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Spine of the Continent: The Race To Save America's Last, Best Wilderness
In The Spine of the Continent, Mary Ellen Hannibal travels the length of North America and reports on efforts to create a wildlife corridor through Canada, the United States, and Mexico, begun with the purpose of protecting landscapes so that animals and plants have room to roam.
288 pages, Paperback
First published September 4, 2012
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Displaying 1 - 25 of 25 reviews
March 11, 2016
Somewhere between 3.5 and 4 stars. What works: the author does a good job of tracing the history of ecology, conservation biology, and connectivity - and explaining these fields in layman's terms. What doesn't work quite as well for me is somewhat related: so much territory is covered, particularly in terms of names (of scientists) and (their) projects, that focus is lost. Must admit that the latter may well have been, at least in part, a focus issue on my part, as I read the book in bits and pieces over the course of two months (after forgetting my first copy on an airplane). There are a number of excursions which, while often interesting, do not always add to the narrative; which can also be said of some of the author's somewhat quirky asides, particularly in the later chapters. Nonetheless, this is a good introduction to an important topic and comes recommended not only for its accessibility but also, especially, for its extensive bibliography and suggestions for further reading.
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April 5, 2013This book inspired me to get out and do something for the environment. I'll never be able to do scientiful activities that will help the wildlife and the land on which it lives, but there has to be something an amateur can do. I learned an enormous amount about the science behind saving animals and helping them deal with climate change. I also got a peek into the politics of the environment (not something that was unexpected). I give this a thumbs up - a scientific book that can be read and understood by non-scientists.
September 12, 2013
While the National Park system in North America has been around for a long time and been one of the great success stories of America, there are flaws that are becoming more apparent as continued climate change affects those environmental islands. But perhaps the most ambitious conservation effort ever undertaken looks to solve the biodiversity challenges and link the natural movements of nature all along the spine of the continent.
MaryEllen Hannibal has managed to do something that is not easily accomplished – she has made environmental scientists seem interesting. Ok, maybe not interesting – quirky might be more correct. Either way, The Spine of the Continent brings to light a conservation effort that is not well known and even less understood. Focusing on the migration routes of species along the Rocky Mountains stretching from Mexico to the upper reaches of Canada, this effort has everything from top scientific minds to grassroots local citizens groups working towards a solution to the complex problem of linking the island structure of nature preserves throughout the continent.
However, Hannibal’s greatest strength in The Spine of the Continent is also the book’s greatest weakness. In the process of making the scientists and their stories interesting, the focus of the actual environmental issues seemed like a rudderless ship. Maybe it was the writing style or perhaps it was the structure, but I often found I had to wade through too much superfluous storytelling in order to get to a nugget of interesting science. And while the premise of this unique conservation effort should have been fascinating, I never felt like this book misses the opportunity to motivate people who aren’t already motivated.
All in all, The Spine of the Continent sheds light on the potential evolution of the national park system. While interesting, it just fails to reach its potential by getting to the heart of the matter. There are just too many distractions and little narrative flow to make it move the reader. While interesting for those with a tie to the environmental movement, it just isn’t powerful enough to attract a mainstream audience.
MaryEllen Hannibal has managed to do something that is not easily accomplished – she has made environmental scientists seem interesting. Ok, maybe not interesting – quirky might be more correct. Either way, The Spine of the Continent brings to light a conservation effort that is not well known and even less understood. Focusing on the migration routes of species along the Rocky Mountains stretching from Mexico to the upper reaches of Canada, this effort has everything from top scientific minds to grassroots local citizens groups working towards a solution to the complex problem of linking the island structure of nature preserves throughout the continent.
However, Hannibal’s greatest strength in The Spine of the Continent is also the book’s greatest weakness. In the process of making the scientists and their stories interesting, the focus of the actual environmental issues seemed like a rudderless ship. Maybe it was the writing style or perhaps it was the structure, but I often found I had to wade through too much superfluous storytelling in order to get to a nugget of interesting science. And while the premise of this unique conservation effort should have been fascinating, I never felt like this book misses the opportunity to motivate people who aren’t already motivated.
All in all, The Spine of the Continent sheds light on the potential evolution of the national park system. While interesting, it just fails to reach its potential by getting to the heart of the matter. There are just too many distractions and little narrative flow to make it move the reader. While interesting for those with a tie to the environmental movement, it just isn’t powerful enough to attract a mainstream audience.
January 13, 2014
In my following interview with Wildlands Network's Wildlands Connection newsletter, Hannibal discusses how her book was written to make nature protection a higher priority among North Americans and more to the Wildlands Network point, to help more people grasp the concepts of connectivity and wildlife corridors. Her book has already captured the attention of a wide range of conservationists -- new and experienced, deep and broad thinking.
