Customer Reviews

Man Swarm and the Killing of Wildlife

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In this important book, veteran arch-conservationist Dave Foreman (founder of Earth First!, the Wildlands Project, and the Rewilding Institute) takes aim at the still-detonating human population explosion and the implosion of wildlife abundance and diversity it is causing, both in North America and globally. Foreman also takes to task those clueless or timid environmentalists and assorted cornucopians and flat-earthers on the left and right who continue to deny that there is a population problem at all. Finally, he lays out the difficult but doable steps that conservationists must take if wildlife and biodiversity are to survive the cruel Anthropocene Epoch, or Age of Man. At the rate we're going, in less than a century, this Age might have to be renamed the "Age of Man, and Only Man" because only our species and a few lucky "fellow travelers" like cats, cockroaches, and crows will survive.

The book's Foreword was penned by the venerated 19th century English philosopher and economist John Stuart Mill, who wrote presciently and wisely in 1848 that: "Nor is there much satisfaction in contemplating the world with nothing left to the spontaneous activity of nature; with every rood of land brought into cultivation, which is capable of growing food for human beings; every flowery waste or natural pasture plowed up, all quadrupeds or birds which are not domesticated for man's use exterminated as his rivals for food..."

This Foreword shows that there is a long tradition of dissidents and freethinkers pondering limits to growth and biospheric usurpation, as well as the importance of the other species with which we share the Earth. Foreman indeed uses "earthling" to refer to all those creatures great and small that grace the Earth with their lives, not just those who walk on two feet and sport opposable thumbs.

With graphs and text, Foreman reviews the fundamentals of population growth and carrying capacity. While it took humanity tens of thousands of years to reach its first billion in about 1800, it has only taken another two centuries to add six billion more. The USA alone irrupted from 4 million in 1790 to more than 310 million at present, and continues to add about 3 million a year, on the way to 440 million by 2050, and somewhere between half a billion and a billion by 2100, according to the Census Bureau.

The Earth is adding another 80 million people a year, on the way to 9 billion or more by 2050, and 10 billion or more by 2100, barring a demographic/economic/environmental collapse - which can certainly not be ruled out. Yet it is staggering just how apathetic and ignorant most people are about overpopulation. If acknowledged at all, it's considered passé or just background noise; the newest gadgets from Apple, the latest Gaga video, the pathetic posturing between Democrats and Republicans in Congress, the volatile stock market, and the chores of daily survival attract a thousand times more attention than this crucial long-term issue.

Suffused with Forman's engaging, easygoing, and eccentric style, at turns humorous, but deadly serious throughout, Man Swarm lays out in grizzly detail how ever-increasing numbers of our species spell doom for other life forms. These poor creatures, or wildeors as Foreman charmingly dubs them (from the Old English) have the misfortune of being stuck on the one known life-bearing planet with Homo sapiens - that would be us humans - the supremely arrogant yet ignorant simian whose cleverness, greed, and short-sightedness long ago outran our collective wisdom and self-restraint. Yet as Foreman emphasizes time and again, it doesn't have to be this way. "The better angels of our nature" - our ancient wisdom and self-restraint - can prevail.

In a chapter entitled "How the Man Swarm Eats Earth," Foreman identifies the Seven Ecological Wounds of the human assault on the "wildworld": Overkill; Scalping and Taming Wilderness; Fragmentation of Wildlife Neighborhoods; Upsetting and Weakening Ecological and Evolutionary Processes; Spread of Exotic Species and Diseases; Biocide Poisoning of Land, Air, Water, and Wildlife; and Global "Weirding" or Climate Change and Ocean Acidification. He elaborates on each of these and shows their relationship to the famous I=PAT equation first proposed four decades ago by biologist Paul Ehrlich and physicist John Holdren.

Foreman then pillories those ideologues who are so blinded by their own faiths (in the free market, in limitless human ingenuity, in the evils of capitalism, etc.) that they fail to perceive - or worse, actively deny - the unbearable load a mounting human population places atop wild nature. Not surprisingly, many such deniers denounce folks like Foreman who attempt to raise concern about overpopulation as doom-and-gloomers and misanthropes. They are like the eternal optimist Pangloss in Voltaire's satire Candide.

Finally, Foreman proposes a variety of steps that we as Americans can take, individually and collectively, to slay the overpopulation juggernaut before it slays our fellow earthlings, and ultimately, ourselves. This diverse list ranges from reducing unsustainable levels of immigration to backing women's education and equality worldwide.

