Icons of Early Conservation Biology
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BOOKS ET AL. inhumanity of the wilderness nor the ram- antebellum America and whose legacy may HISTORY OF SCIENCE pant deforestation that shook Thoreau. But, to good effect be used in addressing current as Walls notes in discussing the writer and affairs. I recommend The Passage to Cosmos Icons of Early naturalist Susan Fenimore Cooper, “[t]he as a fi ne piece of Humboldt scholarship, a true passage to Cosmos is not found, but heartfelt plea for environmental holism, and Conservation Biology forged.” This forging was carried out by an enjoyable read. “Humboldt’s American children,” promi- Jared Farmer nently among them the environmentalists References and Notes 1. A. von Humboldt, Voyage de Humboldt et Bonpland. John Muir and George Perkins Marsh. And Première partie. Relation historique (Schoell, Paris, he U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Walls does her own forging, too. 1814–1825). May 2008 listing of the polar bear ( 1) By recovering the excitement of Hum- 2. Voyage aux régions équinoxiales du Nouveau Continent in Alaska as a threatened species was a fait en 1799, 1800, 1801, 1802, 1803 et 1804, par Al. T boldtian explorations and travel experiences, politically and emotionally charged moment. de Humboldt et A. Bonpland [for its complex publication Walls wins back Humboldt for the 21st cen- history, see ( 5)]. Environmentalists had worked hard to turn tury. Through her account, he joins forces 3. A. von Humboldt, Kosmos: Entwurf einer physischen the already-iconic bear into a symbol of with present-day heroes such as Edward O. Weltbeschreibung (Cotta, Stuttgart and Tübingen, global warming. As part of the species recov- 1845–1862). Wilson and his Cosmos of a sort, Consilience 4. E. O. Wilson, Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge (Knopf, ery plan, the government will continue to cen- ( 4), all of them reorienting and transform- New York, 1998); reviewed in (6 ). sus bear populations. As historian Mark Bar- ing disciplines and divisions that threaten “to 5. H. Fiedler, U. Leitner, Alexander von Humboldt Schriften: row shows, politically motivated inventories Bibliographie der selbständig erschienenen Werke leach the poetry out of our technologically (Akademie, Berlin, 2000). of wildlife long predate the Endangered Spe- driven lives.” Walls reclaims for the present 6. J. Dupré, Science 280, 1395 (1998). cies Act and the dis- a man whose personality and work had a for- cipline of conserva- mative infl uence on the cultural landscape of 10.1126/science.1183462 tion biology. Nature’s Nature’s Ghosts Ghosts is essentially Confronting Extinction a chronicle of proto- from the Age of Jefferson BROWSINGS professional scien- to the Age of Ecology tists making lists of by Mark V. Barrow Jr. threatened totemic Alexander von Humboldt and the Botanical Exploration of the Americas. University of Chicago Press, H. Walter Lack. Prestel, Munich, 2009. 280 pp. $185, £125. ISBN 9783791341422. species. Chicago, 2009. 509 pp. $35, Although “botany was never the real focus of Humboldt’s interests,” his 1799–1804 travels with By using in the £24. ISBN 9780226038148. Aimé Bonpland made an enormous contribution to the recording of plant diversity. Humboldt and subtitle from the Age his collaborators described and named hundreds of plant species from the northern Andes, Mexico, of Jefferson instead and Cuba. (Although several 18th-century Spanish expeditions had also collected many of these, their of “the Age of Cuvier” or “the Age of Geol- fi ndings long remained unpublished.) Lack offers a short account of this research, highlighting links ogy,” Barrow (a professor at Virginia Tech) between the 19 volumes of “Partie unapologetically announces his American 6: Botanique” of Voyage aux régions bias. His nationalist perspective allows him équinoxiales du Nouveau Continent to draw a simple narrative arc: At the time of and the underlying letters, fi eld the founding of the U.S. republic, American notes, herbarium specimens, draw- naturalists, including Thomas Jefferson, did ings, and botanical prints. The au- not believe in the possibility of extinction, for thor notes that Bonpland carried out it seemed to violate the economy of nature. most of the actual botanical work Two centuries later, the United States passed in the fi eld but once back in Paris the world’s gold-standard law for protect- failed to complete the two major ing species from extinction. What happened texts he started. Humboldt then between? No single book could explain it recruited Carl Sigismund Kunth and all, and Barrow doesn’t try. Nature’s Ghosts a small team of researchers, artists, skimps on cultural, economic, and political engravers, and printers who saw the analysis. Instead, the book means to restore work through to publication. Lack the stature of the U.S. naturalists who created stresses Humboldt’s organizational talents and the modern aspects of the concept of endangered species. his methodology: careful number- Barrow’s narrative begins with a