"Reads like a crime novel . . . each chapter ends on a cliff-hanging note."—Seattle Times
When residents of Boulder, Colorado, suddenly began to see mountain lions in their backyards, it became clear that the cats had returned after decades of bounty hunting had driven them far from human settlement. In a riveting environmental tale that has received huge national attention, journalist David Baron traces the history of the mountain lion and chronicles one town's tragic effort to coexist with its new neighbors. As thought-provoking as it is harrowing, The Beast in the Garden is a tale of nature corrupted, the clash between civilization and wildness, and the artificiality of the modern American landscape. It is, ultimately, a book about the future of our nation, where suburban sprawl and wildlife-protection laws are pushing people and wild animals into uncomfortable, sometimes deadly proximity.
The Beast in the Garden: A Modern Parable of Man and Nature
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Book Description
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Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
In 1991, in Idaho Springs, Colo., a small town not far from Boulder, a young jogger was killed and partially eaten by a mountain lion. Although people were horrified, biologist Michael Sanders and naturalist Jim Halfpenny were not surprised. Since 1988 they had been studying the mountain lions that were invading backyards in the Boulder area in increasing numbers and had concluded that, contrary to the accepted wisdom that these lions don't attack people, the big cats were indeed stalking humans in search of a good meal. In an engrossing book that reads like a true crime thriller, Baron, a science and environmental writer, follows the advance of mountain lions around Boulder as if they were serial killers, building tension as he leads up to the killing. There were plenty of warnings. Numerous homeowners saw lions in their yards, dogs were maimed or eaten and a girl was attacked but survived. Sanders and Halfpenny tried to convince the wildlife-loving Boulderites that a tragedy was about to occur, but people believed they could coexist peacefully with the lions, and the Colorado Division of Wildlife was also determined to leave the animals alone. Even after Scott Lancaster, the Idaho Springs jogger, was killed, area residents refused to endorse killing the big cats that moved into their neighborhoods. Baron is not in favor of killing unwanted lions, but in this timely book he warns that as people continue to displace wild animals from their habitats, they have to change the way they interact with them and be more realistic about romantic notions of wilderness. Illus. not seen by PW.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
From Booklist
An award-winning science journalist for National Public Radio, Baron examines the complex relationship between humans and cougars, both in the past, when the predators were nearly hunted into extinction, and in the present, as more homes are built in wilderness areas and more people find themselves face-to-face with predators who not only have no fear of humans but also have discovered in human habitats new sources of food. Baron uses the environmentally sensitive city of Boulder, Colorado, as a microcosm of the cougar-human conflict, which came to a head during the 1980s when mountain lions were killing house pets and threatening children and adults. Although Baron can't resist playing up the sensational aspects of cougar attacks, he does perceptively dissect both sides of the impassioned debate these terrifying confrontations engender, revealing how naive and unrealistic the live-and-let-live approach can be, and how easy it is to take the kill-the-miserable-beasts response to unreasonable extremes. For more on man-eaters, see David Quammen's Monster of God [BKL Jl 03] and Phillip Caputo's Ghosts of Tsavo (2002). Donna Seaman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
42 of 43 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
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.
31 of 32 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
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.
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.
29 of 30 people found the following review helpful
By A Customer
Format:Hardcover
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.
Most Recent Customer Reviews
4.0 out of 5 stars
Fascinating
An interesting look at the intersection of the suburbs, wildlife, and the history behind environmentalism. Think I'll be more cautious hiking the Rockies from now on!
Published 1 month ago by Dawn S. Kruger
5.0 out of 5 stars
awesome
Everyone should read this book. Especially if you live in the mtns. You will look at the outdoors totally differently than ever before.
Almost like big brother watching.
Almost like big brother watching.
Published 2 months ago by charlotte strande
4.0 out of 5 stars
Informative, readable.
The author explained the habituation of the animals and the related problems in a chronological narrative that was both enjoyable to read and informative. Read more
Published 2 months ago by J. Harvey
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Beast In the Garden
This book was great and had a lot of information about a true life event that happened in Boulder, Colorado. Read more
Published 3 months ago by Clair
2.0 out of 5 stars
Dreary book
Overall, pretty boring unless you live in CO. There are not many places where mountain lions are relevant any more.
Published 3 months ago by Bart
4.0 out of 5 stars
Interesting story - well researched
I enjoyed it - as interesting about human behavior as animal behavior. Wait until the wolves move west and see if we learned anything!
Published 4 months ago by Kirk S. Naylor
5.0 out of 5 stars
Great story - couldn't put it down!
This novel read like a crime drama. I absolutely loved it, and by the end of the novel, I really started to sympathize with the cougars. Read more
Published 4 months ago by Lauren
4.0 out of 5 stars
A good book
A good example of what happens when hunting is restricted and predators stop fearing man and start viewing him as a food source.
Published 5 months ago by J Mott
5.0 out of 5 stars
Respect as well as love them
I've seen 4 cougars in my lifetime, in AZ and in CA near populated areas. I always felt most attacks were on runners or bikers...the cat pounce thing. Read more
Published 10 months ago by kestrel
2.0 out of 5 stars
Narrative Bias
I wanted to like this book. I really did. I live in the Black Hills of South Dakota where cougars are thriving and have become quite controversial. Read more
Published 11 months ago by oldetimeybookworm
Citations (learn more)
This book cites 100
books:
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8
books
cite this book:
See all 8 books citing this book
- A Sand County Almanac (Outdoor Essays & Reflections) by Aldo Leopold on page 34, page 156, and Back Matter
- Bear Attacks: Their Causes and Avoidance (revised edition) by Stephen Herrero on page 21, page 22, and Back Matter
- The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas S. Kuhn on page 93, and Back Matter
- Theodore Roosevelt (Twayne's United States Authors Series) by Aloysius A. Norton in Back Matter (1), and Back Matter (2)
- Soul among Lions: The Cougar as Peaceful Adversary by Harley Shaw in Front Matter, and Back Matter
See all 100 books this book cites
- Eastern Cougar: Historic Accounts, Scientific Investigations, New Evidence by Chris Bolgiano in Back Matter
- In Search of the Rain Forest (New Ecologies for the Twenty-First Century) by Candace Slater in Back Matter
- Adapting Buildings and Cities for Climate Change: A 21st Century Survival Guide by Sue Roaf PhD on page 108
- Facing the Wild: Ecotourism, Conservation and Animal Encounters by Chilla Bulbeck on page 271
- People and Predators: From Conflict To Coexistence by Nina Fascione on page 236
See all 8 books citing this book
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