"One afternoon I walk along the roaring Hyalite Creek through mobs of wildflowers that reach my chin. The scene is bucolic but also intense, all this color, this profusion of form. There are successive rain showers, and gusty winds come and go, one waterfall after another hurtles downstream, and the psychedelic greenery bows around, shaking off water. It feels crazy that I am witnessing this alone. I want to step up on a rock and testify." —Mary Ellen Hannibal, from Spine of the Continent
For many of us, there are times when our relationship with nature makes us so alive, so euphoric, we want to share it with the world, just as Mary Ellen Hannibal explains in the excerpt above. Other times, witnessing the hurt nature must endure—like the felling of an ancient cedar or a vehicle’s death blow to a unsuspecting pronghorn—brings us to our knees, and we want to share our grief and our rage with the same world. The highs and lows of being a nature lover can be extreme, but it is this passion that often leads to remarkable conservation action.
Such was the case for author Mary Ellen Hannibal who met others who had felt the sheer joy and deep sorrow associated with having a relationship with our natural world. She needed to write a book with a message that’s loud and clear: Nature needs wildlife corridors, and it needs them now.
LLR: For whom was The Spine of the Continent intended?
MH: In 2008 I was working on my previous book, Evidence of Evolution, and interviewing curators at the California Academy of Sciences about their work. These scientists are almost all taxonomists, which is an old-fashioned but still-central part of biological research—taxonomists identify species and then put them in their proper place on the tree of life; by this practice the history of Earth is thus articulated.
Well, these old world scientists kind of freaked me out. Three of them actually wept while I was interviewing them. Their study subjects are disappearing, fast, and the places where they study them are being bulldozed, developed, you name it. I realized that although I considered myself an environmentalist, I didn’t really have any understanding of the extinction crisis, and that the world at large doesn’t get it either.
A younger scientist at the Academy at the time, Healy Hamilton, told me about the need to connect habitat for species to persist, and she told me about her work in support of something called “the Spine of the Continent,” which as you know, envisions linked landscapes down the Rockies. I thought, “Aha, here is a positive story that will help get the issues behind this crisis out to the public.” Healy also told me about Michael Soulé whom she called “one of my heroes.” So then I had a great character as well as a great story. I was looking to find a way to inform the broadest possible audience, without doing the usual hand wringing.
LLR: Why did you write this book, to reawaken the conservation-oriented community or to open the eyes of a new audience?
MH: God bless the conservation-oriented community—it’s been working hard and tirelessly for a long time. But it’s no secret we need a bigger community of nature-protectors, so yes, I wanted to reach more people and get them into the tent, as it were. At the same time, I wanted to write a book that would be a useful tool for conservationists, to help explain what they do and why they do it to the world at large. I want my book, in fact, to be used as a marketing tool for connectivity.
I read the book through the eyes of my 88-year-old father who was visiting from Vermont. He couldn’t put it down and has since purchased his own copy. During one of our many discussions he asked, “Why don’t more people get connectivity? It makes perfect sense.” But there’s a lot to understand, isn’t there?
I love your father—and he’s right. We need people to understand connectivity, which means we need them to understand a basic level of ecology, of how nature works. We need to see the landscape in a new way, not just some flat thing we fly and drive over, but a place we share with other creatures, a dense dynamic ground of the processes that give us life as well.
What I think Wildlands Network has really achieved is getting the science of connectivity, as defined and illustrated by maps, disseminated widely into the agencies, land trusts and NGOs and academic communities that are concerned with nature protection. That’s not at all easy, as you know.
LLR: New acquaintances defined your approach to the subject it seems. What strikes you most about the characters to whom you introduce us?
MH: Aren’t they all so different, and isn’t that fascinating? And let me tell you there are many, many more people I would have liked to profile in the book, but it can get too confusing for the reader to have too many characters to track. I was just so heartened by the individual turning points in people’s hearts, that there are all these people that “see the right thing to do,” and then “do it,” in the immortal words of Paul Newman.
LLR: You are a wonderful and humorous storyteller. Is humor part of your strategy in getting new audiences interested?
MH: Well first of all, life is kind of funny, so there’s that. Also though, there’s a big need for environmental writing to take a fresh tone. I’m always thinking about the reader’s experience of my prose—I want to make it super-accessible but at the same time nuanced and full of information. These are the luxurious considerations of a writer working with a third draft, by the way!
LLR: What do media—films, books and articles—do that real life experiences cannot?
MH: I like this question because movies, books and press articles are wonderful creators of context for personal experiences of nature. How cool to know, from books, that butterflies pupate earlier on one aspect of a mountain because it is south-facing, and then to see a profusion of butterflies on a hillside and think about where you are and what kind of insolation is at work. How great to know from press releases and marketing materials that a piece of land you routinely hike over is actually used by mountain lions to get from one range to another and that it is important to preserve for that reason.
But as you suggest, there’s something totally special and beyond words about a direct experience of nature. It’s EXISTENCE and LIFE and we all get to feel it, grapple with it, to understand little pieces of it, to get intuitions of its vastness. Moby Dick helps but what a different thing when you see a couple of blue whales breaching gently next to your boat. From what depths have they emerged, where are they going, what is the meaning of it all?
LLR: What is the most surprising thing you have discovered through writing this book?
