Customer Reviews

The Beast in the Garden: The True Story of a Predator's Deadly Return to Suburban America

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David Baron has written a superb book on what is likely to be a growing problem in the United States for some time to come. While the main story is about an increasing number of close encounters with mountain lions that culminates in a fatal attack on a teenager in the greater Boulder, Colorado area, the implications behind how it all began are far more wide-ranging. Ultimately, this book is about how Americans are reordering their relationship with nature and don't even realize it.

Baron tells the story well. Even though you know where the book is headed, you are still gripped by the narrative; you still hope the fatal ending Baron has already told you about in the beginning of the book might still be averted. The author also weaves several historical and biological asides into the story that smartly explain it. The significance of mountain lion attacks on dogs, for example, is made far more ominous because Baron has told the reader of the mountain lion's previous relationship with wolves.

The author has his prejudices, but it's hard not to agree with him after reading the book. He strongly believes that nature's relationship with man must be managed. He convinces the reader that whatever we call the environmental policies that helped animals like the mountain lion return to Boulder (and elsewhere in the U.S.) in the 1980s, it is not a return to an original state of nature as it existed before white settlers so much as it is a whole new world. And that new world has its own rules that are different from those in the past. Not understanding that will force us to learn some painful lessons.

I am an author who has written about man-eating lions for Men's Journal and have researched the subject extensively. NO ONE has written as well and authentically as David Baron. This is an extraordinary book that manages to thread the needle, avoiding sensationalism, but also not shying away from critiquing the more environmentally pc among us. It is an extraordinary piece of writing, a literary work of non-fiction that deserves a wide readership far beyond those interested in predators and adventure journalism. Read the book. Buy the book. Give the book. One of the very best pieces of non-fiction you could hope to acquire.

This is an outstanding book about the relationship between humans and mountain lions. The story centers on a jogger tragically killed (and partially eaten) by a mountain lion that had become habituated to humans. In the process of telling the story (a factual event), the author describes the history and evolution of mountain lions, their historical relationships with humans, lion behavior, the problems encountered when humans and mountain lions move into each others' habitats, and how the two can coexist. The author does a great job of tying everything together in a work that is both very informative and highly readable.

I highly recommend this book! It is one of the best books I have read in a long time.

The "problem" illustrated by this 278-page non-fiction book is the increasing contact between humans and mountain lions (cougar, puma, whatever...) in the Western United States.

Baron focuses on the encroachment of the big cats into urban Boulder, CO in the 1990s with a consequent tragic result for both cougars and people. The lion/human interactions escalate from the occasional urban sighting - at first denied by wildlife authorities - to cougars killing deer within city boundaries to killing pets to killing farm animals to stalking and threatening humans to, finally, an incident in which a lion kills a high school student athlete as he runs in broad daylight on a hillside above his school.

This tale, with lots of footnoted references, also tracks the efforts of a Boulder parks department employee who, from his experience with people being killed by wildlife in Yellowstone NP, recognizes the growing potential for a deadly cougar/human encounter. But he can't convince state game officials to take the problem seriously, partly because game department officials believe Boulder brought the problem on themselves by allowing deer, the cougar's favorite food, to proliferate far beyond normal population density by the city's anti-hunting bias. Apart from the dead high school student, there are cautionary tales about a college-age woman who is treed (yes!) by cougars while running in a suburban area and an adult male attacked and injured on a popular day hike.

But other than recoding and mapping the locations of cougar/human encounters - which Washington state just passed a law requiring - what can be done to avoid cougars becoming habituated to (i.e., not fearful of) people with the eventual conclusion on their part that humans are valid prey? Nobody knows.

Baron's book is well written, entertaining and educational. My only complaints are about the author's occasional rambles into non-relevant aspects of some of the characters' lives and the lack of photographs. There's one photo of a cougar track in the snow (good to memorize if you live in or visit cat country!) and one of a cougar shot by Boulder police. But in a book which goes into depth about several characters I'd like to see pictures of them as well as some of the locations where incidents occurred.

Recommended for anyone interested in North American wildlife or anyone living in "cougar country", which currently is most any place in the Western United States.

A friend of mine heard an interview with author David Baron on NPR. What impressed him was how balanced and objective his view was. My friend immediately bought two copies of The Beast In The Garden, one for himself and one for me. The whole question of how humans can live with wildlife is a highly charged emotional issue on both sides. As I made my way deep into the bowels of this book I realized how utterly ignorant and naive I was. The author manages to examine the story of human interactions with magnificent but hungry wild animals with extraordinary intelligence . He conveys his passion for Nature at the same time that he maintains his objectivity.

