Description: "Extraordinary. . . . Berger is a hero of biology who deserves the highest honors that science can bestow."--Tim Flannery, New York Review of Books
On the Tibetan Plateau, there are wild yaks with blood cells thinner than those of horses' by half, enabling the endangered yaks to survive at 40 below zero and in the lowest oxygen levels of the mountaintops. But climate change is causing the snow patterns here to shift, and with the snows, the entire ecosystem. Food and water are vaporizing in this warming environment, and these beasts of ice and thin air are extraordinarily ill-equipped for the change. A journey into some of the most forbidding landscapes on earth, Joel Berger's Extreme Conservation is an eye-opening, steely look at what it takes for animals like these to live at the edges of existence. But more than this, it is a revealing exploration of how climate change and people are affecting even the most far-flung niches of our planet. Berger's quest to understand these creatures' struggles takes him to some of the most remote corners and peaks of the globe: across Arctic tundra and the frozen Chukchi Sea to study muskoxen, into the Bhutanese Himalayas to follow the rarely sighted takin, and through the Gobi Desert to track the proboscis-swinging saiga. Known as much for his rigorous, scientific methods of developing solutions to conservation challenges as for his penchant for donning moose and polar bear costumes to understand the mindsets of his subjects more closely, Berger is a guide par excellence. He is a scientist and storyteller who has made his life working with desert nomads, in zones that typically require Sherpas and oxygen canisters. Recounting animals as charismatic as their landscapes are extreme, Berger's unforgettable tale carries us with humor and expertise to the ends of the earth and back. But as his adventures show, the more adapted a species has become to its particular ecological niche, the more devastating climate change can be. Life at the extremes is more challenging than ever, and the need for action, for solutions, has never been greater.Brief description: Joel Berger is the Barbara Cox Anthony University Chair in Wildlife Conservation at Colorado State University and a senior scientist with the Wildlife Conservation Society. He is coauthor of Horn of Darkness.
Review Quotes: "The high arctic, the Gobi Desert, and the mountains of Tibet would seem to have little in common, but all are lands of extreme temperatures, rarefied air, and limited access to water. They are also the lands of large ungulates adapted to living in and with the harsh conditions and humans who compete with these animals. Berger, one of the world's preeminent field biologists and an eloquent writer, addresses conservation in extreme climates, asking the basic questions a scientist asks when doing in-the-wild research, then coping with the vicissitudes of attempting to answer those questions in a not-necessarily human-friendly environment. Berger's first-person reporting as he studies musk oxen in Alaska, yak in the Tibetan Plateau, and saiga and takin in the high Gobi Desert reveals the excitement of a scientist gathering data as well as the frustration of dealing with politics, bureaucracy, and recalcitrant minor officials. Woven throughout is the author's obvious love of the land, the animals, and of what he does to further our understanding of these delicate ecosystems."-- "Booklist, starred review"