Erfgenamen van de aarde : een optimistische kijk op de natuur in het tijdperk van de mens

by Chris D. Thomas, Nico Groen (Translator)

De mens brengt de natuur onherstelbare schade toe. Toch? Chris D. Thomas, de vermaarde ecoloog en milieudeskundige, meent dat dit niet het hele verhaal is en laat zien dat de natuur terugvecht. Onze aanwezigheid vergroot juist de biologische diversiteit in heel wat delen van de wereld en versnelt het ontstaan van nieuwe soorten. Als het leven kan herstellen van de asteroïde-inslag die de dinosauriërs uitroeide, waarom zou het dan niet bestand zijn tegen de effecten van de consumerende en producerende mens?

Met het oog van een bioloog en de brede blik van een ecoloog laat Chris Thomas ons de relatie mens-natuur opnieuw bezien. En hij herinnert ons eraan dat het verhaal van het leven vooral een verhaal over verandering is.

Genres: Science, Nonfiction, Nature, Environment, Biology, Animals, Natural History

320 pages, Paperback

First published September 5, 2017

About the author

Chris Thomas is an ecologist and evolutionary biologist, interested in the dynamics of biological change in the Anthropocene. He works on the responses of species to climate change, habitat fragmentation, and biological invasions. He is interested in developing conservation strategies appropriate for a period of rapid environmental change. His research has concentrated on insects and insect-plant interactions, but he is interested in a wide range of taxonomic groups, especially butterflies, birds and plants.

Reviews

[Peter Tillman · Rating 5 out of 5]

An important book. Dr. Thomas writes well, and is good at skewering the illogical "certainties" of certain conservation activists. He points out that all is not gloom and doom. Life is flexible, and successful species, well, *succeed*. Humans have profoundly altered ecosystems for at least the past 10,000 years. These changes are irreversible, but there are upsides. Such as civilization and science. And more (but different) biological diversity, with human aid.

Thomas demonstrates how rapidly evolution can occur, and that there is no real difference between "natural" evolution and selective breeding: both are Darwinian processes, selecting for fitness in each generation, using the natural range of genetic variation in each species. So it's possible to generate a new species in a fast-reproducing organism in a century or so. Usually longer, but the great human-caused reshuffling of the world's life that's in progress has opportunity for creating new species, along with extinction for the less fit. Winners win. Losers are buried. It has always been so.

The great strength of the book is that Thomas is a working scientist. He cites dozens of specific examples worldwide, which makes for fascinating armchair science, and reinforces his points. I recommend the book highly. Best pop-science book of 2017, for me anyway. Will require a reread to get it all down.....

A local story: the Monterey pine, Pinus radiata, is indigenous to coastal California, and barely hanging on here with rising temps and drying climate. But it thrives in such places as New Zealand, where it is now the leading timber tree (as Radiata pine). New Zealand foresters make occasional trips to Calif to gather seeds. The pine also thrives in coastal South Africa, where it has naturalized beyond the timber plantations. So this formerly-rare pine is now an important timber tree in the Southern hemisphere, and safe from extinction, due to human intervention.
On my 100 Best Ever books list. Don't miss, if this sounds at all interesting!

Good review at WSJ, by Jennie Erin Smith:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/picking-...

"When talking about the latest chapter of Earth’s history, or what they’re calling the Anthropocene epoch, ecologists tend to strike a tone of despair. They bemoan the human activity that has warmed the planet’s climate, altered its physical surface and the chemical composition of its seas, and fostered invasions by non-native plants and animals, pushing huge numbers of species closer to extinction. But a handful of thinkers, among them scientists and heads of large conservation groups, has begun to preach against pessimism. Given that much of this change is irreversible, they say, more flexible approaches— and sunnier attitudes—are required. " (Paywalled. As always, I'm happy to email a copy to non-subscribers)

Fred Pearce's "The New Wild: Why Invasive Species Will Be Nature's Salvation" covers much the same ground: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Pearce is a journalist, albeit a well-informed one, and his book is, well, a little clunky. INHERITORS is the book Pearce was trying to write.

Another parallel book is Paul Martin's "Twilight of the Mammoths", https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... . Martin addresses the early human-caused extinctions of almost all of the New World megafauna around 10,000 years ago (or before), and I commend it to your attention.

[Tim · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting read - definitely worth reading for anyone interested in conservation. However, I don't agree with much of it, and I do think it risks undermining conservation efforts.

Firstly, part of Chris' argument is that alien species rarely cause local species to go extinct, and so in general the arrival of alien species increases local species richness and is therefore A Good Thing. While the first part of this is technically correct, I don't think it's a helpful thing to say. Local species richness is not the only, or best, metric for biodiversity. Indeed, there is an argument that moving a handful of human-commensurate species around the world increases homogeneity and therefore decreases diversity, even if local species richness increases everywhere.

Furthermore, Chris suggests that 'losses' (i.e. species going extinct) should be offset by 'gains' (i.e. species moving in to a new area, or new hybrids). However, I don't think these can be compared directly - each loss is the global and permanent loss of a species, and millenia of unique evolutionary history. It is something that can not be returned (excluding 'de-extinction' or other exotic interventions). The 'gains' on the other hand are simply species that already exist moving or hybridising with each other - on a global scale, nothing is really gained.

Chris does make a broader argument, about accepting that change is inevitable and that biologists/'conservationists' should be aiming to maximise global biodiversity in the long run, rather than try (unsuccessfully) to keep everything exactly the same as it was at some arbitrary time in the past. This part of the argument I think holds a bit more water. However, I still think it is a dangerous thing to say without ample explanation, and I think Chris does not provide this. 'Accepting change' could be used as an argument for doing nothing. What Chris only very briefly touches on, but I think is hugely important, is simply the scale of destruction humans have already wrought and continue to effect on the natural world. What we have seen is not a 'change' from one healthy natural state to another, but rather wholescale destruction and simplification of ecosystems. There is simply much less nature than there used to be, and that cannot continue.

I also object to one of Chris' lines of argument that humans, and everything we do, is 'natural' and therefore good. Chris brings about this argument by mentioning that many conservationists aim to protect the 'natural' and minimise 'unnatural' human influence. I actually agree with Chris that said aim is unhelpful, but not for the reason Chris gives. Rather than Chris' argument that humans are natural and therefore anything we do is natural and therefore good, I would say that being natural is not a necessary or sufficient criterion for being 'good'. While humans are just animals that have evolved certain abilities, I would argue that a key ability we have evolved to a far greater extent than any other species is the ability to consider our actions - to think about the long-term consequences, to think logically and philosophically about what is 'right' and what is 'wrong'. And that is how we should measure our actions - not simply say that we are natural and therefore incapable of doing wrong.

