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Win-Win Ecology: How the Earth's Species Can Survive in the Midst of Human Enterprise

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One of our most brilliant, thoughtful, and persuasive, ecologists, Michael Rosenzweig has looked at virtually every major facet of ecology over an illustrative career spanning more than four decades, focusing primarily on evolutionary, population and community ecology. This tremendous range, from studying continent-wide species diversity patterns to understanding community ecology in the surrounding Sonoran (Arizona) desert, and finally, to interpreting major aspects of the fossil record from an ecological perspective, has led to the development of important, often novel, insights not only in ecology, but indeed, for much of evolutionary biology. For example, in the early 1970s, independently of evolutionary biologist Leigh Van Valen (who would coin the term), Rosenzweig stumbled upon the Red Queen's Hypothesis. In his latest book, "Win-Win Ecology", Rosenzweig is a most infectious optimist, arguing persuasively for a new kind of conservation ecology, reconciliation ecology, that, by striving to strike a balance between humanity's demographic and economic pressures and the desire to save as much of Earth's biodiversity as possible, may become ultimately, the best - if not the sole - means of saving this biodiversity.

Rosenzweig passionately believes it is possible for humanity to live in harmony with nature. Moreover, he offers elegant proof that it is being done now, beginning with a most memorable vignette; discovering an "undersea" restaurant at the Israeli Red Sea port of Eilat, whose adjacent reef has been constructed, offering a new refuge to the port's exceedingly rich coral reef biodiversity. Other memorable tales include the inadvertent construction of sanctuaries for native frogs in southern Arixona courtesy of cattle ranchers, for crocodiles at a Florida power plant, and for a pine forest at a United States Air Force weapons testing range. For Rosenzweig, these, and other notable examples he cites, demonstrate how the science of reconciliation ecology would work; a new form of conservation ecology in which mankind would construct new, artificial habitats to preserve some, if not all, an area's existing biodiversity. Most conservation biology efforts, Rosenzweig notes, fall under reservation ecology: "save the Earth's habitats", with increasing attention also drawn to restoration ecology: restoring some territory back to a more natural status. But he believes both are ultimately doomed to fail if they are the only means of preserving Earth's biodiversity. For both purely esthetic and selfish economic reasons like ecotourism, Rosenzweig believes that reconciliation ecology may prove to be more effective than reservation ecology and restoration ecology (But he also recognizes that we shouldn't throw out the baby with the bath water; that both reservation ecology and restoration ecology will still have ample importance in preserving our planet's still rich biodiversity.).

Most of the latter half of "Win-Win Ecology" is devoted to the science behind the species-area relationship, which, ecologically astute readers may recognize, led eventually to the development of the theory of equilibrium island biogeography back in the mid 1960s by Rosenzweig's doctoral dissertation advisor, ecologist Robert MacArthur and systematist and biogeographer Edward O. Wilson. Here Rosenzweig offers persuasive mathematical reasoning demonstrating as to why reservation ecology is insufficient towards preserving our planet's biodiversity. The mathematics he employs is simple, quite lucid, and should be easily understandable to anyone with a good foundation in arithmetic. He also reminds us that extinction is the ultimate fate of all species; a point stated with utmost eloquence by his late colleague, eminent vertebrate paleontologist George Gaylord Simpson, who noted that our planet is a "charnel house of species". And he stresses this point by referring to some of the great mass extinctions known in the past five hundred fifty-odd million years of Earth's biological history, most notably the terminal Permian mass extinction from approximately two hundred forty million years ago, where upwards of 97% of known species became extinct.

Rosenzweig hasn't offered us the golden elixir of truth that will solve our ongoing crisis in protecting and preserving much of Earth's biodiversity. But he has offered a most fascinating solution to our problem, and one that's well-reasoned, and well-stated in clear, extremely lucid, prose. Without question, "Win - Win Ecology" demands a wider readership, especially amongst the scientifically literate audience - and the general public - for whom this book ought to be required reading.

This book inspires you to look at your surroundings and make changes that improve the welfare of the living world around you. However, it states the cold equations of our increasing destruction, and explains what the future is likely to bring if we don't immediately start working for a better world.

Plants and animals used to be able to move to new habitats during periods of climate change -- today we've locked them into too-small reserves and they have nowhere to go except extinct during the current warming trend. That's why we must work hard at making our cities (where most of us live) as hospitable as possible for other living creatures.