MH: Well, I was really blown away by the beaver story, and the realization that exploiting (and exhausting) this natural resource was a primary means by which the United States was established. That Indian tribes were powerful players in this 300-year old drama also totally surprised me. I am still very surprised that Mr. Smart Thomas Jefferson never noticed what these critters were doing on the landscape, that they were making habitat and so creating a theater of life. In a sense, this story typifies our vast unconsciousness about nature—and what we have to wake up from.
LLR: Kids are often seen as the hope for tomorrow. Could you imagine writing a book like this that would reach children?
MH: It is on my list of things to do: write The Spine of the Continent for a young adult reader. Kids are awesome. Sometimes kids are in the audience when I’m presenting about the book. Right while the Yosemite conflagration was in the news every day here in California, a kid asked me: “What happens to the animals when there’s a fire?” Adults don’t think that way—how does it feel for the animals? I told him that a lot of the animals flee or burrow into the ground, but yes, they do die in fires. And if there is enough of their kind in the surrounding areas, the population can come back. But if not, then losing a chunk of a population can be devastating. So there was the connectivity lesson.
LLR: Where should the future of conservation be headed if we are to have enough success before time runs out?
MH: As I was researching the book, I kept asking myself, “What is really working in conservation, what is the most effective direction for it?” The body politic is the piece that nobody has really activated thus far. Surprisingly, though, I see a great path forward with citizen science. It’s booming in all kinds of directions right now (and I’m writing my next book about it). There’s a real potential to scale, to mobsource conservation to the level required.
I learned about citizen science through a couple of the journeys I took researching the book. A notable project is the citizen tracker program of the Sky Island Alliance (SIA), a Western Wildway Network member. Citizens of Tucson take a workshop to learn animal tracking and are then assigned a transect around the city which they monitor. Using data indicating where animals are using the landscape, SIA has been influential in getting highway overpasses and underpasses built for wildlife. At the same time, those people have learned about nature first hand, and they will now not let it go—nobody can, once you feel and love nature.
"One afternoon I walk along the roaring Hyalite Creek through mobs of wildflowers that reach my chin. The scene is bucolic but also intense, all this color, this profusion of form. There are successive rain showers, and gusty winds come and go, one waterfall after another hurtles downstream, and the psychedelic greenery bows around, shaking off water. It feels crazy that I am witnessing this alone. I want to step up on a rock and testify." —Mary Ellen Hannibal, from Spine of the Continent
For many of us, there are times when our relationship with nature makes us so alive, so euphoric, we want to share it with the world, just as Mary Ellen Hannibal explains in the excerpt above. Other times, witnessing the hurt nature must endure—like the felling of an ancient cedar or a vehicle’s death blow to a unsuspecting pronghorn—brings us to our knees, and we want to share our grief and our rage with the same world. The highs and lows of being a nature lover can be extreme, but it is this passion that often leads to remarkable conservation action.
Such was the case for author Mary Ellen Hannibal who met others who had felt the sheer joy and deep sorrow associated with having a relationship with our natural world. She needed to write a book with a message that’s loud and clear: Nature needs wildlife corridors, and it needs them now.
LLR: For whom was The Spine of the Continent intended?
MH: In 2008 I was working on my previous book, Evidence of Evolution, and interviewing curators at the California Academy of Sciences about their work. These scientists are almost all taxonomists, which is an old-fashioned but still-central part of biological research—taxonomists identify species and then put them in their proper place on the tree of life; by this practice the history of Earth is thus articulated.
Well, these old world scientists kind of freaked me out. Three of them actually wept while I was interviewing them. Their study subjects are disappearing, fast, and the places where they study them are being bulldozed, developed, you name it. I realized that although I considered myself an environmentalist, I didn’t really have any understanding of the extinction crisis, and that the world at large doesn’t get it either.
A younger scientist at the Academy at the time, Healy Hamilton, told me about the need to connect habitat for species to persist, and she told me about her work in support of something called “the Spine of the Continent,” which as you know, envisions linked landscapes down the Rockies. I thought, “Aha, here is a positive story that will help get the issues behind this crisis out to the public.” Healy also told me about Michael Soulé whom she called “one of my heroes.” So then I had a great character as well as a great story. I was looking to find a way to inform the broadest possible audience, without doing the usual hand wringing.
LLR: Why did you write this book, to reawaken the conservation-oriented community or to open the eyes of a new audience?
MH: God bless the conservation-oriented community—it’s been working hard and tirelessly for a long time. But it’s no secret we need a bigger community of nature-protectors, so yes, I wanted to reach more people and get them into the tent, as it were. At the same time, I wanted to write a book that would be a useful tool for conservationists, to help explain what they do and why they do it to the world at large. I want my book, in fact, to be used as a marketing tool for connectivity.
I read the book through the eyes of my 88-year-old father who was visiting from Vermont. He couldn’t put it down and has since purchased his own copy. During one of our many discussions he asked, “Why don’t more people get connectivity? It makes perfect sense.” But there’s a lot to understand, isn’t there?
I love your father—and he’s right. We need people to understand connectivity, which means we need them to understand a basic level of ecology, of how nature works. We need to see the landscape in a new way, not just some flat thing we fly and drive over, but a place we share with other creatures, a dense dynamic ground of the processes that give us life as well.
