In The Kingdom of Rarities, Eric Dinerstein takes his readers on a tour of some of nature's most amazing places. Aimed at an educated popular audience with an interest in plants and animals, the book provides a superb balance between description, science and conservation. It's an easy, pleasant, and even exciting read, with the science gently fed to the reader as part of the book's adventure narrative.
An introductory chapter asks ‘Why, wherever you land, do you always find a few superabundant species and a multitude of rare ones?’ It suggests that as many as 75% of all species on the planet may be considered rare, occupying a limited geographical space and having a low population density. It promises that better understanding of rarity can ‘help shape our response to saving wild nature.’ The use of the second person plural is no accident, as throughout the book the author encourages the reader to be at least a vicarious participant in the search for rarities and the ways to ensure their continued survival.
The book has eight longish chapters (20 pages or so) that each focus on a particular way station on our quest to seek places particularly relevant to rarities. We start in New Guinea, an island continent that has been isolated from Australia and Asia long enough to evolve an amazing variety of species found nowhere else. The description of searching for rarities such as birds of paradise is woven with science and conservation to present an intriguing tapestry. A key thread here is that customs controlled overhunting among the great diversity of native peoples on the island, where over 800 languages are spoken (although many are being lost). But these traditions are now losing their conservation effectiveness as missionaries discourage taboos and other pagan beliefs. Another thread is the remarkable Kikori River valley, where a major oil company, Chevron, has established a substantial strict nature reserve that is being repopulated by rarities. While the ethics of exclusion are questioned, the results have been positive for many rare species.
Our next stop is the Madre de Dios region of Peru, with healthy populations of jaguars, pumas and c. 1,000 species of birds. The big cats are being monitored by radio tracking technology that provides important conservation insights. This setting helps explain why the tropical rainforests are so rich in plant species, and why ecosystems fundamentally change through trophic cascades when apex predators are removed (for example, by poachers). Other concepts introduced include dispersal corridors and payments to forest-dwelling people for serving as stewards of the forest and its large cats.
From a forest with as many as 250 species of trees per hectare we fly to northern Michigan to search the species-poor jackpine woods for Kirtland's warbler, one of the rarest birds in North America. We learn that extreme dependence on a particular habitat can be either a cause of rarity or a condition of it. And suitable winter habitat of this migratory bird, on the Bahaman island of Eleuthera, is counter-intuitively maintained by the grazing of introduced goats—a conservation villain in many other parts of the world. Concepts such as conservation-dependent species, dispersal ability, and the ecological role of warblers in controlling insects bring science to the chapter, and the value of a Canadian Forces base in Ontario for the conservation of Kirtland's warbler adds an intriguing new potential partner to the mix.
We then trek to Nepal's Chitwan National Park, where the author has spent many years studying species such as tigers and the greater one-horned rhinoceros. Chitwan reveals the importance of long-term studies of population dynamics, genetic variability, and the role of large herbivores in ‘designing’ their own habitat (called the megafaunal fruit syndrome). From the flood plains of Nepal we hop to the Cerrado, the savannah habitat of giant anteaters and maned wolves in southern Brazil as well as attractive land for the expansion of industrialized agriculture. Countryside biogeography, matrix conservation, convergence, ecological equivalents, sources and sinks, and the role of fire in ecosystem management are parts of its story, along with the many wounds inflicted on rarities by agriculture expanding to help feed the growing human population.
The volcanic Hawaiian archipelago is our next stop, credited by the author as once having ‘perhaps the highest concentration of rarities on Earth’. But then humans arrived, with the first Polynesians bringing rats, pigs, and chickens with them, and hundreds more non-native species following Captain Cook and other aliens to the islands, bringing devastation to the native species. Adaptive radiation, island biogeography, and more climate change are all introduced here, before we move on to Indochina, where scientists found an amazing diversity of large mammals, several new to science, after the end of the Indochina War. It is no surprise that the war had adverse impacts on species but a disheartening surprise is that peace may be even worse for some species, judging from the disappearance of Javan rhinos and kouprey after the war.
We end our pilgrimage on a more positive note in the Himalayan Kingdom of Bhutan, where the King prefers the use of gross national happiness to gross national product as a measure of human well-being. Finally, an answer to conserving the world's rarities: ‘Developing our gift for compassion is a critical contribution to the persistence of rarities.’ But what works in isolated Bhutan may not be easily applied to the whole world, so we learn that our ethical support needs to be accompanied by science, control of invasive species, economic incentives, and improved governance at all levels from the village to the globe (for example, through the climate change and biodiversity conventions).
This short review hardly does justice to the rich diversity of species and issues presented in a highly entertaining way. The conservation discussion would have been enriched by more thorough consideration of the economics of conservation (who wins, who loses, who pays, who suffers). Madagascar, southern Africa, marine rarities, and polar regions were missing, and zoos and botanic gardens certainly deserve more attention. But these are just quibbles about a thoroughly engrossing book that the readers of this journal will surely enjoy.
