Books fascinated with insects and make them their lifelong pursuit. This obsession with insects is probably a good thing; entomology is not typically a hugely lucrative career, compared to finance or computer science. Lockwood devotes one chapter to exploring the complex relationships of two entomologists in the business of insects. A retired US Department of Agriculture honey bee researcher and amateur beekeeper calmly handles large swarms of bees without fear and tolerates bee stings as only a minor irritant but nevertheless professes a strong aversion to spiders. Another entomologist works for her family’s pest-control business, which often involves getting down and dirty in some repulsive, bug-ridden situations. Her coping strategy is desensitization through repeated exposure, but she still admits to occasional fear and disgust during her work. Reading The Infested Mind is a guilty pleasure akin to watching a horror movie. You know that bad things will happen to people but also get some enjoyment from their misfortunes. The fear and disgust that arise from interactions with insects appear to be universal, and Lockwood digs deeply into this rich arena from multiple perspectives. Readers will learn a lot and vicariously experience the obsessions and phobias of people who spend a lot of time with bugs on their mind. KEITH CLAY
Keith Clay (
[email protected]) is a distinguished professor of biology, with the Department of Biology, at Indiana University, in Bloomington.
doi:10.1093/biosci/biu161
CONSIDERING ANIMAL WELFARE IN SPECIES CONSERVATION Ignoring Nature No More: The Case for Compassionate Conservation. Marc Bekoff, ed. University of Chicago Press, 2013. 420pp. $40.00 (ISBN 9780226925356 paper). http://bioscience.oxfordjournals.org
T
here is a growing sense that conservation needs to undergo a period of self-reflection if it is to retain its cultural and policy salience in our rapidly changing world. Books in which underlying assumptions and practices are examined in order to unsettle and inspire are therefore welcome. The relationship between animal welfare and species conservation is one area ripe for debate. Animal cruelty, wanton slaughter of wildlife, and species extinction were interlinked concerns of early conservationists that diverged along different institutional pathways during the mid-twentieth century, as species conservation became aligned with governmental institutions of rational resource management and animal welfare advocates focused on influencing legislation relating to domestic pets, farmed animals, and animal experimentation. In the hearts and minds of many citizens and conservation professionals, these issues remain closely linked, but the ethical and practical tensions between these two domains of policy and action have yet to be fully explored and reconciled. This collection of 26 wide-ranging essays is framed as making the case for compassionate conservation and why it is the only “acceptable road on which to travel into the future.” The book falls somewhat short in this regard. Unfortunately, the introduction is more a lament on the humanities’ “arrogance” and “wounding ways” rather than an effort to scope a set of questions to guide individual chapters: The five section introductions summarize chapter content rather than draw out evidence and insight to build a core narrative and thesis. Three chapters exemplify my frustrations with this collection. Eileen Crist’s compellingly titled “Ecocide and the extinction of animals minds” devotes 13 pages to the familiar territory of Cartesian dualism but only one to the little-known field of cognitive ethology, which represents her novel and potentially unsettling contribution to the topic. Brian Czech’s “The
imperative of steady state economics for wild animal welfare” has a similarly intriguing and ambitious title but starts with the reactionary statement that economic growth is “surely the greatest of all forms of inhumanity in terms of the gross amount of wild animal suffering.” Czech then goes on to describe the obvious impacts of development on animals rather than presenting arguments that might mobilize animal welfare sentiment pools around the challenge of steering society toward a steady-state economy. Finally, in “The war on nature—Turning the tide?” David John summarizes learning from other social movements to argue that conservationists lack political nous, insider strategies, and the capacity to build mass communities without reference to histories of conservation that provide ample evidence to the contrary. This combination of an antihuman tone, underdeveloped arguments, and limited engagement with the broader conservation literature undermines an otherwise promising collection. Two chapters in this collection are worth considering for course reading lists. In the first, “Conservation, animal welfare, and human welfare,” Ben Minter effectively explores the complex convergence of ethics, values, and principles in the African bushmeat crisis and argues for a pragmatic, pluralist form of conservation that is formed in relation to the context of action. Phillip Seddon and Yolander van Heezik’s chapter, “Reintroductions to ‘ratchet up’ public perceptions of biodiversity,” is an upbeat, well-referenced introduction to the restoration ecology vision. Other standout chapters are Daniel Ramp and colleagues’ “Paradigm shift for wildlife management in Asutralia” and Anthony and Gabriela Rose’s “Avatar.” The first presents a useful typology and account of Australian wildlife management issues and proposes the term anthrachy (norms that systematically suppress the importance of other species) as a frame for understanding Australian animal-related law. The second is an enjoyable intellectual reflection on a
December 2014 / Vol. 64 No. 12 • BioScience 1191
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A 2010 conference, Compassionate Conservation, held in Oxford, was intended to initiate an examination of the interplay between animal welfare and conservation and to outline a set of principles (http://compassionateconservation.net). Several chapters make reference to this conference. “Ignoring nature no more” builds momentum for further work to refine
the question: As Bekoff phrased it, “How can differences between people concerned with individual animal welfare and those considered with species be resolved?” A useful next step might be to invite European voices into the discussion (they are absent in this collection). The welfare–conservation question is at the heart of the public and political controversy surrounding the large-scale rewilding experiment of Oosstvaarderplassen. This and other controversies (e.g., badger culling) are stimulating new work from social and political scientists on conservation politics that could usefully inform this debate. PAUL JEPSON
Paul Jepson (paul.jepson@ouce. ox.ac.uk) is affiliated with the School of Geography and the Environment at the Oxford University Centre for the Environment, in Oxford, United Kingdom. doi:10.1093/biosci/biu167
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Erratum In a recent Feature (Bioscience 64: 861–867, doi:10.1093/biosci/biu144), an image of a Petri dish in one of David Schmale’s ground-based sampling devices used for collecting potential ice-nucleating organisms from the atmosphere was incorrectly identified as belonging to a drone-based sampling device. The caption should read, “This Petri dish, in one of David Schmale’s ground-based sampling devices, is used for collecting potential ice-nucleating organisms from the atmosphere. Photograph: David Schmale.” doi:10.1093/biosci/biu204
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