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| Coexisting with Large Carnivores: Lessons From Greater Yellowstone | 
| Creators: Tim Clark, Murray Rutherford, Denise Casey
Publisher: Island Press
Category: Book
List Price: $32.50
Buy New: $27.60
You Save: $4.90 (15%)
New (4) from $27.60
Avg. Customer Rating:  1 reviews
Sales Rank: 113634
Media: Paperback
Edition: 1
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 290
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.9
Dimensions (in): 8.9 x 6 x 0.8
ISBN: 1597260053
Dewey Decimal Number: 639.9797
EAN: 9781597260053
ASIN: 1597260053
Publication Date: May 5, 2005
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: BRAND NEW
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| Customer Reviews:
Good on the biological background, weaker on the human side of the story September 14, 2007
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
This book looks at how wolves, grizzly bears and mountain lions can coexist with the people who live around Grand Teton and Yellowstone national parks. The books is divided into three parts: the social context, case studies of the three species, and lessons for management. Overall, the contributors argue against the typical top-down plans of state and federal agencies, which draw up a management plan and then impose it on the community. Instead, they argue for more community participation in decisions and for practice-based management, with people trying a variety of strategies and then sharing those that work.
The contributors to this volume clearly know the material, and they present it well. The chapters on social context provide valuable background information, and the case studies were also very interesting. The management chapters were much less successful, however. The authors are mostly biologists, and to their credit they realize that they don't really know much social science. That's a handicap when discussing psychology, symbolism, group processes, and agency behavior. The authors are game enough, but it wouldn't have hurt to include a few chapters by people who study such things.
It's hard to argue against people participating in the decisions that shape their lives. But what if people are ill-informed or have demonstrably false beliefs? Many locals are convinced that wolves are going to eat their children, but no non-rabid North American wolf has ever killed a person. (I've encountered a wolf in the backcountry with a child beside me, so I'm not asking ranchers to do anything that I haven't done before.) The potential conflict between democratic processes and scientific knowledge is mentioned but not wrestled with as seriously as it should be.
In the end, the scientists in this book want their own views to triumph. All the authors argue for community dialogue so that locals who disagree with them will change their minds. None of the authors entertain the possibility that they might change their own minds after engaging in dialogue with ranchers. Given this asymmetry, why should ranchers play along?
The authors are also critical of federal and state agencies who use their power resources to try to impose their views on the community. At the same time, the biologists who wrote most of these chapters seem not to have thought critically about their own power resources - - knowledge, logical reasoning skills, and the like - - and how they are trying to impose their views on locals.
The contributors know (or suspect) these limitations of what they are doing. Without addressing them more deeply, however, the management section ends up being a lot of platitudes about dialogue and participation. In contrast, the sections on social context and the three large carnivore species were interesting and convincing.
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Wildlife, nature and the Environment
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