Wild Echoes: Encounters with the Most Endangered Animals in North America

by Charles Bergman

In Wild Echoes, environmentalist and writer Charles Bergman chronicles his experiences tracking down and interacting with the few remaining members of nine of North America's most endangered species. Bergman soars in the company of two of the last remaining California condors, swims with manatees, assists in the capture and release of a Florida panther, and comes face to face with the last remaining dusky seaside sparrow, a species now extinct. As he describes these and other poignant encounters, Bergman discusses the factors, both manmade and natural, that have led to the animals' endangerment. He also examines the efforts of those who hope to pull species back from the brink of extinction.

Contents

Introduction

1. Hunger makes the wolf
2. The fall of the sparrow
3. Carrion for condors
4. A panther in a swamp
5. Sirens
6. Guns and parrots
7. Green eyes at night
8. "So ignoble a Leviathan"
9. Rumors of existence
10. The back door

Appendix 1: Partial list of extinctions in the United States and U.S. Territories
Appendix 2: Organizations concerned with wildlife, extinctions, and the environment

Select bibliography
Index

Genres: Nonfiction

325 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1989

About the author

A writer and photographer, Charles Bergman has lived nearly his whole life in the Pacific Northwest. He’s a long-time teacher of English at Pacific Lutheran University. He’s the author of four books, including Wild Echoes: Encounters with the Most Endangered Animals in North America. He’s written extensively on wildlife and animals in national magazines, including Smithsonian, Audubon and Natural History and National Geographic. His article on wildlife trafficking in Latin America was the cover story in Smithsonian. His work springs from a wild dedication to the Earth and its creatures. His writing and photography have won several awards, including the Washington State Book Award, Southwest Book Award, Ben Franklin Book Award, and he was a PEN USA Literary Award finalist. He has a particular love for the Southern Hemisphere and has completed two Fulbright Fellowships, in Mexico and Ecuador. He has taught study tours in Antarctica six times.

Reviews

[Alejandro Teruel · Rating 2 out of 5]

In each chapter, the author attempts to twist together certain narrative strands: his personal encounter with animals of North American endangered species, the status of the species, a historical context, the animal in the context of literature, and a postmodernist philosophical context. In general, I do not feel the strands come together well -the postmodernist twist in particular seems to belong to another book.

The best parts in each chapter are, hands down, the actual, physical, albeit very brief encounters with grey wolf puppies, dusky seaside sparrows (now extinct), california condors, a Florida panther, manatees, Puerto Rican parrots, black-footed ferrets and right whales. Bergman is a writer, not a naturalist or a scientist, and the encounters have a journalistic feel to them. There are some memorable passages on medieval perspectives on animals such as wolves and vultures and the select bibliography listed at the end of the book is quite interesting.

The book is spoilt by rather shallow and muddled attempts to inject postmodernist musings using Science as a whipping boy for Western civilization´s ruthless assault and exploitation of Nature. On the one hand, Bergman deplores technology but on the other he exults in flying, in a plane, alongside condors, or motorboating beside whales. He berates Biology for focusing on one species at a time, as if ecology didn´t exist. Though he grants that biologists have had some "stunning successes with endangered species", he then says:

Biologists may be able to document the problem [of endangered species], but surely we are not so naive as to think they can solve it. They cannot solve it because the scientific way of understanding nature has helped cause the problem

Yet a few paragraphs later Bergman states

Ecologists, for example, were able to exploit their knowledge of condors, to transform it into a symbol, as part of their resistance to the dominant culture that almost destroyed the species.

So, the condor becomes a symbol of Science to resist...Science?

I emphasize with many of Bergman´s discomforts and the irony he points out of caging endangered animals in order to save them. But if the alternative is leaving the few remaining specimens in the wild, "free" to dwindle into extinction, what can be gained by such "freedom"?

In the long run Bergman is right, biologists cannot save endangered animals -not by themselves, anyway- because it it not a "biological" problem but a biological, demographic, social, political and ethical problem. What we cannot do as a society is refuse to discuss and tackle the problem in all of its complexity, and simply wear eco-buttons, half-heartedly recycle and vote to provide meager funds for biologists as a sop to our collective conscience.

[Courtney Chappell · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was ok but it was kind of intimidating to read a book written by your professor. The stories were good, but I didn't care much about the facts. I felt like the book was divided into too many sections. They didnt really connect. And then the conclusion was just awkward. It talked about a broken window and walking out the back door of the house. Then our professor said that it symbolized his divorce.