In conclusion, there are certainly some things worth thinking about, and I would tend to agree that conservation needs to be more future-oriented and not fixated on some mythical and unobtainable past, but I think even those bits I agree with are poorly delivered and reached through fallacious arguments, and much of the rest of the book is similarly poorly argued and reaches conclusions that I cannot agree with.

[Bob Mayer · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting take on how nature persists in the face of human degradation. I do find it fascinating how quickly the Chernobyl area has thrived. Also, I've come across enough human ruins in the middle of wilderness to know that once the man is gone, nature rules.

[Andrea · Rating 4 out of 5]

I want to thank the author, the publisher, and NetGalley for providing me a free copy in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

Another great book on the expanded view of the so-called "sixth extinction", in the vain of The Ends of the World: Volcanic Apocalypses, Lethal Oceans, and Our Quest to Understand Earth's Past Mass Extinctions that I read earlier this year. I appreciate its clear-headed approach to understanding human impact on the modern ecosystem without the usual hysteria associated with the subject. Yes, mankind is negatively affecting many species, but it has been doing so since the cave-dwelling days, and it actually positively contributed to the prosperity of many others. Inheritors of the Earth is a more optimistic look on what is happening in our world, and it takes into consideration many facts that a lot of politically-motivated conservationists decide to avoid. Not to say the the author is trying to hide his head in the sand - quite opposite, he does not take away from the attempts to save endangered species, - but he does an excellent job reminding us that the situation is more complicated than it appears in media.

[Jeanette · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not an easy read. Sometimes it is wordy and the transitions wide which I think is a mistake in non-fiction as the narrower the focus the better. BUT, and this is the larger exception to that stricture- because this holds a wide subject matter re "ages of extinction" at its core, it's appropriate.

Common sense and practical applications examples of scientific observation reign. That's highly unusual because so much "consensus" now seems to arrive from a place of "we think" that should NEVER be a scientifically placed prerequisite.

I especially loved his birds material.

This is not a book to breeze through or to skim read. It's far more difficult and holds some valuable and exquisitely detailed observations. Evolution is an ever moving and never status quo proposition and within that is such BOUNTY.

[Stephen Hiltner · Rating 1 out of 5]

Thomas claims to be an optimist, but the book's prologue is extraordinarily pessimistic about any intentional action to spare nature the worst of our abuses. Check out this stirring call to inaction: "There is no point in taking on a never-ending fight with the inevitability of eventual failure." Think of any movement, whether it be civil rights or women's rights, or to sustain nature or democracy, and ask yourself if those are the words of an optimist. And where's the optimism in "come back in a million years" (to see that nature has, or hasn't, recovered from our abuse). Can you imagine that solution being taken seriously for any of the other problems we face today?

Thomas saves his deepest pessimism for page 241, where he declares that any "urge to fight a specific biological change" must meet the following test: "Will our efforts have made much difference a few hundred years hence? If not, this means we are fighting a battle we will inevitably lose. Next, will our great-grandchildren's great-grandchildren be that bothered if the state of the world has been altered, given that they will not know exactly how it is today? If the answer to this second question is no, this means we are fighting battles we do not need to win." Such thinking would preclude the vast majority of human effort.

Books of this sort satisfy the uninformed reader by upsetting the applecart, and rationalizing inaction by claiming big problems aren't so big after all. They tend to exaggerate the goals of conservationists, the better to claim that conservationists will fail. Here's a classic example: "to maintain our ecosystems and species in some idealized state is not possible." But conservationists aren't aiming for an idealized state. We are attempting to sustain the evolved balance and functionality of ecosystems and to slow down the rapid human-generated changes sufficiently to allow species time to adapt.

Thomas begins by misleading readers, in ways similar to his predecessors in this genre. He claims that, outside his window, "the basics of biology remain. Regardless of their origin ... plants still capture energy from the sun and convert it into leaves, rendering the world green; animals consume plants and their seeds and in turn are killed and eaten by other animals." The part about "animals consume plants" is often not true. Introduced plants that become invasive tend to be those that the local animals won't eat, whether due to texture, taste or toxins. This gives the invasive plants a competitive advantage, so that they displace the native species, making the habitat less edible for wildlife as time goes on. Herbivores are proving incredibly slow at evolving a taste for stiltgrass, or the poisonous fig buttercup, or any number of other highly invasive species. What Thomas calls a successful species may not be superior, but merely have escaped, through human transfer to a new continent, the predators, herbivores, or diseases that kept its numbers in balance where it originally evolved.

Thomas's highly repetitious talk of winners and losers gives short shrift to the many symbiotic relationships that have evolved between species. The nature I know is much richer than Thomas's stark winner/loser duality, evolving towards a dynamic balance, a win-win coexistence. It's in a predator's best interest not to consume all its prey. He downplays mutualism, giving few and only the most mundane examples, perhaps because it might undermine his simplistic view of species as rootless, cutthroat competitors.

The book wants to have it both ways, telling us not to worry about invasive species, dismissing conservation as a sentimental exercise in futility, and yet is somehow counting on "refuges for the most sensitive species" to continue to exist. How, exactly, are we to protect such refuges from fragmentation and disruption by invasive species if we buy in to Thomas's abject pessimism about intentional acts of stewardship?

We are told that evolution is our greatest hope for mending the world, yet the book is incredibly cavalier about tampering with the ecosystems that are the product of that evolution, and turns diversity into a strict numbers game, rather than a story of interconnectedness.

While claiming that there's an upward trajectory of species, Thomas then states that "periods when the levels of extinctions are high--as they are now--represent major setbacks." So, it sounds like he's admitting that the human impact is incredibly destructive, but, hey, as he says, "come back in a million years." I'm sure all of our other problems will be solved by then as well. That's optimism for you.

[Radiantflux · Rating 4 out of 5]

74th book for 2018.

This fascinating book explores what Nature really means in the Anthropocene.

Thomas argues that environmentalists need get beyond the idea of purity and think of dynamic ecosystems where creatures are constantly on the move, with some flourishing and others dying. Where hybridization and new mutations allow new species to evolve far faster than we are used to to take advantage of constantly changing environments. Not all species invasion is bad in Thomas's view. In fact it can be a good thing for the health of an environment.

He makes a strong case that environmentalists need to stop trying to save "pristine" environments and broaden their framework to include a much more messy (organic?) concept of what nature means.

Two other recent books written by journalists cover similar ground and are worth reading:

The Rambunctious Garden: Saving Nature in a Post-Wild World by Emma Marris
The New Wild: Why Invasive Species Will be Nature's Salvation by Fred Pearce

Thomas's book, written by a biologist gives a unique perspective on these issues.

4-stars.