What I think Wildlands Network has really achieved is getting the science of connectivity, as defined and illustrated by maps, disseminated widely into the agencies, land trusts and NGOs and academic communities that are concerned with nature protection. That’s not at all easy, as you know.
LLR: New acquaintances defined your approach to the subject it seems. What strikes you most about the characters to whom you introduce us?
MH: Aren’t they all so different, and isn’t that fascinating? And let me tell you there are many, many more people I would have liked to profile in the book, but it can get too confusing for the reader to have too many characters to track. I was just so heartened by the individual turning points in people’s hearts, that there are all these people that “see the right thing to do,” and then “do it,” in the immortal words of Paul Newman.
LLR: You are a wonderful and humorous storyteller. Is humor part of your strategy in getting new audiences interested?
MH: Well first of all, life is kind of funny, so there’s that. Also though, there’s a big need for environmental writing to take a fresh tone. I’m always thinking about the reader’s experience of my prose—I want to make it super-accessible but at the same time nuanced and full of information. These are the luxurious considerations of a writer working with a third draft, by the way!
LLR: What do media—films, books and articles—do that real life experiences cannot?
MH: I like this question because movies, books and press articles are wonderful creators of context for personal experiences of nature. How cool to know, from books, that butterflies pupate earlier on one aspect of a mountain because it is south-facing, and then to see a profusion of butterflies on a hillside and think about where you are and what kind of insolation is at work. How great to know from press releases and marketing materials that a piece of land you routinely hike over is actually used by mountain lions to get from one range to another and that it is important to preserve for that reason.
But as you suggest, there’s something totally special and beyond words about a direct experience of nature. It’s EXISTENCE and LIFE and we all get to feel it, grapple with it, to understand little pieces of it, to get intuitions of its vastness. Moby Dick helps but what a different thing when you see a couple of blue whales breaching gently next to your boat. From what depths have they emerged, where are they going, what is the meaning of it all?
LLR: What is the most surprising thing you have discovered through writing this book?
MH: Well, I was really blown away by the beaver story, and the realization that exploiting (and exhausting) this natural resource was a primary means by which the United States was established. That Indian tribes were powerful players in this 300-year old drama also totally surprised me. I am still very surprised that Mr. Smart Thomas Jefferson never noticed what these critters were doing on the landscape, that they were making habitat and so creating a theater of life. In a sense, this story typifies our vast unconsciousness about nature—and what we have to wake up from.
LLR: Kids are often seen as the hope for tomorrow. Could you imagine writing a book like this that would reach children?
MH: It is on my list of things to do: write The Spine of the Continent for a young adult reader. Kids are awesome. Sometimes kids are in the audience when I’m presenting about the book. Right while the Yosemite conflagration was in the news every day here in California, a kid asked me: “What happens to the animals when there’s a fire?” Adults don’t think that way—how does it feel for the animals? I told him that a lot of the animals flee or burrow into the ground, but yes, they do die in fires. And if there is enough of their kind in the surrounding areas, the population can come back. But if not, then losing a chunk of a population can be devastating. So there was the connectivity lesson.
LLR: Where should the future of conservation be headed if we are to have enough success before time runs out?
MH: As I was researching the book, I kept asking myself, “What is really working in conservation, what is the most effective direction for it?” The body politic is the piece that nobody has really activated thus far. Surprisingly, though, I see a great path forward with citizen science. It’s booming in all kinds of directions right now (and I’m writing my next book about it). There’s a real potential to scale, to mobsource conservation to the level required.
I learned about citizen science through a couple of the journeys I took researching the book. A notable project is the citizen tracker program of the Sky Island Alliance (SIA), a Western Wildway Network member. Citizens of Tucson take a workshop to learn animal tracking and are then assigned a transect around the city which they monitor. Using data indicating where animals are using the landscape, SIA has been influential in getting highway overpasses and underpasses built for wildlife. At the same time, those people have learned about nature first hand, and they will now not let it go—nobody can, once you feel and love nature.
February 10, 2025
You might want to read the review by "Laura", which was the first one displayed for me on this site. Her experience mirrors mine. I too, want to give it 3.5 stars. Important subject, thoroughly covered, with fairly lively writing, but it was hard for me to get through, and I quit about 3/4 through, thinking--that's enough; I understand this topic and what happened.
I bought it a couple of years ago, after taking a course on The Anthropocene with the author, at the Fromm Institute. I didn't realize that she published it in 2012. I hope the whole project has been realized by now.
Read Goodread's description to learn about the project, but in short, the Spine of the Continent is a wildlife corridor from Mexico into Canada, pieced together from the string of parks, public forests, and wild land mostly through the Rockies, but south and north of that. It is augmented by bridges for animals over highways and the like.
It was envisioned researched and hopefully implemented by quite a few scientists from quite a few fields. Researched showed that preserving the ecology and in particular saving many small species relies on allowing nature to provide a healthy number of each "top predator" and other larger animals. If they cannot reproduce with a sufficient range of DNA sources, a "trophic cascade", occurs, entailing much species loss.
I bought it a couple of years ago, after taking a course on The Anthropocene with the author, at the Fromm Institute. I didn't realize that she published it in 2012. I hope the whole project has been realized by now.
