Wildlife-related books - reviews

What do you mean with "fiction"?

 

Sorry, by "series" I should have said "TV series" (The Durrells) as opposed to his series of books. While there was a core of truth about the TV Series, there was a lot of fiction that the writer made up.



Hix

 

After spending a fortnight in New Zealand the Beagle departed for Australia on December 30th, 1835. His final comments were:

"I believe we were all glad to leave New Zealand. It is not a pleasant place. Amongst the natives there is absent that charming simplicity which is found in Tahiti; and the greater part of the English are the very refuse of society. Neither is the country itself attractive. I look back but to one bright spot, and that is Waimate, with it's Christian inhabitants."​

Hix

 

The Voyage of the Beagle
Charles Darwin, 1839​

I tried reading Darwin’s On the Origin of Species about 20 years ago but gave up half-way through as I found it rather boring and over-wordy, and he seemed to take a long time to get to a point. So after recently reading Wallace’s The Malay Archipelago I thought I’d give the Voyage of the Beagle a go, thinking there’d be similarities. And there are similarities, but there’s also a lot of differences.

Like Malay, Voyage is more of a travelogue in diary form but, unlike Wallace, Darwin’s book is in roughly chronological order. However, while this book has Darwin’s footnotes, it’s not annotated like my version of Wallace’s book to clarify places, people, animals and words - something I now know was more beneficial than I realised at the time. For instance, I had to google words and locations I had never heard of like infusoria, animalcula, confervae***, Banda Oriental and the Low Islands; Darwin measures distance in leagues and I had to look that up to get an idea of the distances he was talking about (he also uses miles at times). He refers to rheas as ostriches and makes references to Bizcachas a few times, and some birds he uses local names for and frequently I have no idea what species he’s talking about. Other times he uses family names – especially for insects – or scientific names which are no longer valid, again making it difficult to identify the subjects. He only refers to the Andes by name twice (that I remember); the rest of the time he simply refers to the mountains as “the Cordillera”. And his use of the word sterile has puzzled me, as he described the Eucalypt forests around Sydney as such; it seems that unless the vegetation is lush and dense it can’t be considered fertile. I also got the impression that he thought if people who lived on fertile soil weren’t clearing the land to grow vast amounts of crops, the land was being wasted.

So although the Beagle was at sea from December 1831 to October 1836, Darwin spent most of his time ashore (three years and three months) and only 18 months at sea – apparently he suffered greatly from sea-sickness. If the vessel was staying in Port for some time he might even rent a place in town to stay for the duration. Often he would travel inland for a few weeks exploring, or travel cross-country for a few weeks to meet the Beagle at another port – a risky business in Argentina where there were rebel Indians who had raiding parties that were killing farmers and travellers alike. He travelled on foot, on horseback, or on donkeys. In many locations he would climb the local mountain or volcano; in Chile he crossed the Andes into Mendoza (Argentina) and then crossed back again at another location, finding a petrified forest on the way.

Although Darwin is most famous for zoology, most of his discussions in this book are of geology, and when he goes ashore he writes about the strata, the rocks he found, the shells he found in the rocks and the altitude at which he found them. He also has a habit of comparing the environment at certain latitudes with the Northern Hemisphere latitudinal equivalent in Europe, something that is wasted on persons not familiar with the different parts of Europe and their normal environment and weather patterns. Zoological discussions appear periodically where he describes in a few paragraphs, or a few pages, the zoology of a region. While much of what he writes is easy enough to read, there are times when he gets carried away with his writing. For instance, the following sentence:

"It may naturally be asked, how it comes that, although no extensive fossiliferous deposits of the recent period, nor of any period intermediate between it and the ancient tertiary epoch, have been preserved on either side of the continent, yet that at this ancient tertiary epoch, sedimentary matter containing fossil remains, should have been deposited and preserved at different points in north and south lines, over a space of 1100 miles on the shores of the Pacific, and of at least 1350 miles on the shores of the Atlantic, and in an east and west line of 700 miles across the widest part of the continent?"​

After a shorter sentence he follows with:

"Considering the enormous power of denudation which the sea possesses, as shown by numberless facts, it is not probable that a sedimentary deposit, when being upraised, could pass through the ordeal of the beach, so as to be preserved in sufficient masses to last to a distant period, without it were originally of wide extent and of considerable thickness: now it is impossible on a moderately shallow bottom, which alone is favourable to most living creatures, that a thick and widely extending covering of sediment could be spread out, without the bottom sank down to receive the successive layers."​

He finishes the paragraph with:

"Hence, if prolonged movements of approximately contemporaneous subsidence are generally widely extensive, as I am strongly inclined to believe from my examination of the Coral Reefs of the great oceans – or if, confining our view to South America, the subsiding movements have been coextensive with those of elevation, by which, within the same period of existing shells, the shores of Peru, Chile, Tierra del Fuego, Patagonia, and La Plata have been upraised – then we can see that at the same time, at far distant points, circumstances would have been favourable to the formation of fossiliferous deposits of wide extent and of considerable thickness; and such deposits, consequently, would have a good chance of resisting the wear and tear of successive beach-lines, and of lasting to a future epoch."​

Those three sentences are all in the one paragraph, and take up three-quarters of a page. (pg 307-308 in my copy; just prior to May 21st, 1835).

