from the kitchen waste. danger, makes a joke, and carries on. It and triumphant, of those intrepid souls expedition to the Pacific. A similar fate is a refreshing contrast to some of the who, from the 18th Century on, scoured befell Sir Stamford Raffles, of Singapore To be able to name species at all required adrenaline fuelled wildlife programmes the world for ‘new’ species. This was one and London Zoo fame. For those whose a system of some sort, and that was around today. of the consequences of colonisation, collections and notebooks did make provided by Carl Linneaus in 1735 with and indeed a way of demonstrating the it back the rewards, scientific and the publication of his Systema Naturae. Freeman produced a classic BBC film supposed superiority of the colonialists, financial, could be substantial. Henry Conniff tells us much about Linneaus: about piranhas, and describes the even though they were ‘discovering’ Bates (whose name lives on in ‘Batesian he seemed to be a flamboyant and 86 87 ECOS 32(1) 2011 ECOS 32(1) 2011 charismatic teacher, and a great self- This is a minor criticism of a book full of communities’ – are places which “fulfil of sacred groves was lost in one decade, publicist. His students’ collecting trips adventure, information and unexpected humankind’s need to understand, and the1990s, while many remaining sites often ended with colourful and noisy insights. It contains a collective noun connect in meaningful ways, to the may have been reduced to below an parades through Upsalla back to the new to me – a ‘curiosity’ of naturalists. environment … and to nature”. The ecologically viable size. University. Even so he had his critics: For anyone with an ounce of that book does not address built sacred the French biologist Buffon said that curiosity about the natural world, or places, such as temples. Sacred natural The one UK case study describes a Linneaus was attempting to “impose an about its famous and not-so-famous sites represent ancient and profound sacred natural site that has several levels artificial order on the disorderly natural personalities, from Linneaus to Walter cultural values; many have been of protection: Lindisfarne, or Holy Island, world” – a discussion still going on Rothschild, or Darwin to Audobon, protected for hundreds, even thousands off the Northumberland coast, includes today. As for ‘splitters and lumpers’ it is it will be a wonderful addition to of years with low levels of disturbance. a National Nature Reserve and marine pointed out that the ‘lumpers’ are busy their library. As well as being high in biodiversity, Wetland of International Importance ‘undiscovering species’! they provide ecosystem services and under the Ramsar Convention. As well Peter Shirley resources such as water and medicinal as attracting birdwatchers to see the Be that as it may, Conniff graphically plants. They have spiritual, cultural, wintering wildfowl, the island has been describes the mania for collecting economic and educational value as a place of pilgrimage since AD635, and displaying exotic specimens, SACRED NATURAL SITES the location for events, ceremonies, venerated as the ‘cradle’ of Christianity dead or alive, in the cities of Europe Conserving nature and culture pilgrimages and tourism. in northern England and southern and America. This was big business – Edited by Bas Vershuuren et al Scotland, and associated with several showmen, museums (usually privately Earthscan 2010, 310 pages Building on two decades of work, the ‘nature saints’. The most notable, owned) and the nobility competed to Pbk, £29.99 ISBN 978-1-84971-167-8 authors explore “humanity’s deepest Saint Cuthbert, is regarded by some as have the biggest and best collections. response to the biosphere – the sacred ‘England’s first nature conservationist’, People voluntarily subjected themselves The significance of sacred natural sites values of nature as exemplified by sacred according to the author of this chapter, to electric shocks from eels, taxidermists for the conservation of biodiversity natural sites” through a multidisciplinary ecologist and sociologist Robert Wild, died early from the effects of working was barely recognised until the late socio-ecological approach. Importantly, one of the book’s editors and Chair of the with mercury and arsenic, and Thomas 1990s; by then many had already the book includes many different IUCN’s Specialist Group on the Cultural Jefferson laid out Mastodon bones in been modified, reduced, fragmented worldviews, aiming to stay true to the and Spiritual Values of Protected Areas. the White House. By the late 1800s or destroyed. In 1998 UNESCO traditional knowledge holders and The resident community of Lindisfarne there were about 150 natural history organised a series of workshops which custodians of these sites, giving voice of just 150 people swells with over half museums in Germany, and 250 in inspired IUCN and WWF, working with to “perspectives that reflect custodian a million visitors (and their vehicles) a the USA. indigenous groups and networks, to interpretations and realities that year. The number of pilgrimages is rising start exploring ways to integrate sacred manifest in these special places”. annually, with increasing interest in Some of the book deals, perhaps in too natural sites into their conservation Celtic Christianity; retreats on ‘God and much detail, with one of the outcomes work, recognising the urgent need to Many sacred natural sites are now Nature’ and ‘Faith and Feathers’ bring of the collecting, displaying and protect the remaining sites, and to raise small, fragmented and modified, but together spiritual and conservation classifying mania: the development of awareness and understanding of their may be the only remaining natural interests. The visitors bring economic ideas about the natural world, especially value amongst conservation managers or semi-natural places in a cultural benefits but also challenges that the theory of evolution. There is much and agencies. IUCN set up the Specialist landscape, the last places where natural threaten to compromise the integrity about Darwin and others, the events in Group on the Cultural and Spiritual regeneration occurs and certain species of the island and destroy that which their lives and the relationships between Values of Protected Areas, which led to survive.

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