Read Goodread's description to learn about the project, but in short, the Spine of the Continent is a wildlife corridor from Mexico into Canada, pieced together from the string of parks, public forests, and wild land mostly through the Rockies, but south and north of that. It is augmented by bridges for animals over highways and the like.
It was envisioned researched and hopefully implemented by quite a few scientists from quite a few fields. Researched showed that preserving the ecology and in particular saving many small species relies on allowing nature to provide a healthy number of each "top predator" and other larger animals. If they cannot reproduce with a sufficient range of DNA sources, a "trophic cascade", occurs, entailing much species loss.
August 2, 2024
The subtitle tells you a lot about this book as it looks at wildlife conservation from a bird’s eye view. I expected it to be about the efforts to link a host of pieces of land in North America. That was partly the story, but it is really a combination ecology/conservation primer followed by case studies of species and conservation efforts primarily along the Rocky Mountains of North America.
There are a lot of big ideas as well as personalities woven together and at times the storyline gets a little jumbled as she jumps around while telling her story. Much of this is well trodden ground, ie: the theory of Island Biogeography and the concept of “Cores, Carnivores and Corridors”. Having familiarity with these ideas helped me navigate and there was plenty of information that was new to me. Overall, it is an important work.
There are a lot of big ideas as well as personalities woven together and at times the storyline gets a little jumbled as she jumps around while telling her story. Much of this is well trodden ground, ie: the theory of Island Biogeography and the concept of “Cores, Carnivores and Corridors”. Having familiarity with these ideas helped me navigate and there was plenty of information that was new to me. Overall, it is an important work.
November 25, 2024
Definitely a good read, especially if the reader is just starting to delve into conservation science and habitat connectivity. If anything I think this book suffers from trying to cover TOO much. It’s a bit frenetic in its subject matter, covering loads of topics but not necessarily going into real depth with any of them. Maybe its true value outside of an overview of issues facing conservation of wildlife is to expose the reader to that suite of issues and spur them to run with the ones that speak to them and learn more and ways that they themselves might contribute to healthy ecosystems and ecosystem function.
August 1, 2017
An okay read, but way too much filler for me. Title was a little misleading as the book only briefly touches on the actual "Spine of the Continent" project. The rest is background on general conservation and then specific examples of ecosystem dynamics. Overall message of the book was good, but the focus was not what I was expecting.
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June 22, 2019After reading Citizen Science I was excited about this book, which covers Michael Soule and a range of efforts to engineer vital, continent spanning ecosystems through the three C’s: cores, corridors, and carnivores. Particularly for someone from the American West it makes for a fun, informative read.
December 17, 2022
Published in 2012, we already are far along with a new climate crisis in 2022. It is global.
The Mississippi River in St. Paul where I live does not look like a problem. But, from St. Louis to New Orleans, navigation is a problem. Relics on the dry river beds are a treasure hunter's bonanza. We don't measure climate change in twelve-year periods, but we have a climate crisis of wildfires and many more dried waterways. Do you really think draining Lake Superior will help replenish the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon? That possibility makes current headlines.
What is The Spine of the Continent? It is a pathway from the Yukon to Mexico. Birds and animals have followed that trail for thousands of years. The Spine has a ripple effect eastward, building mountains and tearing mountains down. The Spine is also an organization of the brightest scientists and scholars working on climate and climate change.
I am impressed with the high level scholarship by published authors sited.
I am aware of the next generation of climate scientists coming through Wolf Ridge Environmental Learning Center at Finland, MN. 1500 children a week, plus summer programs for all ages.
The Mississippi River in St. Paul where I live does not look like a problem. But, from St. Louis to New Orleans, navigation is a problem. Relics on the dry river beds are a treasure hunter's bonanza. We don't measure climate change in twelve-year periods, but we have a climate crisis of wildfires and many more dried waterways. Do you really think draining Lake Superior will help replenish the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon? That possibility makes current headlines.
What is The Spine of the Continent? It is a pathway from the Yukon to Mexico. Birds and animals have followed that trail for thousands of years. The Spine has a ripple effect eastward, building mountains and tearing mountains down. The Spine is also an organization of the brightest scientists and scholars working on climate and climate change.
I am impressed with the high level scholarship by published authors sited.
I am aware of the next generation of climate scientists coming through Wolf Ridge Environmental Learning Center at Finland, MN. 1500 children a week, plus summer programs for all ages.
May 29, 2017
I enjoyed this book as much as her one on citizen science--a concept we should hang on to /foster. Great books . . . . esp for nature lovers.
February 2, 2018
I loved learning about the conservation efforts. Would have preferred less of the author's presence in her reporting
June 13, 2023
A must-read primer on the history of biogeography and the issues in Western American conservation.
"Only connect."
"Only connect."