Shortly after I finished reading this book, a mountain lion killed 35-year old cyclist Mark Reynolds whose body was found after another cougar attack along a popular trail in the Orange County Foothills. The lion had dragged Reynolds off the trail and his body went undetected for many hours. The cougar, protective of its partially buried prey, later mauled another passing biker. Anne Hjelle, 30, was rescued by her riding companion (who hung onto her leg) and other trail bikers as she was being dragged by the head into the brush.

My 35 year old son and his girlfriend also ride in areas where they have seen mountain lions and now they are reading this book. It is clear that we human predators will need to change our habits if we wish to share the landscape with other highly evolved predators. You will see the world with wiser eyes after reading this book!

Suza Francina, former mayor of Ojai, California, spokesperson for sustainable lifestyles and author, The New Yoga for People Over 50 and Yoga and the Wisdom of Menopause

Baron's book lays out the tale of the gradual return of cougars to the wildland-urban interface in the Colorado Front Range region, describing the beasts' increasing boldness around humans, their snatching of domestic pets, and finally incidents of predation on human beings; and also the changed social context that made this phenomenon possible, and the various human and institutional reactions to it, some complacent, some shrill, some prescient.

I had a curiously mixed reaction to the book. On the one hand, it's interesting raw material, and Baron creates an entertaining narrative. On the other hand there are some irritating things about the book, particularly when he strives to put it all into a larger social context. Whether you will like this book or not really depends on how tolerant you are of the axes which Baron chooses to grind.

Baron shapes his narrative as if the "lion problem" emanated from Boulder and was caused by the Boulder cultural context. It didn't, and it wasn't. The first fatal lion attack occurred in Idaho Springs, near I-70, and closer to the Denver suburb of Lakewood than to Boulder; the second occurred in Rocky Mtn National Park, where one might as well blame the gateway town of Estes Park, or National Park service policies; the first of the non-fatal attacks he relates occurred in the foothills southwest of Denver; only the second (non-fatal attack) could reasonably be said to have occurred "in Boulder", or more exactly a couple of miles out of town up one of the canyons that debouches in boulder. Why does he turn this account of Front Range lions into an account of "Boulder lions"? Partly, one imagines because Boulder contained a few prescient people who saw the phenomenon building and documented it. But also because Boulder contains some of the more florid cultural elements which enable him to turn this into a narrative of naïve eloi nature-worshippers being eaten by lions. It's in fact a much wider phenomenon and doesn't really have a whole lot to do with Boulder animal rights activists.

It's pretty clear that reduced, or eliminated hunting pressure on lions, bears meso-predators (e.g., coyotes, bobcats, raccoons) is one part of the story, and that changing cultural attitudes about nature have helped to bring about that reduction in hunting or trapping pressure. But economic forces are also part of the explanation. When ranching was a principal industry across much of the mountain west and the rockies foothills, mountain lions were shot on sight as a matter of course, because they killed calves. Now that working ranches are disappearing from much of the mountain west, and have effectively disappeared from the Front Range, the economic incentive to kill the beasts has declined accordingly, quite independently of whether they are "protected" or not. And as for fur trapping, how many people make money trapping bobcats or beavers anymore? Such grueling occupations pay next to nothing; financially speaking one would be better off flipping burgers.

It's also clear that new exurban living patterns--ultra-low-density far-flung suburbs--are part of the explanation, since they put people and houses into good wildlife habitat, and also offer trophic resources such as succulent non-native plants, garbage, and domestic pets, which are not present in real wildlands, and which wild animals learn to take advantage of. Baron says some accurate things about this new exurban living pattern--that it is part of a "grand unintended experiment", that people are moving out to more natural environments as the beasts are simultaneously moving into humanized environments, and that problems will result. But in sophistical style he uses these problems (e.g., being attacked by lions) as a sufficient reason to declare that the idea of wilderness is a myth, that people are affecting everything, and a preservationist leave-it-alone approach is untenable, etc, etc. He brings up the old hoary conservation-vs-preservation debate dating back to Gifford Pinchot vs John Muir.

He also suggests that nature lovers approve of this new residence pattern and its attendant human-nature mixing. "America is becoming one vast ecotone where civilization and nature intermingle. To some this suggests a utopian state of affairs. Peregrine falcons nest atop skyscrapers..." The thing is, no conservationist or naturalist I know, however much they enjoy peregrines nesting on skyscrapers, has anything but dislike for the exurban living pattern. It is wildland-destroying, gluttonous of resources, and unsustainable. If Baron payed any attention to e.g., voting patterns, demography, or the distribution of mega-churches, he would understand that low-density exurbs are by many measures culturally conservative spaces, as much a latter day "white flight" as they are an expression of affinity for nature. No doubt many of those "eco-tards" living in Boulder understand that perfectly well, which is why they live in the city of Boulder at urban densities rather than up some canyon with a half-mile driveway on a 15-acre private kingdom and a giant sport ute.

