The best books on Ecology

You are a scientist and conservationist of many years, and now also the author of a new book on snow leopards, which draws from your 20 years of study in some of the world’s most remote regions. What do you think a good book about ecology should do?

I think a good book about ecology should make the reader curious about nature and arouse a desire in them to step outside and connect with nature in whichever way they can. While the reader learns new things about nature, they should also feel emotionally involved and realise that they are not separate from what is being discussed in the book but rather an integral part of it.

How do you balance the science with storytelling in your own work?

Science does not occur in isolation. The process of doing science has a rich backdrop of evocative stories. Embedding science in these stories also helps ground the work and make it more human. The balance really depends on the style of writing. If the science is esoteric then I like to balance it with deeper stories. If the science is fun then I try humour.

Your first book recommendation is The Serengeti Lion: A Study of Predator-Prey Relations by the eminent field biologist George Schaller, published in 1972. It won the National Book Award in the United States the following year. Would you introduce it to our readers?

The Serengeti Lion was the first book that showed how we can study large wild animals in their natural habitats. This book had a unique appeal for both professionals and amateurs. Now, more than 50 years after its publication, it still remains a very accessible book for people interested in learning about the scientific study of wildlife.

The author, George Schaller, has written many books from different environments ranging from the rainforests of Rwanda to the Tibetan Plateau but this book is the best example of the early years of wildlife biology.

Yes, I’m familiar with Schaller. He’s a major player in Peter Matthiessen’s classic travel book The Snow Leopard; he’s cited in Dian Fossey’s Gorillas in the Mist because he studied the Virunga mountain gorillas before she got there. Just as an aside, he is the subject of a new biography, Homesick for a World Unknown by Mirian Horn.

Schaller was a pioneer who demonstrated how we can study wildlife in their natural habitats and still go beyond descriptions and actually quantify their ecology, behaviour, and deploy this knowledge to further their conservation. But he did not just stop at doing scientific studies, he went on to write a book about each of his research projects and made the work accessible to the world.

Before Schaller, only hunters had tried to meet species like the gorilla and the lion in their natural habitats. He was the first person who ventured in these spaces without a gun. He walked in simply with a notebook, pen, a pair of binoculars and cameras. He stayed in the field for long durations, often several months at a time and multiple years for a single study. Sometimes he moved his entire family to his field sites and they all lived there. In more ways than one he opened the path for the many biologists who followed.

Next you’ve chosen to recommend Owls of the Eastern Ice by the US conservationist Jonathan Slaght, about his work with the Blakiston’s fish owl, in the far-eastern reaches of Russia. I remember this made quite an impact on release in 2020.

Owls are present nearly in every habitat around the world. They are also popular in art and culture. But other than the barn owl, and one or two other species, we know very little about them. Jonathan Slaght uses his excellent writing skills to illuminate a very remote part of the world, the far east of Russia, and an almost unknown species, the Blakiston’s Fish Owl, one of the largest species of owls in the world.

Thanks to this book, I know more about this distant species of owl than some of the other owls that I find in my backyard.

Ecologists seem unusually talented, among scientists, at literary work. Would you agree? Do you think there’s something inherently romantic in the pursuit of the science itself that lends itself so well to the page?

I think, among ecologists, for those with an interest in literature have easy access to interesting material through their work. They work gives that access to travel, diverse cultures, diverse nature, and adventure, which are all essential ingredients for a good story. They also live a life that is very appealing to many but very few actually get to live it and so they have a ready readership. So, yes, there is a romance in the study of ecology that is unmatched in most other sciences.

The Song of the Dodo by David Quammen, your next choice, has appeared several times on our site. The biologist Sean B Carroll described it as “a great hybrid of rich history and contemporary science.” Tell us more.

If I had to pick just one book, it would be The Song of the Dodo. It blends great writing with one of the greatest ecological theories of our time, the theory of ‘island biogeography’, and deploys it to bring attention to one of the greatest challenges of our time, the sixth mass extinction.

It makes you fall in love with literature, then teaching you about the science and then calls the reader to arms to prevent this oncoming tragedy.

That leads us nicely on to No Way Home: The Decline of the World’s Great Animal Migrations by David Wilcove. I suppose this, like the Quammen book, is encouraging us to think of the interdependence of species and ecosystems. What’s his argument?

This work draws our attention to the wonderful natural phenomenon of animal migrations. We have all been awed by the great footages of the wildebeest migrations in the grasslands of Africa. But there are equally incredible migrations by a host of other species including the butterflies, birds, turtles and mammals.

This book highlights some of the most remarkable animal migrations that still exist on our planet. This migrations will disappear well before those species go extinct. I am hopeful that we will be able to save many of these species, but will we be able to prevent these migratory behaviours from going extinct? I am not so sure.

Saving these migrations requires us to protect very large tracts of land and waterscapes which is looking increasing difficult in a rapidly changing world.

And finally, I think that brings us to The Great Soul of Siberia: In Search of the Elusive Siberian Tiger by Sooyong Park. Why do you recommend it?

I find the Siberian tiger to be the greatest enigma after the snow leopard. The ruthlessly difficult landscape and the rarity of the cat makes it very difficult to penetrate this world of this majestic cat. The author demonstrates the great amount of patience and tenacity needed to study this species. He embodies the amazing world of the tiger.

This book is also a reminder of the time where the researcher enters the world of the tiger without depending on modern technology of genetics and camera traps. Through the writing we learn more about the natural history skills of reading the pug marks to understand what the tigers are up to. It shows that old school romance of natural history is still around and healthy.

I like that—the old school romance. In the blurb, the book is described as the result of Park’s ‘obsession’ with the tiger. Actually, this is a framing that we often see in ecology books, and it could be applied to your own book and work, too, I think. Is that how it feels from the inside? A scientific survey or study that is also the expression of a fixation or monomania?

Fixation? Yes. Monomania? No.

I think these types of research projects will not happen without a bit of fixations. They are difficult, come at a huge personal cost and the rewards are not significant. We often only see the tip of the iceberg; a lot of the price is paid up front and risks are taken.

Sometimes the risks pay off, but most of the time they don’t. So in some regards there are a lot of overlaps between explorers, mountaineer, and ecologists.