Although the Beagle circumnavigated the world, and Darwin is famous for his work on the Galapagos finches, for the four years and ten months journey, three years and six months was spent around the coast of South America, and only six weeks in the Galapagos. This is because the Beagle’s primary objective was to complete survey of the southern and western coast of South America, and “carry a chain of chronometric measurements around the world”. Looking at the geology, the local peoples, and collecting plant and animal specimens was secondary. As a result, of the twenty one chapters in the book, fifteen are around the South American coast, and only one chapter each for the islands in the Atlantic, the Galapagos, Tahiti & New Zealand, Australia, the Cocos-Keeling Islands, and his return to England via Mauritius.

I was a little disappointed by The Voyage of the Beagle, probably because I was expecting more in the way of zoological content. As I have already mentioned, there was a strong focus on geology – in fact, over the next ten years he only published four works and they were all on geology. He also focussed quite a bit on the various peoples and how they lived. As a result, I found the reading a little tiring/boring at times, not just the content but the style too, and it took me a few weeks to finish the book. Having said that, it is still worth a read and some of the geological bits are interesting – like the giant fossils he found in South America or his theory on the formation of coral atolls – but unfortunately you won’t get many zoological insights.




***
When I saw the word confervae I suddenly thought "Maybe that's what Trump was tweeting about a couple of years ago. And the press, never having heard the word before, was making fun of him. Maybe he's brighter than we think after all. Maybe there's still hope for the USA."

Then I looked up exactly what he said in his tweet, and realised he is just an idiot, after all.



Hix

 

Durrell was not above fictionalising his writings a bit also. For instance in Corfu his brother Larry was married and living in a separate house. In the Corfu trilogy Larry lives with the family and there is no mention of the wife.

 

Darwin didn't dislike Australia that much. When he thought he might lose all his money in the stock market collapse which occured when the Railway Mania bubble burst in 1846 he considered migrating to Australia because he thought that would give the greatest chance of his son's building their own lives without the advantage of family money. His shares recovered of course and he continued to live the life of a wealthy English country gentleman.

 

Yes, and interestingly, in the TV series Nancy makes an appearance as Larry's girlfriend in a couple of episodes.



Hix

 

It was the solid body of scientific works that flowed from the Beagle expedition that made the scientific community open to his evolutionary theories when Origin was finally published.

Likewise his financial position enabled him to live the life of a respectable country squire, member of the Parish council and so on. Darwin did not appear to be some radical and this made it easier for Origin to be accepted.

People claim the Wallace got the short end of the stick regarding evolution, however he never had either the scientific or social standing to launch such a radical theory as evolution through natural selection. The difference in their positions in society was marked. Later in life Darwin gave Wallace an allowance to live on. It was actually smaller than the annual meat budget for the Darwin household.

 

The following two books are about the conservation of two different Hawaiian bird species, with two very different results.

The Hawaiian Goose
Janet Kear & A. J. Berger, 1980, published by Buteo Books​

I first encountered the Hawaiian Goose (Branta sandvicensis), or Nene as they are known in the local Hawaiian language, at Jersey Zoo in 1982 where a small flock were free-ranging in the zoo grounds and periodically harassing/attacking members of the public. As an endangered species and conservation success story when I saw this book available recently at a good price I purchased it.

Subtitled “An Experiment in Conservation”, this 155 page hardback book tells the story of the Nene in 6 chapters, starting with an historical overview of the formation of the Hawaiian islands, the origins of Hawaii’s birds and her endemics, fossil remains and relationships between the Nene and humans, and the decline of the species. When Captain Cook ‘discovered’ the Sandwich Islands in the late 1700’s the Nene population was later estimated to be about 25,000 birds. The decline, commencing in the 1800’s and continuing into the early 1900’s, has been attributed to the permanent arrival of Europeans into the islands and the destruction of habitat for roads, farms and housing; hunting (apparently the birds make good eating); and the introduction of feral species including dogs, cats, rats, goats, pigs and mongoose. By 1951 there were only 30 individuals left alive.

The second chapter is a detailed account of the species itself, its anatomy, biology, habitat, diet, behaviour and reproduction. This chapter is supplemented with 46 black-and-white photographs illustrating many of the facets of the species, and also aspects of the captive rearing and conservation efforts written about in subsequent chapters.

