Wild Ones- Second Half of Butterflies and Birds

I thought the ending notes of the book were very depressing. I have so mad sad faces in my notes from this book! There seemed to be such a sense of cynicism among almost all the conservationists who had been working on the projects for long periods of time. They all started out so enthusiastic and just ended up hopeless. I think this has to do with the shifting baseline idea and how despite all their efforts, they still aren't seeing the wildness of their youth. There just seemed to be so many setbacks in each of the stories, the cranes refusing to migrate, destruction of the dunes to see a whale, the video of the starving polar bear cub. There also seems to be a bad outlook on human nature. The backpack of rocks metaphor was really depressing; we can never escape the negative qualities of being human. We always carry that weight with us.  It's hard to see the "weirdly reassuring" aspect of this story. Even Mooallem believes that there is no chance for the wildness to continue and that future generations will curse us for our destruction. But he says at least they know that things were better.

The personal connection of the conservationists to their work and the amount of effort that people are willing to put forth is maybe the reassuring part, but still all I can think of are the sad endings. For example, George put so much work to get the crane Tex to lay eggs. After all that work he was worried about people making fun of him, but then Tex died. This was very sad, to put all that work into a project and form a personal connection to your work, to have it end abruptly. Another example, is the story of Gibbs and her husband looking at the cranes. All they wanted to do was look at the natural beauty together in their old age as he was getting Alzheimer's. This story was very adorable and touching. It is reassuring that people care so much and despite all the negative qualities of humans, we are still working. But I'm not sure this is enough to feel good about our future.

I know in our discussion last week, many people wanted more ecological and biological detail. Why should we care about these species. But I do think the main point of this story is not the animals themselves or why they are important ecologically speaking, but how people view the animals. There is a conservation bias in people and it is important to see how you can get the public behind conservation. I think it is important to understand how people view animals and how that can be used to help them. Although this is inevitably a small picture approach it may be useful in driving big picture changes. In the end though, the wildness that we see today is changing, and as more and more environmental problems creep up, it is hard to see the end of human intervention in keeping animals alive. It is hard not to want to give up or know what the point is but hopefully the future holds some positive outlooks for biodiversity.