June 8, 2023
Rereading this 2012 work, I found myself wanting updates on the projects Hannibal discusses. It was hard to find out much about the Spine of the Continent initiative, from which the book's title is drawn; and the book doesn't actually spend much time on it either. There is a focus on Mike Soulé, the biologist credited with "inventing" the field of conservation biology (who died in 2020); and there are a lot of well-told stories: the importance of beaver and its loss; the reintroduction of wolves to Yellowstone; the Sky Islands of southern Arizona and New Mexico; jaguar, pronghorn, wolverine, pika. Very readable, though the author's use of slang was sometimes annoying.
Read
October 17, 2012Here we go, first time reviewing a book written by someone I know. Feeling the pressure a) not to be mean, but b) not to pull any punches. Onward.
This book describe a current effort to link open space for the entire stretch of the Rocky Mountains, from the Yukon to the Yucatan. From beaver to bear to pronghorn to jaguar, wildlife of all stripes have historically used this enormous corridor as their home and their highway, some of them migrating thousands of miles to breed or simply find new territory. But the encroachment of human settlement has cut this area to pieces, stranding wildlife in virtual islands of open space surrounded by impassable cities, suburbs, and interstates. The effects of such isolation on wildlife range from genetic stagnation to an inability to find more appropriate homes as humanity changes the climate, but generally spell doom for many of our continent's most awe-inspiring and ecologically important creatures.
Enter the Spine of the Continent, a massive collaboration between scientists, government agencies, NGOs, and private land-owners to reconnect the continent's severed vertebrae and ensure our land's spectacular ecological legacy. Hannibal's mission is to persuade you of this project's importance, introduce its charismatic cast of key players, and describe the many ecological processes humanity has diminished and that this project seeks to restore.
On the whole I think she succeeds. A great deal of this book concerns laying some biological groundwork: if you don't know what biogeography, island biogeography, and wildlife corridors are or don't really know why they're important, this is enormously valuable and Hannibal is a great guide, writing highly approachable prose and ensuring all lessons include a healthy dose of personality, whether the scientists' or her own. If you already know this stuff, these sections are kind of a drag, and maybe it's the stuck-up East Coast snoot in me, but words like "bass-ackward" and "ginormous" don't have a place in non-fiction outside of quotation marks. I can't even imagine Edward Abbey using "ginormous," though bass-ackwards would have suited him. End tangent.
I found the portrait of Michael Soulé to be very interesting, and I was frankly glad that long portions of the book's first third are straight biography of this fascinating man: an academic who left academia, a Buddhist who hunts, a conservationist hero who invented conservation biology and yet still summons tears when making his plea for nature. I knew embarrassingly little about him aside from his famous paper on mesopredator release (remove coyotes form suburban SoCal and birds decline, b/c the cats the coyotes terrorized eat all the birds). Now my embarrassment is lessened.
The biological portraits constituting the latter two thirds are fun and interesting, but somewhat tangential. Few of them include the critical refrain of "and here's why this animal depends on the connectivity the Spine will provide." If this book is a rhetorical device to communicate the vital importance of this project, each creature feature needs to be included in the argument. It's often implied, but I think it needs to be stated outright.
Regardless of my qualms, though, I was convinced that the project is important, and this books makes for a compelling introduction. Trying to find information about it online convinced me all the more, because http://wildlandsnetwork.org doesn't even begin to communicate the sweep and complexity of this vision (as of October 2012), and some simple searches don't lead to much. Clearly it needs more articulate, impassioned advocates like Mary Ellen Hannibal.
Addendum
If anyone from the Spine is reading this, here's what a want: a simple page that shows up as the top hit when I search for "Spine of the Continent" that shows a map of the project highlighting where the current gaps in connectivity are and what you're doing to close them. The current map looks like you've already succeeded! Show maps from past years so we can see progress as gaps are closed. Include the identities of the many partners to show us how epic this collaboration really is, but have your own logo, your own name, your own branding to convince us that it's a unified effort (I mean Spine branding, not Wildlands Network branding).
This book describe a current effort to link open space for the entire stretch of the Rocky Mountains, from the Yukon to the Yucatan. From beaver to bear to pronghorn to jaguar, wildlife of all stripes have historically used this enormous corridor as their home and their highway, some of them migrating thousands of miles to breed or simply find new territory. But the encroachment of human settlement has cut this area to pieces, stranding wildlife in virtual islands of open space surrounded by impassable cities, suburbs, and interstates. The effects of such isolation on wildlife range from genetic stagnation to an inability to find more appropriate homes as humanity changes the climate, but generally spell doom for many of our continent's most awe-inspiring and ecologically important creatures.
Enter the Spine of the Continent, a massive collaboration between scientists, government agencies, NGOs, and private land-owners to reconnect the continent's severed vertebrae and ensure our land's spectacular ecological legacy. Hannibal's mission is to persuade you of this project's importance, introduce its charismatic cast of key players, and describe the many ecological processes humanity has diminished and that this project seeks to restore.
On the whole I think she succeeds. A great deal of this book concerns laying some biological groundwork: if you don't know what biogeography, island biogeography, and wildlife corridors are or don't really know why they're important, this is enormously valuable and Hannibal is a great guide, writing highly approachable prose and ensuring all lessons include a healthy dose of personality, whether the scientists' or her own. If you already know this stuff, these sections are kind of a drag, and maybe it's the stuck-up East Coast snoot in me, but words like "bass-ackward" and "ginormous" don't have a place in non-fiction outside of quotation marks. I can't even imagine Edward Abbey using "ginormous," though bass-ackwards would have suited him. End tangent.