[Helen · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book is thoroughly anthropocentric as it embraces techno-optimism, where human actions sends perhaps more than half of terrestrial species extinct by the end of the century and enslaves billions of animals in intensive food production system. The great moral wrong of extinction (Cafaro & Primack 2014) is not recognized.

[jrendocrine at least reading is good · Rating 4 out of 5]

The author, Chris Thomas, is a highly awarded conservation biologist, and it shows in his writing. There is a lot of detail about places and animals and plants that just goes zip zip zip, (had to skim a little) because so many examples as data for his conclusion.

The conclusion is worthwhile and in contrast to much common parlance surrounding biodiversity:
1. Despite species loss (which is natural since the beginning of time) there is more gain than loss. Species are on the move, finding new ways to interbreed, adapt and speciate.
2. Humans still have to be very cautious because we (climate change) could cause a major extinction (take care with our Anthropocene Park).
3. We shouldn't be trying to re-create primeval worlds - or "re-wild" - but rather let nature take its course. New species are occurring all the time. Nature is natural, let it wild.

This all makes a lot of sense to me and reads as an optimistic and reasonable approach.

(But a little boring at 320 pages.)

[Ted · Rating 4 out of 5]

An important book with an interesting perspective regarding the evolution of plant and animal species in habitats around the world that have been modified and/or destroyed by the activities of humans.
The author takes a long range view of species evolution and is cautiously optimistic about Nature's capacity to survive and thrive in the human-altered world of the present. Life on the planet is constantly changing and no doubt it will continue to do so long after humans have gone.

[Ian · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found this a fascinating book, and one that has led me to reconsider some of my own attitudes. Any book that has that effect deserves a high rating.

Author Chris Thomas argues that environmentalists tend to focus exclusively on the negative side of any changes to the natural world brought about directly or indirectly by humans, such as the importation of new species or the creation of hybrid species. By contrast, his own view is that such developments produce gains as well as losses, and that in any case evolution has never been static. Change has been a constant feature of evolution and it is illogical and unrealistic to oppose it. He also argues that, since humans are a naturally evolved species of ape, we are also part of the natural world.

Trying to rehearse all the arguments would make this review much too long. Those that concerned change in the natural world were mostly new to me and I generally found them convincing. One that had particular relevance for me concerned “alien” species within the British Isles. In the area where I live the rhododendron bush grows wild very successfully. It is widely viewed as an invasive “pest” species, and I have always been firmly in this camp myself. The author compares attitudes towards the rhododendron, introduced to the UK about 250 years ago, with attitudes towards the sycamore tree (introduced about 500 years ago) and the brown hare, introduced by the Romans 2000 years ago and now listed as a protected British species. On hybridization, he presents convincing arguments that the traditional “tree of life” is a misleading image, because branches on the tree frequently join back together. The history of Homo Sapiens outside of Africa is a good example of exactly this process.

The argument that humans are part of the natural world is one that I had encountered before and one that I feel is weaker than the rest of the book. Of course it’s true that we are one more species of ape, but I also think humans are a unique species in that we are aware of our impact on the planet. The “humans are part of nature” argument should never be used as a way of allowing us to shrug our shoulders about the impact of humanity.

I did feel that at times the author got a little repetitive with his arguments. Mostly though, a very worthwhile book.

I think though, it will take time before I can be entirely free of my ingrained prejudice against rhododendrons...

[Adam Orford · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dr. Chris D. Thomas argues that humanity will probably cause a worldwide increase in biological diversity. He has published scholarly work on the underpinnings of this topic.* The idea goes that average local biological diversity is generally increasing even in the face of global species loss, because the species that are going extinct are geographically isolated while those that are not are expanding their ranges into previously uninhabited territory without displacing native species. So, a plot of forest land today might lose two unique bird species to extinction, but gain five immigrant species from elsewhere for other reasons, and its local biodiversity would increase (net plus three) even while worldwide biodiversity would decrease (net minus two), and this is actually happening all over the word. Meanwhile, immigrant species are on the cusp of creating a huge speciation event - hybridizing into the plants and animals of the future. On the whole, this is neither good nor bad, but "natural," because human beings are natural. Hmmm.

On the science, I think he makes some really interesting points. He catalogs the under-recognized biological upsides of the anthropocene: increases in terrestrial species diversity as a result of human alteration and fragmentation of once-uniform terrestrial environments. He surveys the emerging research on speciation, which suggests that new species may emerge much more quickly than previously believed. Bizarrely, he almost entirely ignores the ocean, but while this limits the universality of his ideas, it does not detract from his terrestrial survey.

However, his book is trying to be a philosophical (ethical, political) or policy argument, and it isn't structured very well for this. Thomas wants to challenge the prevailing moral position of conservation biology - that human activity is “hurting nature," and therefore that we should work to counteract that harm and preserve species that will otherwise disappear. That means that his book depends both on his characterization of prevailing conservation biology being right; and his prescriptions and corrections also being right. Responses are always tricky in this way. But he does not comprehensively lay out what he is responding to, and so it is sometimes difficult to judge what he has to say. Anyway, he comes at it like a biologist, not a philosopher, and this weakens his delivery. He is constantly touching on vast areas of debate that he doesn't seem to even recognize exist, and certainly does not do very much to address or confront, except from within his own limited conception of the ideas with which he disagrees.

Some armchair psychologizing: I think that Thomas is coming at this whole thing from a position of gut-level frustration at the prevailing policy proposals coming out of conservation biology. Ends: save the charismatic megafauna! Means: prohibit habitat change and bothering said charismatic megafauna. He says: why not just move the beasties somewhere else? The primary constraint is geography - so help them migrate to new niches, rather than try (probably quixotically) to protect the niches they are dying in. Assist in mobility and let the survival happen on its own. Eh, maybe. Although it's not clear why doing this is worth the effort when trying to preserve them in place is allegedly not.

Thomas does rather convincingly cut apart arguments about what is "good" in conservation biology and biodiversity protection regimes as illogical and irrationally privileging certain historic moments. He, however, is not the first person to do this. "Biodiversity" itself is a slippery-vague concept, elevated to the primary heights by biologists trying to protect nature (another slippery-vague concept). So he spends a long time contemplating a large hole in his back yard, which, to him, in its epochal geology, represents the foolishness of privileging today's bio-geosphere over yesterday's, or tomorrow's. Species come and go. And they move around. That's life. Trying to preserve some bit of the old world against the change, when it comes, is pure folly. It is expensive and ultimately impossible. So why bother? Fine.

But he also does not argue against environmentalism (whatever exactly that is). He advocates for reducing greenhouse gas emissions and reducing Earth’s human population, among other things. So he's not a total nihilist. Yet he is against trying to control how species respond to human environmental alterations. He argues that the only difference between the Sixth Extinction and other biological extinction-speciation waves is that humans are directly responsible for Number Six, and that this alone is not enough, logically to support arguments for conserving the biosphere at any particular (inevitably anthropocentic) past moment.

