Book Review: Hope for Animals and Their World

 Hope forAnimals and Their World: How Endangered Species are Being Rescued from the Brink

Goodall, Jane, with Thane Maynard and Gail Hudson (2009: Grand Central, 392pp.)

In this book, Goodall and her co-authors tell the stories of animals (and a few plants) which might well have become extinct, but survive thanks to human dedication and ingenuity. Some of the stories, like the California condor (Gymnogyps californianus), are famous, and others obscure. I’d never read about one of the most fascinating episodes, the recovery of the black robin (Petroica traversi) whose survival came down to a captive breeding effort using the only fertile female left in the world.

Some of the stories include Goodall’s own travels around the world, where she saw such creatures as Pere David’s deer (Elaphurus davidianus), Australia’s Rufous Hare-Wallaby (Lagorchestes hirsutus), and the Formosan Landlocked Salmon (Oncorhynchus masou formosanus). She also visits her beloved chimps: a photo of an infant named Flint reaching out to touch her hand will bring tears to eyes of many readers.

Some of the stories concern people who took great risks to save the last of a species. Finding Dryococelus australis, the Lord Howe Island stick insect (by an expedition sent to verify its extinction!) involved great hazards including a seemingly insane climb up a steep, rocky slope in the dark to spot the huge nocturnal insects. 

Goodall doesn’t neglect modern discoveries and rediscoveries of animals. Her chapter on the Lazarus species includes Zino’s petrel (Pterodroma madeira) on the island of Madeira, named for and watched over by three generations of the Zino family.  There’s also the Caspian horse, an ancient breed of small, gentle horses, saved by one determined woman who discovered this forgotten ancestor to the Arabian pulling carts in a remote Iranian village. She looks at resurrections like the coelacanths (genus Latimeria) and the Wollemi pine tree (Wollemia nobilis) (and if you don’t think a story about a tree can be exciting, read it).   The new finds include the kipunji (Rungwecebus kipunji), a large and unique monkey (it looks intermediate between a mangabey and a baboon) from Tanzania. Co-discoverer Dr. Trevor Jones said of the find, “…one of our team suddenly grabbed me and pointed to a monkey in a tree a hundred meters away. I grabbed my binoculars and nearly fell over. It was a surreal moment.”

Goodall has much to say about the broader topic of conservation.  She is sad but blunt about the fact that saving island species, in particular, can require using guns and poison to kill off imported cats and rats when trapping is impossible due to funds or animal numbers. She also discusses the ethics of collecting, the need for a whole-body specimen (she doubts it), the importance of indigenous participation, and the many ways people can support conservation in general or a particular species. 

Don’t just read this book. Treasure it.

“…there is yet this feeling of hope. There are surely plants and animals living in the remote places, beyond our current knowledge. There are discoveries to be made.” – Jane Goodall