I found the portrait of Michael Soulé to be very interesting, and I was frankly glad that long portions of the book's first third are straight biography of this fascinating man: an academic who left academia, a Buddhist who hunts, a conservationist hero who invented conservation biology and yet still summons tears when making his plea for nature. I knew embarrassingly little about him aside from his famous paper on mesopredator release (remove coyotes form suburban SoCal and birds decline, b/c the cats the coyotes terrorized eat all the birds). Now my embarrassment is lessened.
The biological portraits constituting the latter two thirds are fun and interesting, but somewhat tangential. Few of them include the critical refrain of "and here's why this animal depends on the connectivity the Spine will provide." If this book is a rhetorical device to communicate the vital importance of this project, each creature feature needs to be included in the argument. It's often implied, but I think it needs to be stated outright.
Regardless of my qualms, though, I was convinced that the project is important, and this books makes for a compelling introduction. Trying to find information about it online convinced me all the more, because http://wildlandsnetwork.org doesn't even begin to communicate the sweep and complexity of this vision (as of October 2012), and some simple searches don't lead to much. Clearly it needs more articulate, impassioned advocates like Mary Ellen Hannibal.
Addendum
If anyone from the Spine is reading this, here's what a want: a simple page that shows up as the top hit when I search for "Spine of the Continent" that shows a map of the project highlighting where the current gaps in connectivity are and what you're doing to close them. The current map looks like you've already succeeded! Show maps from past years so we can see progress as gaps are closed. Include the identities of the many partners to show us how epic this collaboration really is, but have your own logo, your own name, your own branding to convince us that it's a unified effort (I mean Spine branding, not Wildlands Network branding).
April 2, 2014
As a nature lover who lives in rural Vermont with scant knowledge of the West, I loved this book. It was such a treat for me to be educated while also being entertained – a real feat for a science writer. I'd never heard of such a thing as a "trophic cascade," for example, and truly enjoyed learning about it. And who knew beavers were so remarkably important for our environment?
The Spine of the Continent has exactly the right tone, with an occasional light touch (referring to beavers at one point as “choppers,” having elk “looking over their shoulders” for wolves) mixed with serious and fascinating science.
Hannibal also did a terrific job profiling the people she was in the trenches with. She didn’t interview them over the phone, she spent time with them in tents and hunting lodges. Because of this, Hannibal was able to capture their personalities (among them, the memorable Mary O’Brien, a beaver savior).
For me, the book had the perfect amount of making it clear: "I'm talking about high stakes, people!" while not over-proselytizing -- and turning people off.
Several sections of the book had an emotional impact on me. I got teary when the owner of a huge property in Colorado saw that his High Lonesome Ranch took up a chunk the size of a half dollar on a six-foot map of the Spine of the Continent, and that he had friends who also owned substantial properties -- and "(he) realized it could be done." That the spine could be connected – by, among other acts, commercial endeavors mixing productivity with conservation-minded stewardship.
The book left me feeling hopeful.
The Spine of the Continent has exactly the right tone, with an occasional light touch (referring to beavers at one point as “choppers,” having elk “looking over their shoulders” for wolves) mixed with serious and fascinating science.
Hannibal also did a terrific job profiling the people she was in the trenches with. She didn’t interview them over the phone, she spent time with them in tents and hunting lodges. Because of this, Hannibal was able to capture their personalities (among them, the memorable Mary O’Brien, a beaver savior).
For me, the book had the perfect amount of making it clear: "I'm talking about high stakes, people!" while not over-proselytizing -- and turning people off.
Several sections of the book had an emotional impact on me. I got teary when the owner of a huge property in Colorado saw that his High Lonesome Ranch took up a chunk the size of a half dollar on a six-foot map of the Spine of the Continent, and that he had friends who also owned substantial properties -- and "(he) realized it could be done." That the spine could be connected – by, among other acts, commercial endeavors mixing productivity with conservation-minded stewardship.
The book left me feeling hopeful.
June 14, 2014
The Spine of the Continent is an essential work. There are secrets revealed in this book that have the power to undo damage done to our planet. My review of The Spine was published in Terrain in April, 2014, I'm posting the first paragraph, please follow the link to read the rest...
Since 1872, when Ulysses S. Grant signed the bill that made Yellowstone our first national park, our country has been proud of its public lands. But these islands of safe spaces aren’t enough for the species that inhabit them; nature must have the ability to move and connect in order to survive. Mary Ellen Hannibal’s book, The Spine of the Continent, illuminates the initiative that is determined to protect key landscapes along the expanse of the Rocky Mountains, from the Yukon to Mexico. She shows us that the Rocky Mountains provide an essential roadway for animal and plant migration and dispersal, especially as climate change forces species into higher elevations. If safe routes don’t exist, populations such as grizzly bear, wolves, pika, and bighorn sheep become isolated entities that will eventually cease to exist.
http://terrain.org/2014/reviews-reads...