This is a truly interesting distinction: that we should work to reduce our impacts, but not attempt to reverse our impacts, once they happen. It is difficult to find in the book a coherent philosophical argument for this outlook. Why is it a good thing to alter our activities and even our population to reduce our impacts, but a bad thing to seek to mitigate the worst of our impacts when we have not acted to reduce them? In other words, at the first decision point (change behavior or not?) the goal is to reduce impacts. But after we have chosen the bad option, at the second decision point the goal is to let nature take its course. This does not seem to be consistent.

Ultimately, his value propositions are very different from those that prevail in conservation biology today. His summation:

Whenever our urge is to fight a specific biological change, we should ask the following triplet of questions. Will our efforts have made much difference a few hundred years hence? If not, this means we are fighting a battle we will inevitably lose. Next, will our great-grandchildren’s great-grandchildren be that bothered if the state of the world has been altered, given that they will not know exactly how it is today? If the answer to this second question is no, this means we are fighting battles we do not need to win. If change is inevitable, which it is, we should then ask a third question: how can we maximize the benefits that our descendants derive from the natural world? In other words, how can we promote changes that might be favourable to the future human condition, as well as avoid the losses of species that might be important in unknown ways in future?

If we can create new biological success stories by whatever means, let’s do it. We can protect animals and plants in places where it is feasible to do so, rather than where they came from. We can transport climate-threatened species to places they could not otherwise reach–why not, if this increases the chances that individual species will survive? We can import species into ecosystems where they did not previously occur, for example if drought-resistant trees could increase the resilience of a forest to future water shortages. We can introduce species to new geographic regions so as to increase the impoverished diversity of human-created habitats. We can foster novel ecosystems that contain mixtures of species never seen before. We can deliberately create ecologically diverse landscapes that are mosaics of different kinds of ecosystem, richer in species than most that exist today. We can also help direct the evolutionary process: establish new hybrids that will perform ecological functions we find useful, develop new forms of insects that will eat pestilential weeds, and use genetic modification technologies to insert disease-resistance genes into captive frogs so that they can repopulate South America. It is time for the conservation and environmental movement to shed its self-imposed restraints and fear of change and go on the offensive.

The first question prioritizes feasibility - and advocates against doing something that will likely fail - or that doing something that will likely fail is not good, and in fact is bad. Would it be "bad" to try to save a child's life if it appears clear that the attempt will fail? What is the morality of infeasible action? Especially when that action takes resources that could be put toward other ends?

The second question prioritizes the perspectives of future generations, but with a different twist than typical. Usually, we hear the argument that we should not presume to know what the future will value, and foreclosing to them the chance to enjoy what we have is not an ethical move. But he seems to say that we should not assume that the future will care or miss what they do not have.

The third question is a variation on this idea: in the face of uncertainty, we still owe a responsibility to the future, but it is to somehow to maximize their benefits (always a challenging task when we can't know what they are). His answer is wholesale experimentation and let the chips fall where they may. He does not seem to give much credence to the potential downsides.

* Chris D Thomas, “Translocation of Species, Climate Change, and the End of Trying to Recreate Past Ecological Communities,” Trends in Ecology & Evolution 26, no. 5 (May 1, 2011): 216–21, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tree.2011.0... Chris D. Thomas, “Local Diversity Stays about the Same, Regional Diversity Increases, and Global Diversity Declines,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 110, no. 48 (November 26, 2013): 19187–88, https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1319304110; Chris D. Thomas, “The Anthropocene Could Raise Biological Diversity,” Nature 502, no. 7469 (October 2, 2013): 7–7, https://doi.org/10.1038/502007a; Chris D. Thomas and G. Palmer, “Non-Native Plants Add to the British Flora without Negative Consequences for Native Diversity,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 112, no. 14 (April 7, 2015): 4387–92, https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1423995112.

[Sarah Clement · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a well-written, accessible book about how ecosystems are changing in the Anthropocene, but it offers a different take on the subject to what you may have read previously. I consider myself someone who is fairly open to the idea that ecosystems are always changing and that baselines are often arbitrary and unrealistic, and I have read several books along the same veins. But even I found myself resisting some of the ideas in the book. Perhaps deliberately controversial at times, this book will definitely make you question some of your implicit (and explicit) assumptions about how landscapes should look and what it means for conservation to be successful in this new epoch. Thomas also does a good job of mixing personal anecdotes about his own back garden and his travels with empirical evidence from the scientific literature. He even manages to tell those stories without sounding like the trite 'intrepid traveler' type tales you will read from authors like George Monbiot. It's certainly a more hopeful book than most you will read on the topic, and written by someone with decades of expertise who has been brave enough to challenge some of the foundational principles of his own education. Conservation science is quite normative, but not everyone is willing to admit that and confront it directly. This book does. Although I am not entirely convinced by every argument in the book, every argument definitely made me think and often prompted me to re-visit ideas that I had accepted as 'settled' science. Along with Rambunctious Garden and Where Do Camels Belong, I would say this book rounds out my Top 3 books about biodiversity and ecosystem function in the Anthropocene.

[Ricardo Pinto · Rating 4 out of 5]

this book makes plausible arguments that demonstrate that many (most?) of us have an inaccurate view of the ecological crisis that we are facing. The core point being that we must not cling to a notion of keeping the natural world and our fellow creatures in some 'fixed state'; that species and ecosystems are constantly in flux, and that our attempts to protect what we can from human-made damage can often be making the situation worse: because, given climate change etc, we must allow animals and plants to move to new environments that will allow them to survive and prosper. Rather than stopping this, we should aid it. This is not to say that we must not try to save species and ecosystems—but we have to be wiser about how we do this.

The reason I have not given this a 5 star review is because, though clear, the arguments are a tad repetitive—I feel that the book could have made its arguments more concisely.

This said, this book has instilled in me an optimism that was not there...

[Todd Martin · Rating 1 out of 5]

I have to say, I approached Inheritors of the Earth: How Nature Is Thriving in an Age of Extinction with a healthy dose of skepticism. I heard Chris D. Thomas, Professor in the Department of Biology at the University of York, on a podcast some time ago and he seemed to be saying that there was an upside to the Anthropocene (the current geological age, viewed as the period during which human activity has been the dominant influence on climate and the environment). Sure, thanks to pollution, habitat destruction and climate change, humans are responsible for the sixth mass extinction (one of the greatest losses of biodiversity in Earth’s history), but according to Thomas, we are also responsible for creating new opportunities for (certain) species to thrive (of course these include cockroaches and sewer rats … which makes me wonder why this is such a good thing).

