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Where the Wild Things Were: Life, Death, and Ecological Wreckage in a Land of Vanishing Predators | 
 enlarge | Author: William Stolzenburg
Publisher: Bloomsbury USA
Category: Book
List Price: $24.99
Buy New: $15.35
You Save: $9.64 (39%)
New (27) Used (3) from $15.14
Avg. Customer Rating:  8 reviews
Sales Rank: 26909
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1st
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 304
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.3
Dimensions (in): 9.5 x 6.3 x 1.2
ISBN: 1596912995
Dewey Decimal Number: 577.16
EAN: 9781596912991
ASIN: 1596912995
Publication Date: July 8, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: Excellent condition.
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Product Description
A provocative look at how the disappearance of the world’s great predators has upset the delicate balance of the environment, and what their disappearance portends for the future, by an acclaimed science journalist.
It wasn’t so long ago that wolves and great cats, monstrous fish and flying raptors ruled the peak of nature’s food pyramid. Not so anymore. All but exterminated, these predators of the not-too-distant past have been reduced to minor players of the modern era. And what of it? Wildlife journalist William Stolzenburg follows in the wake of nature’s topmost carnivores, and finds chaos in their absence. From the brazen mobs of deer and marauding raccoons of backyard America to streamsides of Yellowstone National Park crushed by massive herds of elk; from urchin-scoured reefs in the North Pacific to ant-devoured islands in Venezuela, Stolzenburg leads a startling tour through bizarre, impoverished landscapes of pest and plague. For anyone who has seldom given thought to the meat-eating beasts so recently missing from the web of life, here is a world of reason to think again.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 3 more reviews...
Excellent book September 25, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This is an excellent summary of many field studies that prove the importance of apex predators. It's a quick and compelling read, and expect it may become required reading for all interested in environmental issues. The book paints a rather bleak picture of the situation we face, and now I notice it's conclusions everywhere. He talks at length about the DC area, where I live, which adds to my own personal awareness of the issue. I'd recommend it to anyone: it's written for laypeople but can be useful for scientists as well.
Predatory Instincts September 15, 2008
The authors' style really resonated with me. He describes large earth-shattering revelations with such eloquence. Starting with the thesis that the death/extinction of predators and "super"predators are to blame for many ecological/environmental, he delves into numerous case studies and ongoing research of many leading biologists. The first chapters discussion of the kelp forests along the Pacific rim was particularly interesting, and made a real case for the rest of the book: ecosystems MUST be looked at from the top-down, rather than the reverse. The scientists that Stolzenburg profiles methodically and systematically show that the top predators directly relate to such things as river ecology, plant seed distribution, and seemingly unrelated things like Lyme disease.
While so many points in this book stood out, I particularly enjoyed the one time humans got it right: the reintroduction of wolves to Yellowstone Park in Wyoming in the mid-1990s. It was a success story, and I presume that it remains so this day, over ten years later.
Simply put, this book was amazingly written and infinitely informative. If you care about nature, biodiversity, and the future of our planet and the creatures living on it, reading this book will help you gain insight on how setting life back into the natural balance will remedy many (unfortunately not all) of the ills we face.
An Important Book With Broad Implications August 31, 2008
Where the Wild Things Were: Life, Death, and Ecological Wreckage in a Land of Vanishing Predators, is a new and important contribution to conservation and ecology by William Stolzenburg (Bloomsbury, 2008)
The author looks at cases, both experimental and real-life, where the top predators have been wiped out, and looks at what happens next. It turns out that a lot of things happen, none of them good. One result is an explosion of "mesopredators" (the second-tier carnivores, ranging from coyotes to raccoons to feral domestic cats) which wreak havoc on ecosystems without the larger predators to compete with (and sometimes eat) them. Plants and prey animals have evolved for one type of ecosystem and are often helpless in an altered one. While his examples come from all over the world, it's the North American ones that will cause the most consternation to most readers. Who foresaw that killing the eastern wolves and cougars would result in a gigantic deep population explosion (far beyond the ability of hunters to keep up) that wrecked the habitats of many smaller creatures? Who knew that bringing in a new apex predator (whalers) and wiping out the northern Pacific great whales started a cascade that drove the former apex predator (killer whales) to decimate seal and sea otter populations in many areas, resulting in kelp forests being replaced by barren seafloor overrun with the urchins the otters used to keep down? There are many such examples, some almost despair-inducing. One of Stolzenburg's important points is that, ecologically, human hunters don't replace the predators: they hunt in specific seasons rather than all year round and pick off the largest animals instead of the weakest.
This book should be must reading for anyone involved in wildlife management or conservation biology including everyone in the FWS, EPA, or state wildlife agencies.
Matt Bille, author, Shadows of Existence: Discoveries and Speculations in Zoology
Beware of amateurs August 28, 2008
The quite carefully written review of papers published over the last 60 years (yes, some ideas take a long time to make it to the maintstream)really tells a compelling story of our most feared ompanions, the top predators. What struck me most is the fearful power of self-defined specialist, or special interest groups, such as the hunting community, the animal right advocates, the greens, who ferouciously defend their standpoint ("rats have a right to live even if they exterminate the last breeding pair of a ground nesting seabird", to name just one nice case). What appears to be logic usually is not,(remember the summers spent by all those students sitting on fire watch towers preventing fires that now are being set on purpose by rangers?) and special advocacy groups are really prone to fall into that pitfall. So this book is an enlighting call for seeing the full picture, in this case the benefit we could gain from having back the top predators.
Where the Wild Things Were August 19, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Sheer genius... I cannot sing enough positive praises about "Where the Wild Things Were"... Truly an education in ecology... William Stolzenburg does a thorough job of presenting diverse viewpoints... All of the topics were fascinating... The author's writing is moving, powerful, and provocative... I could go on and on with superlatives...
I am extremely excited to introduce family and friends to "Where the Wild Things Were"... My hope is that this book will receive the vast exposure it so richly deserves...
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