Since 1872, when Ulysses S. Grant signed the bill that made Yellowstone our first national park, our country has been proud of its public lands. But these islands of safe spaces aren’t enough for the species that inhabit them; nature must have the ability to move and connect in order to survive. Mary Ellen Hannibal’s book, The Spine of the Continent, illuminates the initiative that is determined to protect key landscapes along the expanse of the Rocky Mountains, from the Yukon to Mexico. She shows us that the Rocky Mountains provide an essential roadway for animal and plant migration and dispersal, especially as climate change forces species into higher elevations. If safe routes don’t exist, populations such as grizzly bear, wolves, pika, and bighorn sheep become isolated entities that will eventually cease to exist.
http://terrain.org/2014/reviews-reads...
March 11, 2016
While set in the context of the Spine of the Continent project, this book serves a broader purpose, which is an introduction to the often-misunderstood field of conservation biology. The first part lays the groundwork while parts two and three introduce specific projects within the Spine collaborative and all the issues they face. Hannibal writes in a personable and accessible style, unafraid to take a few detours along the way to consider an alternative viewpoint or dive deeper into philosophical quandaries. Hannibal introduces the Spine project and the field of conservation biology through the eyes of the people who are there, working tirelessly not for personal glory, but for a deeply held belief in their cause. It is the stories of these people that are the ultimate message of inspiration and hope.
March 27, 2013
An intriguing look at the personalities and intro to the science beyond biological connectivity / conservation and the importance of providing linkages for flora / fauna to navigate the human-made obstacles keeping them from their traditional ranges or allowing them to move to more appropriate locales in the face of global warming.
Fairly well written and researched, yet personality / story driven to remain accessible to general audiences.
Fairly well written and researched, yet personality / story driven to remain accessible to general audiences.
July 10, 2016
I'm adding this book as "read," because indeed I have read it hundreds of times. I'm trying to push my baby out into the world of Goodreads, and to put it on shelves like "Best nature" books and so forth, it has to be on my bookshelf, apparently. If anyone wants to correct me on this or guide me into this world, I'd appreciate it!
February 12, 2017
Informative, but not hard to read. I plan on being a conservation biologist, and this book was great for me. Exciting, scary, sad, hopeful. I love how she interviewed so many people, who sometimes disagreed.
March 20, 2013
A sprightly tour of doom and gloom with some real hope.
April 3, 2014
Love love love this book. It's a must read. Well written, informative, just great.
June 4, 2016
Book is my current favorite non-fiction book. I learned soooo much.
April 6, 2017
A good story spoiled by lack of control.
Hannibal sets out to tell the tale of an audacious conservation plan: the preservation of a huge corridor of wilderness the length of the Rockies, from the Yukon to Mexico. Sounds fascinating, right?
The only problem is, the story never takes off. She's too distracted. And so we get a mini bio of Michael Soule, the so-called grandfather of conservation biology. We get an extended riff on the history the fur trade and the importance of beavers to early European immigrants in America. There is long section on Darwin and Wallace, and more on island biogeography. Arguably, these are necessary components of the story she is telling, but they do not deserve the prominence, and they end up swamping out the tale I paids my money to hear.
Nor does she seem a particularly reliable guide. Her favored narrative strategy is plopping down a paragraph thick with references, then spending a bunch more time explicating those references, not all of which are important. So we go all over the place, except forward. She makes all kinds of generalizations that seem wrong--that scientists are emotionless creatures without hobbies or interests beyond material reality, for example. Or that they haven't used literary references in academic papers for 150 years. I suspect she knows better--indeed, I suspect she knows far more than me about this subject and related ones--but for reasons of her own decides such declarative statements are necessary.
By the last one-third of the book, I was seriously skimming, hoping the story would reveal itself, but as far as I can tell, it never emerged, rather was drowned in a welter of details. Too bad.
Hannibal sets out to tell the tale of an audacious conservation plan: the preservation of a huge corridor of wilderness the length of the Rockies, from the Yukon to Mexico. Sounds fascinating, right?
The only problem is, the story never takes off. She's too distracted. And so we get a mini bio of Michael Soule, the so-called grandfather of conservation biology. We get an extended riff on the history the fur trade and the importance of beavers to early European immigrants in America. There is long section on Darwin and Wallace, and more on island biogeography. Arguably, these are necessary components of the story she is telling, but they do not deserve the prominence, and they end up swamping out the tale I paids my money to hear.
Nor does she seem a particularly reliable guide. Her favored narrative strategy is plopping down a paragraph thick with references, then spending a bunch more time explicating those references, not all of which are important. So we go all over the place, except forward. She makes all kinds of generalizations that seem wrong--that scientists are emotionless creatures without hobbies or interests beyond material reality, for example. Or that they haven't used literary references in academic papers for 150 years. I suspect she knows better--indeed, I suspect she knows far more than me about this subject and related ones--but for reasons of her own decides such declarative statements are necessary.
By the last one-third of the book, I was seriously skimming, hoping the story would reveal itself, but as far as I can tell, it never emerged, rather was drowned in a welter of details. Too bad.
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