Anyway, with that as a backdrop, I figured I’d read Thomas’ book to better understand the specific claims being made. In a nutshell, it’s this … in addition to wreaking ecological devastation, human activity can also create opportunities for some species to expand their traditional range.

So … I have to say, this isn’t a particularly insightful observation. Within 100 yards of my home in the Sonoran Desert of Arizona people have planted decorative species such as:
- Ficus Trees from East Asia
- Bougainvillea from South America
- Oleander from East Africa and the Mediterranean
- Barrel Cactus from Mexico
- Bird-of-paradise from the subtropical coastal areas of southern Africa
Viola! Humans have miraculously increased the biodiversity of my local area. Thomas seems to find this very impressive, but there’s a reason that no one has proposed the widespread importation of non-native species as a solution for the biodiversity crisis … it accomplishes nothing. Global biodiversity is reduced if species continue to go extinct at an alarming rate. Rather, Dr. Pangloss’ … er … I mean, Thomas’ view strikes me as little more than making a virtue of a necessity.

Here’s the thing … new species take many millions of years to evolve. When humans wipe out species at 1,000 times the natural background extinction rate in the course of a few hundred years, there simply isn’t enough time for new species to evolve to fill these now vacant niches. Thomas writes “Come back in a million years and we might be looking at several million new species whose existence can be attributed to humans.” That’s all well and good, if it proves to be true, but you and I don’t have a million years. It’s just not clear to me why we’re supposed to relish the idea of living on a biologically impoverished planet during our lifetimes.

Thomas’ not only makes an unconvincing case, but he also argues it quite poorly. For example, while he acknowledges the fact that humans are responsible for the current extinction crisis, he thinks this is fine because humans are part of nature, which makes the extirpation of species natural as well. At the risk of pointing out the obvious, humans also commit genocide, murder, rape, child abuse and the enslavement of fellow members of their own species. We should therefore do nothing about these ‘natural’ behaviors either? It’s ridiculous.

With that said, Thomas does make one important, if obvious, point … the planet is not static. Plant and animal species continually evolve and change with time. It has always been so (which is why dinosaurs no longer roam the central United States). It simply isn’t possible to freeze the Earth’s ecosystems in place so that they remain unchanged for all time. Rather, the goal of conservation should really be to slow the pace of change to a level that provides enough time for species to adapt and survive (which, as already mentioned, is quite a long time).

My suspicion is that is that Thomas’ lame attempt to make an unconventional point will simply result in his book being used by anti-environmentalists to argue for the dismantling of environmental protections. Why do anything if, as Thomas argues, the environment is thriving while species go extinct around us. After all, it will all work out for the best. All we have to do is wait a few million years.

[Samantha Venter · Rating 5 out of 5]

I thought this book was excellent - it is really well written and easy to read. It's a fresh perspective on the state of the environment and on conservation. He included humans in nature, which is important because humans are often thought of as 'outside of' or 'separate from' nature. I loved the examples he used and I think this is an important read to think about the flip-side of the current accepted conservation way of thinking.

[E · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is by far the most fascinating book I have read in a while. If you are a Darwinist and believe in natural selection, how on earth could you object to how humans are affecting our planet? You can't believe in "survival of the fittest" and then object to the possible endangerment of the lesser sage grouse. In other words, you can't have it both ways. Thomas doesn't come out and say this quite so plainly, but it is the inescapable conclusion of his work, which focuses on how life on earth is doing just fine in the Anthropocene epoch, thank you very much.

The book is a bit repetitive, but each chapter was interesting. He begins by looking at major ways in which humans affect other species. In these first four chapters he discusses raising animals for food, clearing habitats for agriculture and development, raising the temperature of the atmosphere by a whopping one degree centigrade, and transporting plants and animals to different parts of the world. All of these tasks increase the diversity of species in any given place. Will some go extinct? Sure. But you'll still have greater worldwide diversity. Species are far more likely to adapt and even form hybrid or new species than they are to die out.

One of Thomas' biggest pet peeves (and mine) is people's efforts to repristinate biomes. If you believe the world is billions of years old (which I don't), why would you act like the world right before modern man showed up was its "natural" state? There's no such thing. The world is always changing. Who cares if you plant asian species in the midwestern United States? Especially if you think Homo homo sapiens are just another species (which I don't).? Why is what we do any different than a squirrel moving a nut from here to there? When is the artificial cut-off line to be drawn? There are islands in New Zealand where conservationists are trying to get rid of all mammals because there are "invasive." Well, everything is invasive!

In the next chapters, Thomas looks at some of the species that are doing very well in the age of man, and others that are not. He looks at species that have adapted where they are, and others that have adapted elsewhere (pine trees protected like crazy on the Monterrey peninsula are now grown all over the place in the southern hemisphere, for one example). In the final chapters he looks at what man should do (realize that we are part of the world, not some invader that has messed up everything; this will profoundly affect how we deal with the species around us).

Make no mistake, Thomas loves nature. He doesn't want to see endangered species fall by the wayside (I'll let the reader decide for himself if this is an inconsistency in his thinking). But he also doesn't want us to be unrealistic about how we interact with it (or, are a part of it). It will do what it will do. No reason to play God.

Obviously there are some fundamental presuppositions that I do not share with this author, but nevertheless I found this a great read. It should knock some sense into any conservationist who takes the time to read it.

[timv · Rating 2 out of 5]

I found that this book started off very interesting and then just kept repeating itself over and over. It made for a slog of a read by the end. I did enjoy the frequent use of photography in the book.

Underlying most of the premises in this book is that we should look at the concept of looking at human caused changes in nature through the lens of geologic time versus the lenses usually used. Another underlying concept is there we are in the Anthropocene and humans have created the opportunity for species everywhere in the earth to possibly propagate anywhere else on earth. So in terms of endangered species, habitat distraction, etc. we should, in the words of the author, “don’t cry over spilled milk“, and just get on with our human dominance. As the author states, it won’t matter anyway because after a couple generations nobody will remember what nature was like anyway and our grandchildren or great-grandchildren will just accept whatever remnants exist... they will never know that in the words of Joni Mitchell, “we paved over paradise and put up a parking lot.“

No wonder why Bill Gates and other technologists have wildly praised this book.

Read this book and weep.

[Elentarri · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an interesting book that takes a look at the not so doom-and-gloom effects of man's impact on the environment and the ever changing nature of the environment.

The author points out that man is part of nature and man's activities are no different from any other animal, we just use different means to accomplish out goals. He also points out that nature, evolution and the environment are dynamic and ever changing and that conservation efforts that assume nature is static are doomed to failure and go against the natural order of "how things work". Thomas makes use of many examples to make his points, but I felt his chapter arguments could have been more focused. While I don't agree 100% with everything he writes, I felt this book is important in terms of providing food for thought and in shaking up the conservation/environmental people to take a good look at what they are actually trying to accomplish and if the current methods are working.