quick ing of specimens, preservation of summary of the geologists, paleontolo- notebooks, production of illustra- gists, and comparative anatomists in Europe tions, and deposition of specimens who established the reality of extinction. in prominent public institutions. The The original icon of prehistoric extinction richly illustrated volume includes a was the American mastodon. Thinking for- selection of 82 full-color plates from ward in time, Cuvier and Lyell posited that “Partie 6” (such as Acineta superba, human-caused extinction was possible, an epiphytic orchid Humboldt and Bonpland collected from cloudforest in Ecuador). The reviewer is at the Department of History, State Uni- versity of New York, Stony Brook, NY 11794, USA. E-mail: CREDIT: COURTESY PRESTEL COURTESY CREDIT: [email protected] www.sciencemag.org SCIENCE VOL 327 15 JANUARY 2010 271 Published by AAAS BOOKS ET AL. even inevitable, and potentially regrettable, Icon of extinction. When Martha, the last but not unnatural. Finally, in the 1830s and known passenger pigeon, died on 1 Sep- 1840s, investigations into the histories of tember 1914, her body was rushed to the three kinds of fl ightless birds—the dodo, the Smithsonian Institution, where it was long moa family, and the great auk—proved that displayed as a warning that even a species humans could in fact eliminate whole spe- whose population numbered in the billions cies. Of these, the auk is most important to could fall victim to humans. Barrow’s story because it was the fi rst spe- cies to die in front of naturalists’ eyes— sequoia—an American symbol linked or their gunsights. Various collectors and to the mastodon in 19th-century popu- museums vied for the fi nal specimens. lar culture, a species long thought to be It was, however, the dramatic, continental an evolutionary relict doomed to natu- declines of the American bison and the pas- ral extinction and in danger of human- senger pigeon in the late 19th century that caused extinction. turned U.S. naturalists into conservation- Nonetheless, Barrow has produced ists. For example, the American Bison Soci- something noteworthy—the defi nitive ety began a captive breeding program at the prehistory of conservation biology in Bronx Zoo to save the shaggy national sym- America. The book is especially strong bol. Propagation of passenger pigeons proved in its treatment of the underappreciated much harder, and the fi nal two birds—a child- cohort of fi eld biologists between Wil- less pair named George and Martha Washing- liam T. Hornaday and Aldo Leopold. ton—died in the Cincinnati Zoo. Overall, Nature’s Ghosts is rousing In the fi rst half of the 20th century, U.S. and depressing. Despite great changes naturalists enlarged their scope of concern. in U.S. attitudes about nature, Ameri- They looked beyond the nation’s borders— cans still care more about charismatic fi rst to the big-game country of Africa, then to megafauna than lowly, ugly creatures. the Galápagos Islands. Naturalists promoted matics, no computer modeling. In Barrow’s Although the original wording of the Endan- the passage of the Western Hemisphere Con- telling, their greatest tool was their “power- gered Species Act was surprisingly sweep- vention in 1940 and the creation of the Inter- ful emotional response” to wildlife, their ing, in application it has been something else. national Union for the Protection of Nature “deep sense of connection” to nature. After As famously shown by the snail darter court in 1948. In the same era, they added preda- World War II, naturalists found a home in case, not all threatened beings are created tors and scavengers to the list of mammals new nongovernmental organizations like the equal. Ironically, the narrative of N a t u re ’s and birds worthy of attention and preservation. World Wildlife Fund and enlarged agencies Ghosts replicates the popular disregard for Under the infl uence of the new discipline like the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Not certain classes of life. Pigeons were not, of ecology, naturalists began to inventory until Michael Soulé’s generation did “indoor after all, the only species that darkened the endangered habitats instead of just hunting biologists” within academia try to recover American sky with awesome fl ocks. There and mounting, capturing and breeding. the American naturalist tradition—a move was also the Rocky Mountain locust—a once- In the pre–World War II era, naturalists applauded by Barrow, who locates the roots prodigious species that went extinct about the and ecologists could not apply for govern- of conservation biology in natural history. same time without any fuss or expression of ment grants to conduct their baseline studies. The author’s admiration for his biographi- human regret ( 4). How many people feel a Institutional support then largely came from cal subjects creates problems. In passing, he deep sense of connection to grasshoppers? privately endowed natural history museums provides evidence that many of his players Barrow’s naturalists made no comment about and conservation groups.