A review by inquiry_from_an_anti_library
Nature Wars: The Incredible Story of How Wildlife Comebacks Turned Backyards into Battlegrounds by Jim Sterba

adventurous dark emotional hopeful informative inspiring reflective tense fast-paced

5.0

 

Is This An Overview?

During the 20th century, Americans recognized how the ecosystems has been harmed and damaged.  In response, various environmental organizations were born.  Culture gradually changed to become more protective of the flora and fauna.  The protection was so successful, that there are species which were near extinct, which began to flourish, and have become overpopulated.  Overpopulation of animals has negative consequences for people and the ecosystem.

 

As people have lost tacit experiences with the ecosystem, people no longer know how to properly protect and interact with the ecosystem.  The more animals there are, the more food resources are needed.  Species which have become overpopulated due to human intervention such as by giving them more food, cannot find enough food for themselves in their habitats, leading to starvation. 

 

Human intervention can be on an ecosystem scale, but often, people advance the cause of a few or a single species.  While the supported and protected species becomes overpopulated, the species competes with unprotected species, taking away resources from the unprotected species.  Protecting a single species at the expense of others damages the ecosystem, as the numbers of the unsupported species decline.  An overpopulation can pollute and degrade the ecosystem thought their consumption methods and waste, which damages the habitats of other creatures.

 

Animals which habituated to the presence of humans, and recognize that humans are not a threat, can become a threat to humans.  Those who handle animal related problems are appreciated by those whose problems they resolve, but are disapproved by those who idealize the animals. 

 

Various means of controlling species populations are discussed within communities, often with tense debates as the various interest groups do not think the means of others are appropriate.  As culture has become protective of animals, many do not want to use lethal means of controlling the population.  Even though people do not want to use lethal means, people appear to not find the frequent road kill as problematic. 

 

Who Invaded Who?

As people invaded animal regions, animals reciprocated by invading human regions.  Though developing an environment for people, certain species have benefited from these developments as well.  Species which were able to thrive in developments for people, which otherwise would have had difficulty surviving.  Within human associated regions, there are various legal protections for animals, such as laws that prohibit hunting.

 

How To Control The Population?

There are lethal methods of reducing animal populations, but they have become disapproved of.    The overpopulation of animals makes hunting seasons less effective, for they remove less animals than the reproduction rate of the animal, and there are less people willing to hunt.

 

A nonlethal method of removing animals from an environment is to relocate the animal.  Relocation is not a safe method as relocated animals have low survival odds.  The animals are relocated to strange environments and need to compete with animals already there.  The relocated animals can also carry diseases. 

 

When repopulating wild population, domesticated species to not necessarily thrive.  For their behavior has changed to be domesticated, rather than what is needed to survive.

 

Caveats?

The focus of the book is on the species which are overpopulated due to human intervention.  Not all species are overpopulated.  More research would be needed for species which have not recovered.

 

This book shares a diverse number of species which have flourished from human contact.  Sharing the biological traits of a species, a history of how they were endangered, how culture changed to support them, the consequences of their overpopulation, and the political conflict on population control.  Even with the diversity and varied details on each species, the explanations can become self-similar.  Such as the conflict over how to manage a species, from different lethal to nonlethal methods, can appear to be the same as other species but with different interest group names.