Life Is Good

Although a young philosophy, conservation has had notable successes, including setting aside vast tracts of wilderness for posterity and saving a selection of beloved species from oblivion. Yet, today conservation faces its greatest test: saving our planet--and ourselves--from a sixth mass extinction. In this age of climate change, vast forest destruction, and marine degradation, scientists are increasingly convinced that without rapid action and societal change, many of the world's species--great and small, ugly and beautiful--will be condemned to early extinction. In a series of essays, Jeremy Leon Hance, environmental reporter with mongabay.com, explores the challenge of mass extinction and the different ways conservationists, with limited support and funds, are rising to meet it. The essays focus on a wide-variety of topics including efforts to save long-ignored endangered species, such as an ancient venomous rodent; recent research vindicating long-reviled predators, like wolves and lions, as key to an ecosystem's harmony; the rise of the camera trap, a humble new tool that's photographing rarely seen species; and a new theory on how humans view, and even forget, wilderness. This thought-provoking book raises the question: as the biodiversity crisis spreads from the rainforest canopy to the deepest ocean, how will the world's cleverest species act?