Baron also busily sets up, and knocks down preservationist straw men who advocate for leaving "pristine" nature alone in all circumstances, when in fact, he argues,there is no "pristine" nature left, and so everything needs to be "managed". Once again, I have no idea who Baron is talking about here. Every conservationist I know understands that human beings are affecting every square inch of the planet these days. Anyone who knows anything about conservation biology understands that "pristine" spaces are not large enough, and not connected enough, and not representative enough of all earth's biomes, to be able to preserve earth's biodiversity. One has to pay attention to more human-affected parts of the landscape as well. It is also pretty clear to every intelligent naturalist and conservationist that in the lower 48 there is no escape from some form of management for large wide-ranging carnivores like wolverines, grizzly bears, and yes, cougars, and that managing humans and human residence patterns is also necessary to minimize conflicts. The remaining wild areas simply aren't big enough, or connected enough, and the potential for conflict with humans is too great. Even the 4.5-million acre greater Yellowstone ecosystem is a bit small to sustain grizzly bears indefinitely without genetic interchange with other populations, which might need to be done artificially. Fishers were recently returned to Olympic National Park via an artifical reintroduction, after an absence of some decades. There was nothing controversial about it. Everybody understood that fishers were very unlikely to recolonize the area on their own from remaining source populations in Montana and Idaho.

Exceptions of this sort notwithstanding, there in fact are still vast areas of the mountain west for which the best long-term "management" strategy is to leave them alone. Nature is resilient, and can recover from disturbance of human or natural origin in interesting and complex ways. Conversely it is absolutely incorrect to think that the traditional resource extraction agenda is dead or defeated on our public lands. Federal land management agencies and their allies (with the honorable exception of the National Park Service) have learned to disguise retrograde resource-extraction agendas under the guise of "restoration", that is all.

On the specific subject of cougars, I personally think Baron makes a bit too much of the notion that cougars are doing this stuff only because humans, for the first time ever, have stopped their "aversive conditioning", i.e., hunting and killing the beasts. Cougars are at the best of times idiosyncratic and unpredictable, and my guess is that they have been sneaking up on people, and following them, and occasionally preying on them, for as long as humans and cougars have shared this continent. I have seen cougars on the ground only four times. By far the spookiest of these encounters--the cougar approached me stealthily in the dark to within about five meters, where I noticed it by its eyeshine-- was in an area of Baja California where ranchers still shoot cougars on sight, and where cougars have next to no opportunity to get habituated to human beings.

Humanity's interaction with the rest of nature is often a sordid tale. Humans and other animals have long contended for living space, but the North American experience is nearly unique. Our dealings with wild life, plant and animal, have swung from nearly absolute exploitation and extinction to various versions of preserve and protect. Both attitudes have been clouded by ignorance and misunderstanding. David Baron vividly and expertly examines these views. He explains how one community, Boulder, Colorado, has become a model for a new view of coexistence with our fellow creatures. It may have taken the inadvertant sacrifice of one young man to show how our relationship with wilderness must be reconsidered and recast.

Baron's science journalist's skills grant him the role of emissary, crisscrossing the border between the human and cougar communities. He carefully observes the lifestyle of the New West inhabitant. "White, wealthy and progressive" suburban Boulder came to typify a new term in biology - the "ecotone". Ecotones are the interface of humanity and wilderness. Homes at town's edge, open lawns and gardens attracting deer, jogging paths over isolated ridges and remote canyons are a novel environment.

Cougars, once fearful of men, and dogs, followed their usual prey of deer into this zone. In doing so, they adapted to conditions readily. Baron demonstrates the falsity of many myths surrounding the cougar. They are highly adaptive creatures, even possessing a "culture" few humans recognise, let alone understand. They feared the wolf packs encountered in the past, but quickly learned pet dogs are no threat. And cougar mothers taught their cubs Fido could provide a meal. Once thought to follow fixed movement patterns, cougars are now recognized as random patrollers of territory. To humans, this unpredictability poses an unexpected threat. It's led to attacks on people - in Boulder, it led to the death of an eighteen-year-old student.

This captivating account of how awareness of the ecotone emerged is flawless. There are heroes, villians, people whose views are challenged and reactions to new provocations. The hero of this story is not the slaughtered youth, Scott Lancaster, but Michael Sanders, wildlife "manager". Sanders, and colleague Jim Halfpenny, struggled to understand what was happening in the Boulder ecotone. They recorded cougar sightings and activity, trying to formulate a picture of puma behaviour. They anticipated potential threats while appealing to government agencies to assist them in their work - to no avail. Local politics and attitudes intervened. Even a direct attack on a woman failed to budge preconceptions. The result was the sacrifice of a young man on the alter of ignorance and misunderstanding. Baron urges that this sacrifice not be in vain.

