Win-Win Ecology: How The Earth's Species Can Survive In The Midst of Human Enterprise (Hardcover)

~ (Author) "Today's dominant strategy of conservation biology is reservation ecology: save the Earth's natural habitats..." (more)
Key Phrases: reconciliation ecology, sink species, shifting baseline syndrome, United States, New Zealand, Eglin Air Force Base (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review

"In thoughtful and elegant prose, peppered with humor and bits of philosophy, Rosenzweig presents...a hopeful, fresh vision.... The book is a wonderful source of motivation and inspiration, entertaining and thought-provoking for lay and professional audiences alike. Even the most skeptical readers will likely be convinced of the need to rethink conservation strategy."--Science
"Rosenzweig is marvelous! With vast erudition he has brought to life a novel sub-field of ecology. Win-Win Ecology focuses on saving species just as all hope seems gone! He demonstrates, with many fascinating examples, how humans can at least sometimes construct new ecological niches to replace those that human activity has destroyed. It doesn't always work but it works often enough to supply some hope for the world's future biodiversity. It is not a rosy pipe dream future but a realistic lantern of hope presented in lovely prose. It is necessary reading." --Lawrence Slobodkin, Founding Chair of the Department of Ecology and Evolution, SUNY-Stony Brook, and author of A Citizen's Guide to Ecology
"A wonderful contribution to a new wave of ecological thinking, a focus on how to preserve biodiversity in habitats already hosting high levels of human activity. Working to make such habitats more hospitable for other organisms is a critical accompaniment to ongoing efforts to protect them in reserves. Everyone should be aware of this hopeful trend." --Paul R. Ehrlich, President, Center for Conservation Biology, Stanford University
"Rosenzweig has done it all--elegant experiments and continent-wide summaries of ecological patterns. He combines those essential experiences with passionate and thoughtful writing to make a compelling case that we can and must live with Nature, not fence her off in reservations." --Stuart Pimm, Doris Duke Chair of Conservation Ecology, Duke University, and author of The World According to Pimm: A Scientist Audits the Earth

Product Description

As humanity presses down inexorably on the natural world, people debate the extent to which we can save the Earth's millions of different species without sacrificing human economic welfare. But is this argument wise? Must the human and natural worlds be adversaries? In this book, ecologist Michael Rosenzweig finds that ecological science actually rejects such polarization. Instead it suggests that, to be successful, conservation must discover how we can blend a rich natural world into the world of economic activity. This revolutionary, common ground between development and conservation is called reconciliation ecology: creating and maintaining species-friendly habitats in the very places where people live, work, or play. The book offers many inspiring examples of the good results already achieved. The Nature Conservancy, for instance, has a cooperative agreement with the Department of Defense, with more than 200 conservation projects taking place on more than 170 bases in 41 states. In places such as Elgin Air Force Base, the human uses-testing munitions, profitable timbering and recreation--continue, but populations of several threatened species on the base, such as the long-leaf pine and the red-cockaded woodpecker, have been greatly improved. The Safe Harbor strategy of the Fish & Wildlife Service encourages private landowners to improve their property for endangered species, thus overcoming the unintended negative aspects of the Endangered Species Act. And Golden Gate Park, which began as a system of sand dunes, has become, through human effort, a world of ponds and shrubs, waterfowl and trees. Rosenzweig shows that reconciliation ecology is the missing tool of conservation, the practical, scientifically based approach that, when added to the rest, will solve the problem of preserving Earth's species.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 224 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA (April 24, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0195156048
• ISBN-13: 978-0195156041
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.3 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #297,662 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Clarion Call For A New, Most Unique, Approach to Saving Earth's Biodiversity, February 21, 2009

By	John Kwok (New York, NY USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

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.

6 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Inspiration amidst depression., August 20, 2003

By	cb "cb" (encino, ca US) - See all my reviews

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.