Flight Ways

April 21, 2014
Looking holistically at the process and fact of extinction, van Dooren, an environmental philosopher and anthropologist from Australia’s University of New South Wales, poses provocative questions about the meaning of species loss. Van Dooren arranges each chapter by species and larger taxonomic groups of birds on the edge of extinction, and then superbly explores the implications of interspecies “entanglements” within ecosystems and the fact that species should be “understood as vast intergenerational lineages, interwoven in rich patterns of co-becoming with others.” Van Dooren works to situate humans more appropriately than they have been: “In focusing on entanglements, this book aims to present alternative understandings of extinction to those grounded in entrenched patterns of ‘human exceptionalism.’” While explaining how human activities are largely responsible for the decline of his subjects—albatrosses, Asian vultures, Australian little penguins, whooping cranes, and Hawaiian crows—van Dooren also investigates the ethical implications of captive breeding programs designed to stave off extinction, at least temporarily. Behind the scenes of the successes lies the “violent reality of the way in which much of this care for species and environments is practiced,” contradictions which become “the messy work of ethical conservation for our time.”

September 1, 2014

Australian academic and environmental philosopher van Dooren has read and thought deeply about extinction, as evident in his extensive chapter notes, references, and writing. However, in an age of mass extinctions and concurrent public interest, many may find this text bewildering. The author does solid work in summarizing the decline of five kinds of birds in different precarious situations: Indian vultures, North Pacific albatrosses, American whooping cranes, Australian little penguins, and Hawaiian crows. However, he proceeds with dense and obtuse writing that is full of phrases such as: "Temporalities converge in this meeting of bodies, each carrying histories and presaging futures inscribed in them by evolutionary inheritance." One of the few means of insuring the continued existence of declining species, captive breeding, the author strangely describes as violence. Nowhere does the text mention of James Cowan Greenway's classic Extinct and Vanishing Birds of the World. Also, the book's focus means that while van Dooren discusses Arthur Schopenhauer, Martin Heidegger, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and other philosophers, there is no discussion of extinction icons such as the California condor, ivory-billed woodpecker, or Hawaiian nene goose. VERDICT Of interest only to those with deep concern for philosophy, ethics, and endangerment/extinction.--Henry T. Armistead, formerly with Free Lib. of Philadelphia

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