His conclusion suggests the ecotone isn't limited to the Colorado mountains. Wolves, racoons, coyotes and even geese are invading marginal habitats at the edge of human settlements. A cougar was struck by a car in Kansas City. Another surprised a strolling couple in Minneapolis. A coyote strode onto a verandah near Boston. Baron doesn't propose a return to bounty hunting. He respects the needs of the rest of the animal kingdom, even predators. What is needed, he urges, is an informed, pragmatic approach to wilderness preservation. With the "outbreak" of humans intruding on much of the planet, new forms of wildlife management must be applied. This will require resources [your tax dollars], study [more students taking up wildlife study] and political will [no simple answers].

Baron romanticises nothing in his narrative. His realistic approach is almost unique in nature writing. Certainly, his championing a new view of how we approach the rest of nature must be heeded. He is clearly aware of the massive education process that must ensue to prevent more killings. He stands almost in a "no-man's land" between those thinking "nature" must remain unblemished and those who urge further exploitation. He takes what is perhaps the most unpopular stance in America today - arguing for further knowledge and understanding before decisions are taken. In these times, one of those decisions is where to place the next new suburban house. Perhaps yours. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]

David Baron is a great writer, and this is a great book!

This is a must read for anyone who cares about large carnivores and their future survival.

Beast in the Garden is a non-fiction book that reads like a crime novel. Initially, I suspected that this might be another sensationalized account of wild animals run amuck. What I found was something entirely different, a tome that combines elements of biology, sociology and American history. It is truly a case study on our evolving environment, culture & society.

In this book David Baron masterfully illustrates that not all the news about the environment is doom and gloom. There is an exciting story out there that many people haven't noticed, and that is the recovery of North American wildlife. The cougar is just the most dramatic and charismatic example. This book should help people who love wildlife understand that there is a cost to having these creatures come back. We are going to have to make modest sacrifices and adjustments to our lifestyles in order to accommodate them. We are also going to have to come to the realization that wildlife needs to be managed, in order to insure human tolerance and public safety.

Mark Dowling

When I was younger, I loved the ocean. After I viewed the movie Jaws, I became fearful. This can happen to folk who read David Baron's book, The Beast in the Garden: A Modern Parable of Man and Nature. It is not the intent of Baron to make anyone fearful... this is not of the "when wild animals attack partying coeds" genre. Rather, Baron attempts to answer a question: why was Scott Lancaster killed and eaten by a mountain lion? Was this one of those random, piano falling, lightning striking, lottery winning events that demonstrates no rhyme or reason but, as Forrest Gump says, "It happens." Or was this event predictable, nonrandom, and, perhaps, preventable?

Baron allows readers to reach their own conclusion, but certainly he favors the latter. His rationale is the subject of this book, and it is presented in a clear, lucid, and engaging style.

I've used this book for two years as a text in a course I teach, and the college students find it interesting and thought-provoking. I've had both a general class discussion, and a "mock trial." The trial works as follows:

We have an initial discussion of the book... thoughts, likes, dislikes, ...what is it about predation on people that attracts our interest?

I set the stage for a trial. The issue is who, if anybody, is criminally or civilly liable for this attack? The class gets broken into these groups: Colorado Division of Wildlife, City of Boulder, Boulder and Clear Creek County Sheriff's Offices, judges, and the family of Scott Lancaster. They all get 15 minutes to discuss the case, and then the fireworks begin! Lancaster's family gets to make their initial case, plea for justice, compensation, etc. Then DOW, Boulder, and Sheriff's offices get to defend themselves. Lancaster's family is allowed to cross-examine, as are the judges. At the end, the judges reach a verdict, and explain their decision. We have an additional discussion of all issues raised, including the resolution of actual lawsuits in California. Students seem to like this style of discussion.

Great book! It is weak on any solutions, but if you ask 10 people, they'll give you 10 potential solutions. The real solution is... well, I guess I'll let that be the subject of MY book!

If you're looking for a sensational account of animal attacks, this is not your kind of book. The Beast in the Garden does center on a young man's death by cougar, but the focus is much wider. It's the story of what happens when we build homes and suburbs in, or on the fringes of, cougar habitat and when we are naively (and understandably) charmed by the presence of wild animals in our midst, without considering the very real risks involved. The author is not a hunting advocate in any way, but he does point out that an unexpected consequence of the halt to cougar hunting years ago is that generations of cougars have since grown up who do not fear people- not good for the cougars or the people.
The Beast in the Garden is well written, balanced, thoughtful and respectful of the people involved in the central tragedy, and the author also shows compassion and respect for the animals. The progression of events that led up to the death of Scott Lancaster is so relentless and clearly set out that you wonder how most naturalists in the area never sounded an alarm. And how the love of nature can sometimes blind us to the realities of it.
The writer provides no easy answers, but the questions he raises are fascinating.