[Lada · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a totally brazen book which will (repetitively) instruct you to stop worrying and learn to love invasive species, hybridization, release of GMOs, global warming and other man-made changes, even as it claims to not be doing so. Man *is* nature. It gives one something to think about. I thought nature might eventually recover from humans, but this books argues that many species (not just rats) are arriving and thriving thanks to us.

[Robin Tobin (On the back porch reading) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent audiobook....

[Sophia · Rating 5 out of 5]

This qualifies as a milestone book that has genuinely transformed my opinion and understanding of an important topic. The perspective the author provides deviates from conventional stances
of conservation efforts, I am thoroughly convinced by his view, and nothing is more interesting than different opinions! It's a delicate topic, and really requires reading the whole book to understand the author's perspective. There is also a tone of optimism that has become rare as awareness increases on the impact of humanity on Earth. More importantly, while the topic may seem to be on the very specific aspect of ecological conservation, it in fact acts as a window into human nature, morality, and cognitive biases that shape more broadly other, seemingly unrelated views of the world. At the same time, this book is less about ecological interventions per se, and more about what nature really is and how it really works, and why are thinking about it have been all wrong.

If you disagree with my review, read the book. While it tends towards repetitiveness, the arguments are very thorough, and there are lovely descriptions of natural environments throughout that make it all very pleasant. You don't need to be a professional anything to understand his point or enjoy the book.

The core argument is that nature is all about change, and our conservation efforts have been ignoring this, instead trying to preserve or restore some idyllic past. I was struck by how this parallels strongly with other "moral" discussions regarding modern attempts to restore human lifestyle (diets, exercise, cityscapes, etc) to some lost idyllic past, regarded as the "natural" and preferred state of humanity. The idea that the modern age is a corruption of the past is pervasive, and it turns out the same bias that leads us to imagine an optimal past state is extended to the nature surrounding us.
The fact is, nature is dynamic, evolution IS change, and we have been fighting it. The battlefront of this war on change comes in the form of defending areas from "alien" species. While the argument has always been that the arrival of these other species risks the extinction of the natives, this has only verified itself in a tiny percentage of cases; the vast majority of the time, the new and the old live side by side. While we might be struck by the devastation of a parasite imported from abroad on a local population of chestnut trees in North America, we can easily loose perspective on how many other species have gone on entirely unnoticed as they creeped into the continent.
The book is optimistic, because it looks at nature differently. When you stop seeing alien species as intrinsically negative and invasive, especially when imported from humans, you realize that globally, things are doing all right; while we do loose many species to other human causes, nature is overall resilient to imports in a way that shouldn't be ignored.
The author argues that our tendency to spread other species all over the place recreates the conditions of archipelagos: lots of species get moved around, but end up in locations where they don't interact much, and yet aren't totally isolated from each other. This results in each "island" evolving their own characteristic species, but not so isolated that they don't feel the evolutionary pressure to maintain defenses against diseases, competition, and predation, thus resulting in biologically successful species. While at the moment we might perceive this spread of species as a tendency towards uniformity, the reality in the future will be an increase in species evolved for their new environment.
Not only should we not fight the movement of species, we could also consider actively moving endangered species to new locations where we suspect they thrive. This happens all the time, both with and without human involvement; a species that was close to extinction in some areas manage to spread to some new distant region where they thrive, thus avoiding extinction. Historically, humans actively trying to shape an ecosystem have failed spectacularly (e.g. introducing toads in Australia to eat bugs), or at least not had the desired consequences. This is different however from moving species to save them from extinction; they are less likely to be "invasive" given that they were close to extinction anyway, and presumably humans would try to save them because they liked them intrinsically, and whether they adorn American forests or Australian ones shouldn't much matter. I do not however consider myself qualified to make this judgement, I just would like biologists and ecologists to consider the possibility.

The only real quibble I have with the author is his attempt to redefine the term "natural". He argues that because humans evolved from nature, that makes everything they do "natural". The problem with this is that the reason we have the words "natural" and "unatural" at all is to very simply distinguish between things that were caused by mankind vs not. This is not the same as trying to argue that humans are in fact animals; animals are defined by their biological characteristics, and thus humans are animals. "naturalness" is defined as things not caused by human kind. While the line gets blurry, especially when moving back in time or when considering secondary consequences of human action, that doesn't mean the distinction is meaningless, just like distinguishing between species isn't meaningless just because there's a gradient of differences. A cement dam is "unnatural" and a beaver dam is "natural", just because humans did one, and non humans did the other. That's how language works, as well as cognitive categories.

Overall, this book gives you a new perspective on how to consider conservation efforts. It highlights the importance of defending actions that are sustainable in the long run (unlike saving disease prone flightless birds) and don't require constant intervention (such as leaving natural parks untouched). It over-stresses the point that animals moving around is a good thing, and the fact that we are behind it doesn't make it intrinsically negative.
halfway through the book, I thought this argument was a bit rich coming from a British landowner, a peoples with historical tendency to favor invasions; but unlike the Old British Empire, species that populate new places don't in fact make it a point of exterminating all the locals.

I was also struck by how the debate on migrant species paralleled the debate with handling migrant humans. Ironically, "liberal" ecologists tend towards defending native flora and fauna from invaders but cheerfully accept human immigrants, whereas their "conservative" counterparts tend to not care much at all if foreign plants and animals enter their borders, but do make a point of keeping out their human equivalent. The actual pros and cons of human movements vs animal and plants are quite different, and the same solution won't work for all, but it's still interesting that the debate isn't completely disconnected, and sometimes eerily similar stances crop up (albeit from different people in different times). For example, apparently there are attempts to cull bison around the Grand Canyon that have too many cow genes (how to go about this was not specified) because they are less "pure", which in my view got uncomfortably close to arguments of eugenics from Nazi Germany. It turns out, when we aren't paying too much attention, the same way of thinking crops up again and again, even if we should know better.

My other concern is that there is a little cherry picking going on. On the one hand, the author is specifically going over perspectives and information that is neglected by most ecologists, but it would have been more complete to paint an accurate picture of where the world stands. My only hint that there was such a bias came from when he mentioned Flanders, one of the most densely populated and agricultured region in the world, and where I happen to live at this moment. He used it as an example to say that he found just as many species in Flanders as he did in some part of the "wild" world, but he went to a veeeery limited spot here; the vast majority of this area is in fact farmland with only a handful of "wild" species finding any place at all to live. He also specifically mentioned bird species, which are in fact the only type of "nature" you can really see around here. There aren't even stray dogs or cats for how tightly controlled things are.

