Etosha, Tongaroa, Kakadu, Okavango, Denali—“The Last Wild Places” all seem to have beautiful names from another time to match their own wondrous beauty. Surely “The Last...” is a melancholy beginning. It is an epitaph more than a title. Whether in The Last of the Mohicans, The Last of the Summer Wine, The Last Picture Show, or The Last of the Wild Places, the phrase signals bitter reconciliation to a sad but inevitable end. I have visited and even had the good fortune to conduct research in some of the locales that tourist brochures proclaim as “The Last Wild Places,” enticing us to see them before they are gone. I wrote this book because I do not wish to accept their leaving as inevitable.
Human activities are altering the planet—its atmosphere, its oceans, and, as I emphasize in this book, its landscapes. It should not come as a great surprise that we are living in a time of Last Wild Places and attendant high extinction rates of plant and animal species. Directly or indirectly, we are the cause. Understanding how to manage and preserve some of these places and their species can be remarkably difficult. But the causes of the high rates of extinction are easy to understand. Fundamentally, they involve change and responses to change, and these are the focus of this book.
To help you understand the impact of change on terrestrial landscapes, I will introduce ecological concepts describing the interactions between plants and animals, the relationship between landscape patterns and environmental change, and the connections involving extinctions and explosions of species populations. Each chapter begins with a quotation from mythology or history and tells the story of a particular animal and its fate. That story then leads to discussion of an ecological concept.
Why use animal stories? People in diverse cultures are educated in the ways of life through stories—tales to learn to speak, fables to discern proper behavior, myths and parables to remember truths. Often these narratives involve animals. Some animal stories give these creatures attributes exemplifying human traits to educate, as in Aesop’s fables, or to entertain, as in Rudyard Kipling’s just-so stories. My own stories are nonromanticized, historical accounts of certain specific animals.
One could undoubtedly write a comparable book using aquatic and marine animals to illustrate the effects of human change on our planet. I have restricted myself to terrestrial animals, either birds or mammals—five of each. Although they have the advantage of being familiar topics of traditional fables, they are an extremely thin slice of the rich diversity of terrestrial animals. My selections may seem diverse and eclectic, but each makes an important point about how landscapes function and how change affects the animals inhabiting them. I consider mostly North American species, but representatives from Europe, Africa, Antarctica, Australia, and Oceania are also present.
Perhaps one advantage of using animal stories is that the chapters parallel the intellectual evolution of many scientists performing research in large-scale ecology. Certainly my own keen interest in birds as a young boy led rather naturally to a desire to understand the factors that change the habitats of birds, and from there to an interest in ecosystems and global ecology. In talking with colleagues, I have often found that an interest in natural history, followed by realization of the fragility of species survival in a changing world, is one life pathway that produces global ecologists. It also can fuel an ardent involvement in conservation issues.
Some of my accounts are about familiar beings: dogs, penguins, and beavers. Other creatures are perhaps less familiar: extinct birds from the now-cleared floodplain forest of the Mississippi River, giant flightless birds, and an extremely common bird that most of us do not know at all. If there is a personal signature in the choices, it is my use of the Bachman’s warbler (“the Earthquake Bird”) and the ivory-billed woodpecker. These are birds that I long sought as a boy, but today am sure I will never see. They were the rarest of the remarkable creatures of the forests of the Mississippi River and other meandering rivers of the southern United States. These vast forests had been wounded by the cotton farming of my grand father and his peers, chained as my father’s generation tamed the floodwaters that drove them, and destroyed by the value of soybeans to my own contemporaries. These wonderful forests are gone in the span of but one generation of the trees that made them. Their story -will be repeated from the Amazon, the Zambezi, the Bhramaputra—unless we think deeply about what we are doing to our planet and steer it by a truer star than immediacy.
Although the implications of this book with respect to ecosystem change and species extinctions may seem grim and pessimistic, the experience of writing it has left me optimistic that a better appreciation of the scientific issues by thoughtful and caring people is our best hope for the future. We must be aware of what we do know, so that we can better define what we need to know. It is my hope that this collection of stories will provide some of that baseline knowledge.
I have been given considerable help in developing this project. Much of the initial writing was done during a sabbatical visit from the University of Virginia to the Research School of Biological Sciences at the Australian National University (ANU) and the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), Division of Wildlife and Ecology (now the Division of Sustainable Ecosystems), both in Canberra, Australia. The librarians of both organizations allowed me repeatedly to drain their shelves of books. They also helped me locate some of the harder-to-find material. Later, the libraries at the University of Virginia, particularly staff members Melissa Loggans and Linda Cotton, provided support and encouragement.
I appreciate the backing of the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Agency (NASA grants NAG-7956 and NAG-9357) and of the University of Virginia’s internal grant programs (the Academic Enhancement Program and the Funds for Excellence in Science and Technology Program).
Writing a book causes one to depend greatly on the help of friends and the kindness of strangers. My sincere thanks go to all those who assisted me with the writing. A. E. Newsome of CSIRO read my pieces about dingoes and discussed his experience with them over thirty years of research in the Australian outback; C. K. Williams provided similar aid on the European rabbit sections, and on the history and future of biological control of rabbits; Steve Cork discussed the endangered Leadbeater’s possum and steered me to David B. Lindenmayer, whose work with this highly endangered Australian marsupial is the epitome of quality research on rare-species conservation; Monika Van Wensveen gave me access to her scanning equipment and help with obtaining photographs of Australian animals.
R. W. McDiarmid and A. P. Peterson helped me solve the puzzle of exactly which auk, strangely called Alca pica, was likened to the penguin by Joseph Banks. This research ultimately involved knowing which edition of Linnaeus would have been in circulation when Banks departed England on James Cook’s HMS Endeavour voyage of discovery. R. D. Barber provided much-appreciated advice on the Bachman’s warbler.
D. L. Druckenbrod, J. A. Blackburn, J. F. Lamoreux, R. K. Shugart, several reviewers on the Yale University Press advisory board, H. E. Epstein, and the twenty-one fourth-year students in the spring 2001 seminar in terrestrial ecology read the manuscript in its entirety, providing advice and encouragement along the way. Alan Newsome, Kent Williams, Erika C. Shugart, R. J. Swap, Mike Erwin, and Todd Dennis all gave their time and effort. So did Deborah Lawrence’s 2003 seminar in conservation ecology. I am indebted to them all.
My gratitude goes also to Jean Thomson Black and Jenya Weinreb of the Yale University Press, who worked patiently with me during manuscript development. The assistance of R. L. Smith, Jr., in preparing the figures is greatly appreciated, as is the editorial help of Vivian Wheeler.
Three people helped me immeasurably, and in different ways. Brian Walker, an ecologist whose advice I have always valued, encouraged me for years to write a book about landscape ecology. The project would have probably never seen completion without the loyal efforts of my colleague Lyndele von Schill. Finally, I extend warm affection and appreciation to Ramona, who in our thirty-seven years of marriage has listened to my ideas, traveled the world with me, and tolerated the vagaries of living with a research scientist trying to write a book.