Ep. 40 – Michelle Nijhuis on the history of the wildlife conservation movement

“Hope is the subject of much discussion in conservation circles, both the need for it and the lack of it,” Michelle Nijhuis writes in Beloved Beasts: Fighting for Life in the Age of Extinction. “Yet few if any of the most influential early conservationists were motivated by what might be called hope. They were motivated by many other things — delight, outrage, data — but they had little confidence that the work they were moved to do would succeed in rescuing the species they loved. They did it anyway.” Photo courtesy of Michelle Nijhuis.

In his seminal work on conservation, A Sand County Almanac, Aldo Leopold wrote of his view of humans’ moral responsibility to the natural world: “I do not imply that this philosophy of land was always clear to me. It is rather the result of a life journey.” Today, we tend to regard conservation figures like Leopold, and other giants like John Muir and Rachel Carson, as a pantheon, who penned a “conservation scripture” that reshaped our view of the natural world and pulled countless species back from the brink. Yet, as award-winning science journalist Michelle Nijhuis, writes in her superb new book, Beloved Beasts: Fighting for Life in an Age of Extinction, these vaunted figures have their own stories, filled with victories worthy of celebration, shifting ideologies, biases, imperfections, and unfinished work, all very much shaped by the worlds they lived in. And these stories–of how they loved, studied, hunted, preserved, and fought for animals both locally and around the world–ultimately tell a much broader tale of humanity’s relationship with animals.

In Beloved Beasts, Nijhuis tells the riveting history and evolution of the modern conservation movement. She introduces readers to the Swedish scientists who devised the system of naming and grouping species that endures today, the rebel taxidermist who led the fight to save the American bison from extinction, the New York City socialite who demanded that the Audubon Society stop ignoring the gunning down of game birds by sportsmen, and more. These inspiring, dogged, and often flawed characters transformed both the ecological communities and ideas that we inherited. In this episode, we speak with Nijhuis about what we can learn from the stories of past conservationists and their efforts to protect the wild animals that they loved.

“What’s been forgotten a little bit in recent years is that if we solve climate change, we still haven’t solved conservation,” Nijhuis tells us. “We still haven’t saved biodiversity. Many of the species that are endangered today are not yet under direct threat from climate change. They certainly will be if we don’t figure out how to clean up our act, but what they’re suffering from, what may drive them to extinction in the coming years and decades, is the same thing that has always driven species to extinction since we started doing violence to other species, which is we are destroying too much of their habitat, shooting too many of them, poaching too many of then, and just overexploiting individual species. It’s important for climate to be part of the conservation movement, but I don’t think it can be its sole focus.” Photo courtesy of Michelle Nijhuis.

Beloved Beasts is just the latest in Nijhuis’ two-decades-long career writing about animals, climate change, and humans’ complex relationships with the natural world. Nijhuis is a project editor at The Atlantic. Her works have appeared in publications including The New York Times Magazine, National Geographic and The New Yorker.

“To consumers of modern media, the story of species conservation doesn’t look much like a story,” Nijhuis writes. “It looks like a jumble of tragedies and emergencies: the last Yangtze river dolphin, the last two northern white rhinos (both female), the soon-to-be-last vaquita — obituaries and near-obituaries relieved only by sporadic heroics and temporary successes. It takes place in a bleak present and a much bleaker future … Fantasy and despair are tempting, but history can help us resist them. The past accomplishments of conservation were not inevitable, and neither are its predicted failures. We can move forward by understanding the story of struggle and survival we already have — and seeing the possibilities in what remains to be written.”

Michelle Nijhuis’ recommendations:

Animals Strike Curious Poses by Elena Passarello

A Sand County Almanac by Aldo Leopold

Governing the Commons by Elinor Ostrom

Listen & subscribe to When We Talk About Animals: Apple Podcasts | Soundcloud | Spotify | Stitcher | Google Podcasts