[Tutankhamun18 · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is very good. It re-examines the way we look at the extinction event that is currently happening on planet earth as a result of humans. Instead of being necessarily a bad thing, it look at evolution and planet earth on the longer scale and determined that extinction and speciation are both natural. Evolution replaces itself with new forms at the expense of others. Humans, even with their culture, morals, war machines and pollution are part of nature and so any extinctions they cause are just as natural as the asteroid that contributed to the global warming that killed dinosaurs. However we do need to ashere to planetary boundaries if we wish to continue to exists and it is to this end that we should engage with climate mitigation. The beginning and ending of this book were very strong is laying out ideas and the middleof the book illustrated this well with examples. There was a very extensive and enjoyably created notes section that enhanced the reading experience and has directed me on to further reading.

“In other word, we can describe the human and non-human impacts in exactly the same terms. Species have always moved and evolved, and they have done so particularly rapidly whenever the environment gas changed, whatever the cause.”

“On average, for every new species that arrives, less than one od the species that was originally there dies out.” For example, foreign plants in New Zealand have doubled the diversity of NZ.

“Invasive species are no longer top of the list of threats, perhaps because the isolated ecosystems and speciws that were particularly vulnerable interlopers from distant lands have, in the main, already been invaded.”

Favourite fact:
30% of the worlds bio mass is humans and 97% of the worlds biomass is man made (humans, human crops, plants for pleasure, livestock, zoo animals, pets ect.)

Favourite case studies/ examples:
- tse tse fly and African Elephants
-Pinus radiata (tree) in California unsuccessful, hugely successful in New Zealand

The authors conclusions from this text:
1) Change occurs when the environmental world changes. The best method for human involvement in conservation is to understand that no change is not an option, and to instead consider the pros and cons of all alternatives.
2) Our aim should be to maintain robust ecosystems (however different from those that exist now or in the past) and species, rather than to defend an unstable equilibrium. - The convention has been to set national targets and baselines, but the problem with this approach is that a decline in species in one country, which registers as negative, could result in the species areival in another country (a biological invader, also seen as negative), meaning thag the international status of the species is unaltered.
3)When doing conservation our aim should be to maintain the biological building blocks (populations and species that will form tomorrows ecosystem- we can see from history that the animals that do well post extinction events already existed before the events). The more different kinds of species exists, the greater that some will flourish under new environmental conditions, and this increases the chances new evolutionary adaptations and hybrid forms wipl be able to contribute towards Earth’s biological process.

[Ushan · Rating 3 out of 5]

If you are ever in Los Angeles, visit the La Brea Tar Pits and Museum. It is an oil deposit that rises to the surface of earth; all the lighter fractions of petroleum have evaporated, and only the tar remains. Animals have been getting stuck in it for thousands of years, dying and sinking into the tar, and the museum shows their reconstructed skeletons: the Columbian mammoth, the ground sloth, the dire wolf, an extinct bison larger than the modern bison, the giant short-faced bear, and more. All these animals were hunted to extinction when the ancestors of the Native Americans arrived in North America.

Humans have been altering the environment for as long as there have been humans in the environment. Now, suppose that conservation biologists want to preserve a part of the North American landscape. What point in time should they try to roll it back to? When the Lewis and Clark Expedition (say) saw it? To the time of Columbus? The landscape had already been altered by humans even then. It is impossible to roll it back to the Pleistocene because the Pleistocene animals no longer exist. Moreover, during the ice ages and interglacial periods, landscapes have been rolling back and forth all over Earth; if the biologists pick a point, it cannot help but be arbitrary.

What Thomas notes are three things, illustrating them with many examples. First, humans have been transporting species of animals and plants all over the world. Conservation biologists have been fighting the alien invaders, trying to preserve the landscape of... when? There is nothing sacred about today's landscape. Second, if the invaders have a related native organism, they will hybridize. Third, in a new place the invaders will evolve into new species, slowly by the human clock but instantaneously by the geological clock. This is the age of extinction and at the same time the age of creation. This is something I've never seen said before, and it is true.

[Connor · Rating 4 out of 5]

I AGREE, THANK YOU! I whole-heartedly agree with this book's take. Evolution is so often not taken as a legitimate force that will keep life on earth going on and on. And that means that some organisms won't fare too well in the Anthropocene. Is that anthroocentric? Yeah, 100%, no qualms with that one tbh. Humans should be conservationists and climate-smart, but also our primary interests should be our own and the rest of nature will have to play catch-up to that. Obviously, keeping around a fair amount of species is in our interest so in some cases it is a win-win for sure. Not to be flippant, but we are the keystone species and that means everything else will have to find its niche in that, go extinct, or be cool enough that we chose to keep it around for some reason. A lot of bummers along that road though.

Love u audible

[Shan · Rating 4 out of 5]

A different and more optimistic perspective on things.

[Gendou · Rating 3 out of 5]

The core message of the book is solid: don't be prejudiced against organisms that happen to be invasive species. Invasive species have a role to play in the future of ecological habitats around the world. Species mixing produces lots of new species through hybridization, etc. which is generally good for ecosystems.

But it also contains some repugnant messages. Reading it sometimes felt a little bit like watching Fox News. The author is clearly educated in the language of science. He can be eloquent and nuanced when he wants to be. But time after time he starts off with a reasonable message, then goes off the rails, coming to controversial conclusions from fallacious arguments. He also uses shockingly callous language e.g. species that go extinct are "losers" and successful species are "winners". He also implies the only reason we should protect endangered species is because they're like "spare parts that might be needed in the future". Really heartless.

For example, when discussing examples of extinction due to human-introduced invasive species, he says we should just let weak species go extinct. Don't bother taking action to protect them, because they're doomed to be killed off eventually once those protection measures fail. This is the logical equivalent to not treating a life threatening injury because we all die eventually. While it's true we all die eventually (and all species eventually go extinct), it kind of matters how and when this happens! And it kind of matters whether we (and are willing to) can do anything about it. It comes off as though the author just doesn't value threatened species. He may be shocked to learn other people, myself included, actually give a shit about them.

The author also doesn't seem to value global biodiversity. He praises the high rate of species formation from hybridization of human-introduced species. He severely downplays the current rate of extinction. Thing is, while hybrids are great and all, they aren't directly adding any new alleles to the global biosphere. The extinction species, however, often means the loss molecular secrets that developed over millions of years. How many unique poisons (read: medicines) will be lost in the next decade as amphibians species are decimated? How many potential plant-derived pesticides will be lost forever due to rain forest destruction?

The book argues that species formation due to human-introduced species mixing probably outpaces species loss. He doesn't give any hard numbers or reference any scientific research on this topic, just a bunch of anecdotal examples and some piss-poor arguments. He clings to the high rate of species formation due to hybrids. Granted, it sounds like this rate is high now due to the explosive spread of invasive organisms since the invention of the jet engine. But this rate will quickly drop off once most species have had a chance to try out most habitats. The rate of habitat destruction, on the other hand, shows little sign of decreasing any time soon.

