Where the Wild Things Were

[JimmyLyding]

The full title is "Where the Wild Things Were: Life, Death, and Ecological Wreckage in a Land of Vanishing Predators" by William Stolzenburg.
I cannot recommend this book highly-enough to those folks who are interested in the subject. It's enjoyable, yet horrifying at the same time.
The subject of this book is basically how us humanss have screwed the environment (and ourselves) by removing so many predators from ecosystems.
We've removed the wolves and cougars (largely...) from the eastern US, and now white tail deer are deadly hazards for motorists and many species of plants.
We removed wolves from Yellowstone, saw certain habitats be virtually destroyed, re-introduced the wolves, and have seen those certain habitats rebound.
Orcas, kelp, sea otters, whales, and how their interaction has affected the jacked-up thing that has become the North Pacific Ocean ecosystem.

My favorite was how Stolzenburg describes Thomas Paine's experiments with tidal predators and prey by manipulating the distribution of the starfish Pisaster ochracues. If you were a mussel, then pisaster would be a god of doom for you. This starfish inexorably crawls up the tidal area, covers a mussel, and then begins to slowly pull apart the mussel's shell until it's open wide-enough for its stomach to go externally into the mussel's shell to begin digesting the meat. Sounds pretty dreadful, but Dr. Paine's experiements of clearing certain areas of Pisaster ochracues while leaving others areas intact has served as the backbone of the study of modern predator-prey relationships.

The best thing about this book is its readability. There's no punchline at the end, and there's no mystery. Stolzenburg hammers home his point that removing predators from an ecosystem has seriously deleterious consequences with countless examples which range from killer whales eating everything from herring to blue whales to starfish to concrete examples of biogeographical isolation.

If you want to learn the meaning of the term "trophic cascade" then this book is for you. I couldn't put it down.

[PaleoRob]

Awesome review. I'll have to pick this one up.

[big_load]

The eastern forests are a great example. Lacking predation except for a few coyotes, the deer denude all vegetation within their reach. The woods are not well.

[JimmyLyding]

Rob, again, I cannot recommend this book highly enough. Just think "Collapse" or "Guns, Germs, & Steel" both by Jared Diamond, in terms of clarification (or incorrect opinion depending upon who you are), but about the interaction of man, predators, prey, and how the result affects so many things. This book flows through the peepers like a bullet flies through the air. Sorry about the ridiculous analogy, but I've been wanting to use it.
I read the portion about the pisaster starfish 5 times because its method of procuring food so fascinates me, and the part about pod of orcas going at the pod of sperm whales is unbelievable.
It's available in trade paperback.

re: the Grand Gulch Hike, I thought about going, but then realized that I had to get back to the Catalinas. Grand Circle country is definitely on my short list, and I'm really really really hoping to get up to the North Rim of the Grand Canyon this summer.

[sirena]

For a great documentary about this topic, see the movie Lords of Nature: Life in a Land of Great Predators: http://lordsofnature.org/

[T Harris]

Sounds interesting. Even though it would be the same as what the book is about....I wish there was a spider nuke. The bomb would just wipe out every spider on earth, so then I would only have one other fear...needles. I know it's completely ridiculous, but I can dream.....

[cabel]

The review is 100% correct. It is a great read and should make all of us think of all the problems that man has created. This one sits at the center of my book shelf.

[azbackpackr]

Thanks for the book review! We need more good, well written book reviews on here. If the book was not published this year, I can get it via ILL (interlibrary loan) even right here in Eagar, Arizona. I have to wait until the end of the semester to have time to read it, though!