This book deserves to be read by all who really care about wildlife and sustainability.

Dave Foreman lays the core problem facing wilderness, wildlife, and the future of humans, right at our feet with no apologies. Almost anyone's first instinct will be to rail against the facts presented in this work. Simply out of frustration and sadness over the fact that we humans, alone, have presided over the greatest mass extinction of life on Earth since dinosaurs disappeared. How did we get here? And how, if at all, can we stop our sprint past the carrying capacity of the planet? And where does all other life on Earth fit into our self-centered, locust-like gobbling up of every resource on Earth?

Who answers the tough questions about what's happening in the Sudan today? War. Famine. It all leads back to the very question no leader seems to have an answer for: What does massive overpopulation have to do with the problems every country faces today?

Man Swarm asks the hard questions which need answering. And fast. The Earth is not infinite. Yet population is not even a talking point in mainstream environmental groups. Technology will not save us. Yet we produce more junk every day at the expense of lives somewhere on Earth. And, if anyone cares about other forms of life on Earth, wilderness and wildlife are now at the end of their rope. Something must give. Man Swarm says it's us. And looking at the simple facts, I agree.

We are treated in this excellent book to a comprehensive and extensive review of the literature of ecology, environment, and the prospects of our planet for future comity and surviorship.

Sadly, its circulation will be small. Unfortunately, its primary intended audience (e.g. world leaders who have the power to put policies in place to help alleviate planetary stresses) are largely deaf to taking the decisive, extensive, cumulative actions which will stop the impending pace of planetary plunder. A decendent of Fairfield Osborn's fateful book, "Our Plundered Planet", this book will enlighten and frighten any thoughtful reader.

Will the wake up prose of this and so many other qualified books of this genre be heeded? Not likely to the extent needed.

This book will prove one of the most poignant calls for human population stabilization yet written. It's breath-taking in its sweep and compelling to the point of humanity's spiritual death. I couldn't put the book down. I have explored the globe from the Arctic to the Antarctic--and I have seen firsthand what Foreman shows us in the pages of his book. Humanity stands at a cross roads: either stabilize human numbers or kill off much of the other "earthlings" on the planet in the shape of fins, claws, hooves, feathers, shells and fur.

He addresses the seven wounds inflicted on Earth's creatures. We can and must change our poisoning, cutting, scraping and destroying animal habitat. We must understand animal carrying capacity. We must understand our own predicament. Foreman clearly shows us that we stand nostril-deep in trouble in 2012. If we continue, it will worsen beyond repair. As Dr. Albert Bartlett said, "Extinction is forever."

Foreman brings up the moral and ethical question: does humanity have the right to wholesale slaughter of much of the rest of the animal kingdom? What rights do humans have for such endless killing? At what point does our spiritual connection to the Earth die with the deaths of our fellow travelers.

This book needs to be read by every world leader. It needs to be read by every US senator, House Rep, Governor and school principal. It needs to be read by all citizens who care about the future of America and this planet. If we fail to change course, Mother Nature will enact her own solutions and none of us will like them.

Therefore, when you read this book, tell another 10 friends who will tell another 10 friends who will create a "consciousness shift" which leads to a "critical mass shift" that leads to a "tipping point" toward a viable future for all of the living creatures on this planet. It's our watch. Let's take action. Thank you Dave Foreman for your passion, your heart, your love of wildlife and your love of our planet home.

Foreman writes a fantastic book on the issue of increased numbers of people(80 million a year worldwide) crowding out wildlands and wildlife. Perhaps armchair environmentalists will realize there is more to being green than buying compact flourescent bulbs and a reusable grocery bag. If I were to critique some aspect of this work, he briefly knocks tea party conservatives. I fit that category but realize that the issue of increasing human numbers is not a "right or left" issue. This is the best book I've ever read on the issue of population growth.

As the eminent biologist has stated 'every species extinction diminishes humanity' and so this book provides powerful support to that sentiment. The author Dave Foreman is a lifelong conservation advocate who has a great breadth of knowledge, personal insight and passion to impart on the issue of wildlife and protection of it. He sees the number one problem for the preservation of wildlife as being human overpopulation and he references many relevant people, books and studies that provide powerful and compelling support for this assertion. What I love about the author is that he shows a strong commitment to wanting to understand and share with the reader the science behind this issue while at the same time being an immensely warm and generous writer. As Dave Foreman has stated in the past, 'fighting to save biodiversity, the process of evolution, is a way for us to save our souls.' This is a great book!