The book is basically one long rant. Most chapters are loosely centered on a particular example of a species doing well or not so well in the anthropocene. Instead of laying out a careful, scientific, logical case for a particular conclusion, the same half-arguments are injected seemingly at random, over and over and over. The book could be compressed by 50% by taking out all the times he repeats himself.

One part that really bothered me was when he starts by making a good point that humans are entirely natural. I agree that the separation between humanity and the natural world is largely an illusion. But he goes on to deny the dichotomy between natural and unnatural i.e. human-caused extinctions. This simply doesn't follow; it's an equivocation fallacy.

[Bill Leach · Rating 5 out of 5]

The main theme of this book is that because evolution is a continual process, we should not consider the movement of species around the world as exceptions. Rather than dealing with them as disrupting the current arrangement of species around the globe, we should recognize that species are always in flux.

Climate change is constant and has always caused the distribution of species to change. Perhaps the greatest example is the boreal forest, none of which was present during the ice ages when the ice sheets reached south to the middle of North America. In fact, the ancestors of all species that are alive today have flowed back and forth across the globe for many millions of years.

While foreign species often have major impacts, they are less than may appear at the time. For every new arrival, less than one original species is lost, resulting in an increase in diversity. Foreign plants have doubled the diversity of New Zealand. Mark Williamson's Tens Rule holds that one in ten of new arrivals escape from captivity, and one in ten of these become pests.

Foreign invaders may be pests initially, but they tend to evolve to become part of the ecosystem. Thomas points out that in California, the caterpillars of one third of 236 native species include foreign plants in their diet. California now supports over a thousand species of introduced plants. The author observes "Some might discount these new species as weeds and pests, but that is a reflection of the human mind, not a fundamental attribute of these new forms of life."

The author observes that "It should also be remembered that most species are not steam-rolled out of existence when biological worlds collide. The majority of all species in every region remain quite successful ...".

Thomas provides numerous examples of recent evolution. Yellow star-thistle (Centaurea) Spread from Spain to California - after 86 generations it is losing its fertility with Spanish plants and is on its way to becoming a separate species. North American apple flies have evolved from hawthorn flies within the last 150 years. Three species of wasp that historically parasitised the hawthorn flies have evolved to search apple trees for the apple flies.

Hybridization is of foreign species is frequent. Yorkwort, evolved from a Senecio originally from the slopes of Mount Etna, which was shipped to Oxford where it evolved into a distinct species within 100 yrs. Moreover, it hybridized with common ragwort in 1979 producing a hybrid that breeds true, now called Oxford ragwort. More recently, it again hybridized to form a third species.

The author claims that 7 Or 8 new species have evolved in Britain, demonstrating an evolutionary rate 100 times faster than in the wild (possibly driven by the gardening obsession of the British). He feels that everything we are doing to the world is forcing evolution into overdrive. The earth was not in some perfect or final state before humans pitched in. Life is a process, not a final product

Author observes that "The human era is undoubtedly a time of unusually rapid extinction. We should regret the losses - but we should also applaud the gains." and "In the end, the Anthropocene biological revolution will almost certainly represent the sixth mass genesis of new biological diversity."

A nicely written book.

[George Christie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Okay, every biology student should read this book, it's that thought provoking. That being said, the basic premise of the book, that spreading species across the globe will eventually end up creating vast numbers of new species, is more of an essay subject than a book, and I often felt he was simply using a slightly different example to say the same thing he'd said ten pages ago.

Thomas rightfully points out that size the first cells diverged in one at or another, species have always moved, they have always gone extinct, and they have always evolved. It is pointless to bemoan what has always been and it is pointless to pretend there is some perfect, natural past to which we should aspire. Mammoths are gone, as are many other species, and temperatures have sufficiently changed (as have both ocean and air chemistry) to make a return to a pre-industrial past impossible.

So, let's embrace the positives as well as attempt to ameliorate the negatives. Thomas certainly doesn't suggest wiping out species, but neither does he encourage trying to save the tiny remnants of the obviously doomed (the New Zealand South Island takahē is particularly noted for being unlikely to survive). Of course, he doesn't discuss the California condor, which may well be brought back from the near-dead (from 27 to over 400 individuals) or the whooping crane (approximately 20 individuals to over 600). In failing to do so, he does conservation efforts a disservice--how is one to know if an effort is worthwhile until one has tried?

My other problem is that he analyzes species numbers without delving too much into species interactions or ecosystem stability. Sure there will be more species in ten thousand years, but will we gain or lose viable habitats in the meantime. Adding species may well reduce a given area's ability to support human life, a far more immediate issue than the number of sparrow species present in 25,000 human generations. My guess is he feels the negative impacts of moving species have been thoroughly described, whereas few if any writers have championed the value of the changes that have occurred.

Regardless, this is the type of book that is perfect for presenting a balanced picture of human effects on biodiversity. Not all species expansions are bad--as he points out there are species that are dying out where they used to live but are thriving elsewhere. If other species have to give up a little room, then so be it. He notes that it is rare indeed to show that one species went extinct when another arrived (with the notable exception of people).

A book that is sure to challenge the established notions of any student of ecology. A worthy read.

[Robert · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a timely read with recent headlines projecting 10 percent of the world's species (~1,000,000 in total) will go extinct due to human activities (interestingly, this book, published in 2017, came up with a similar conclusion). However, not discussed is the evolutionary addition of species due to human involvement due to climate change and the increasing diversity on a regional basis due to human-facilitated transport of species.

Thomas amends his conclusions with clear statements that he is not proposing that existing species be abandoned and allowed to die off, but he questions battles against invasive species when there's only one case of of invasives causing the extinction of a native species. He also delves, with a sophisticated academic's eye, into the old adage that humans are products of nature; therefore, what we do is, by definition, natural. He also proposes that species endangered and trapped by climate change should be moved to areas where they are not trapped and can therefore thrive. Species that are adapting to our changing world should be embraced as the future because the future is with us now.

Thomas questions efforts to remove invasives, especially when most battles against them are futile resulting in lost resources that could have been focused on preserving existing species and habitat. Ultimately, he suggests the most important conservation activity is preserving and reserving habitat.

Many conservationists and environmentalists will be horrified by many of the conclusions and thoughts in this book, and many conservatives will feel mistakenly emboldened. This book is the real politik of evolutionary biology and our current state as humans create the new Pangea of cross-continental species.

I can't say I agree with everything he states, but his ideas are thought-provoking and provide a different take on conservation and managing species. Humans are, indeed, products of nature, but we can change our behavior to be better stewards of the environment. Either way, the outcome will be natural whether we like it or not.