Some deep non-fiction for me to ponder.
In this book, Marris delves into wild nature, and what that even entails nowadays. Can nature even be called wild anymore these days, heck, does nature even exist anymore? A lot of questions regarding animal conservation and animal welfare are raised and often times not directly answered.
A good, long, thorough and well-written book that truly does make the reader think. It's not a light read, not a quick read you'll finish within a day or so. But I honestly liked that, it really does get the reader thinking, even if I don't agree with all of Marris' points.
First of all, I don't like how Marris mostly highlights the bad thing that happen in zoos but largely ignores to mention the importance they have for wildlife conservation and education. I've done a year-long college course in wildpark management and I've learned that while, yes, some bad things happen(ed) in zoos over time they also do a lot of good. But Marris purposefully chose to mostly focus on the negative. Without zoos there are quite a few animals that would be fully extinct by now due to their conservation efforts. Also, while there's definitely bad zoos out there, keep in mind that there's also really good ones (usually the EAZA/AZA accredited ones that have to adhere to a lot of standards) and zoos also used to be a whole lot worse in the past. Of course, no zoo is perfect, but you could say that for any facility that holds animals. It's fine to not like zoos, but since this book is about animal conservation I wish more effort had been put into the positives they present as well especially with their breeding programs of endangered species.
Also, the author seems to insist that Elsa the lioness' release in the wild was successful, and if you've read my review of Born Free you'll know that I somewhat disagree with that. Yes, Elsa learned to hunt in the wild and bond with her own species, but she was still consistently being looked after by the Adamsons even when supposedly a "wild" animal. If she were really truly wild, they wouldn't constantly be checking up on her and feeding her if she didn't manage to hunt anything in a while.
And of course there's other points I disagree with. If it'd be up to Marris, we wouldn't be getting rid of invasive species, we'd be feeding polar bears, etc. Like yes, there is nuance in these situations. But generally speaking invasive species are as the name implies and do damage on the ecosystem. How is letting invasive species like cats or rats killing native wildlife a part of wildlife conversation? That sounds like the opposite. I do agree that there need to be more humane and painless ways to get rid of invasive species, but to just let everything run its course could have disastrous results for the ecosystem. As for feeding polar bears, a more tricky question. Generally feeding wildlife is of course considered bad and something that shouldn't be done, but if we could put up feeding stations so the bears don't associate the food with humans maybe it could work? Since the ice is melting and they are indeed getting less food. But that could bring with it the result that polar bears don't hunt anymore and start to rely on the food stations only.
Ah well, despite some of my gripes with the author's statements, this is still a good and well-written read. It sparks discussion, it makes you think, and that's what I think is the book's main goal in the end. A lot of these situations are not black and white and require nuance, and some of Marris' statements I agree with, others I don't. Overall there's a lot of discussion to be had around animal welfare and wildlife conservation. I just hope we can do the most to protect the species and ecosystems we still have left.
Rating: 4/5
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