Those following chapters concern the Nene in captivity, the Nene at Slimbridge, and releasing captive reared Nene back into suitable habitat in Hawaii. The final chapter, titled “The Experiment in Conservation” describes the goose’s status as of publication which was at that time 750 birds in the wild and 1250 in captivity in zoos and related facilities around the world.

The book includes eight appendices of the following:

• Endemic, extinct, rare and endangered Hawaiian birds
• Weight’s of adults Nene (at different times of the year, at both Slimbridge and in Hawaii)
• Average linear measurements of adults at Slimbridge
• Details of Nene egg weights, dimensions and clutch sizes
• Gosling weights
• Breeding performance in captivity by year
• Mortality at Slimbridge
• Rainfall records at two of the release sites.

The book is rounded off by a detailed bibliography of 143 citations, and an index.

Despite this publication being 40 years old it is a thorough examination of the species and the methods employed to save it from extinction, and eventually put it back into the wild. Author Dr Janet Kear has intimate knowledge of the species and its conservation, having joined Sir Peter Scott’s Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust at Slimbridge in 1959 (leaving in the mid 70’s when she became curator of the Trust’s new centre at Martin Mere) and was breeding the Nene at Slimbridge for most of her time there. The second author, Professor A.J. Berger, was an ornithologist at the University of Hawaii researching and publishing on the endemic birds of the islands.

 

I remember this book when it first came out. I also remember the days when Slimbridge's NeNe were their flagship species, with the main open pen housing a large flock, numerically bigger than their other species. On recent visits its been harder to find any at all, just a few pairs here and there. A species they seem to have downgraded now, after achieving so much success in the past.

 

The Race to Save the World’s Rarest Bird
Alvin Powell, 2008, published by Stackpole Books​

Like the previous review, this book is about an endangered endemic Hawaiian bird, but unfortunately the outcome is not the same. The book is subtitled “The Discovery and Death of the Po’ouli” and that is exactly what this book documents.

In 1973 some young scientists working in Maui on the slopes of the Haleakala volcano, in some dense and very difficult terrain, discovered a species of bird hitherto unknown to science. Named the Po’ouli (poh-oh-oo-lee) the species had a very limited range, and subsequent research efforts were slow, generally due to the habitat the bird lived in and its inaccessibility. However, it was obvious there were only a handful of the birds, estimated at no more than 200.

Over the next decade research showed the birds were declining drastically in numbers, but the cause for the decline was not obvious at first. It was later shown to be a combination of factors including feral pigs (which also thwarted conservation efforts), rats, mosquitos, disease, habitat changes and warming temperatures.

Eventually, when the population had dropped to only three birds, an attempt was made to bring them into captivity, but only one male bird could be caught. Despite more attempts the remaining birds evaded capture and eventually disappeared. And the single male died in December 2004. [Although there have been may surveys conducted since that time, no further Po’ouli have been sighted and in 2019 the IUCN declared the species extinct.]

This book is presented very differently to the last. The author is a science journalist and never actually saw a Po’ouli. However, he has researched the material thoroughly and written the book more as a story, quoting from his interviews with key figures who studied the bird, rather than a strictly scientific account of the species (like Kear & Berger’s “The Hawaiian Goose”). As such, it is not just the story of Melamprosops phaeosoma but also the compelling story of the people who discovered, researched, and fought desperately to keep the species alive.

For anyone who is interested in extinctions and conservation, this is an excellent read. My only criticism is that there are no photographs of the bird, except a single image on the cover. In fact, there are no illustrations of any kind apart from a map of Maui showing the conservation area and some towns. Despite this shortcoming, the book is well-written (as you would expect from a science journalist) and I thoroughly recommend it.

 

The extinction of the Po'ouli is a very important case study and with the benefit of hindsight we can see what should have been done. I had a vicarious involvement with this project. Three colleagues who worked with me were involved with this species during its terminal decline. It was a difficult bird to work with since it lived in hostile and inaccessible terrain.
While there were still a few birds the effort should have gone into broad ecological studies trying to better understand its limiting factors and how to mitigate them. There was justifiable reticence to bring birds into captivity while so little was known about their needs. When a bird was brought into captivity it ate well, and the species may have been more straightforward to keep that had been anticipated.
Lessons we should embrace in these cases:

1. Know your species, and understand its challenges. Broad ecological and natural history studies.
2. Work with captive individuals to learn about biology and how to increase productivity (e.g. double clutching, and other clutch and brood manipulations).
3. Mitigate limiting factors in wild (e.g. rats) and enhance productivity and survival with management.

A "hands off approach" with a reticence to get involved with the species resulted in its extinction.