Outdoor Conservation Book Club discussion

This book has long been on my to-read list, so I'm ready to get started! I hope you guys will join me!

I plan on reading it...but probably not this month...!

Jessica wrote: "I plan on reading it...but probably not this month...!"
No hurry! I/we will be here to discuss in the future too :D

I went on a marathon reading session today and finished the book! Here is my review: It's no secret that humans have dramatically altered the planet. Everywhere we've gone in our history has coincided with megafauna extinction, leading to landscape alterations, leading to this and that and the slinky just keeps falling down the stairs. We have the capacity and brainpower and dexterity to change the world, but the flip side is we have the capacity also to destroy the world. Possibly/probably without even realizing it. We've isolated species that have very strict habitat requirements, so they can no longer move about freely, and then slowly (or quickly) the population plummets and goes extinct. We've hunted large animals into extinction by the sheer ability to harvest a species that previously had no natural predators, reproduces infrequently, and reaches maturity slowly, so that now the species cannot gain enough members to offset take. Everything is connected, whether we realize it at first or not. We've introduced species across oceans, onto islands, and that has (probably unwittingly) caused the demise of the native species. But what it really all boils down to is the last few sentences of her book, which summarize it perfectly: "Right now, in the amazing moment that to us counts as the present, we are deciding, without quite meaning to, which evolutionary pathways will remain open and which will forever be closed. No other creature has ever managed this, and it will, unfortunately, be our most enduring legacy. The Sixth Extinction will continue to determine the course of life long after everything people have written and painted and built has been ground into dust and giant rats have - or have not - inherited the earth." We are accidentally, unconsciously, and sometimes knowingly eliminating species from the planet which thereby closes the evolutionary pathway she refers to. We've directly eliminated species (hunting), indirectly eliminated species (habitat removal), and set the whole future up for failure with a warming climate caused by CO2 emissions, which causes ocean acidification, and on and on and on. We are ultimately deciding who lives on in the future and who does not. It's a great responsibility and we're probably squandering it.

I started it yesterday on the train!