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A review by tolintook
Hope for Animals and Their World: How Endangered Species Are Being Rescued from the Brink by Jane Goodall
3.0
This book is a set of stories of animals that face extinction and the efforts of people (mostly European or European descent) to bring the species back from the brink of extinction. There are many amazing feats described, like teaching two different bird species (bald ibis, whooping cranes) to follow ultralight aircraft as a way to teach them migration routes. And other amazing stories like a guy who did mating dances with a whooping crane that imprinted on humans, and the crane then would allow staff to artificially inseminate her. Another story shows how another guy encouraged a male peregrine falcon—as the guy made mating movements and sounds—which allowed staff to use the “products” of that mating to inseminate other peregrine falcons. Through the many stories of trying to release captive-bred endangered animals, you get a good overview of the challenges that endangered species face.
The stories do usually centre European/European descent conservationists and a European perspective. Drawing from that and from the fact that Thayne Maynard (who tells several stories in the book) and Jane Goodall haven’t had a deep critical education, some of the stories have racist or colonialist aspects (like one story of a wild horse expert in Mongolia, where only his first [and quite non-European] name is given [Munkhtsog], while the names for all white conservationists are given in full). But Goodall also highlights the Roots and Shoots organization (that she started), one of the goals of which is to uplift the material conditions of people living near endangered species. One major theme in the book is that, as they frame it, the support of the local community is needed for any conservation goal to be sustainable in the long term. So the conservationists try to drum up that support by providing real economic benefits of the project for local people. From this book one can’t really see what local people think about the projects. But for anyone thinking about doing social science research, a great project would be to get the perspective of local people about particular conservation projects described in this book. That is an area where work is needed in social science research. Some have already been doing this work for particular species (I know of one doing this with grizzly bears in Alberta, for instance—which aren’t endangered globally but are locally endangered in Alberta), but this book provides a great overview of the different projects in the world where work like that could be expanded. Goodall does mention how the efforts to save a particular species of tiger beetle led to many (in the United States) questioning the value of using $500,000+ on that beetle when the money could have (in their eyes) been used for social programs, but a much deeper and systematic analysis about such issues would be important contributions to our knowledge about the value of conservation for people who aren’t paid conservationists.
The stories do usually centre European/European descent conservationists and a European perspective. Drawing from that and from the fact that Thayne Maynard (who tells several stories in the book) and Jane Goodall haven’t had a deep critical education, some of the stories have racist or colonialist aspects (like one story of a wild horse expert in Mongolia, where only his first [and quite non-European] name is given [Munkhtsog], while the names for all white conservationists are given in full). But Goodall also highlights the Roots and Shoots organization (that she started), one of the goals of which is to uplift the material conditions of people living near endangered species. One major theme in the book is that, as they frame it, the support of the local community is needed for any conservation goal to be sustainable in the long term. So the conservationists try to drum up that support by providing real economic benefits of the project for local people. From this book one can’t really see what local people think about the projects. But for anyone thinking about doing social science research, a great project would be to get the perspective of local people about particular conservation projects described in this book. That is an area where work is needed in social science research. Some have already been doing this work for particular species (I know of one doing this with grizzly bears in Alberta, for instance—which aren’t endangered globally but are locally endangered in Alberta), but this book provides a great overview of the different projects in the world where work like that could be expanded. Goodall does mention how the efforts to save a particular species of tiger beetle led to many (in the United States) questioning the value of using $500,000+ on that beetle when the money could have (in their eyes) been used for social programs, but a much deeper and systematic analysis about such issues would be important contributions to our knowledge about the value of conservation for people who aren’t paid conservationists.