Rose-Tinted Ecology 英文参考文献.docVIP

Book Review/Science in the Media Rose-Tinted Ecology Thomas Brooks They are all very small scale: the evidence that they can be generalized across the landscape to deliver us a reconciled planet is slim. Chapter 5, the one chapter which addresses broad-scale issues—economically and environmentally perverse subsidies— does so from a “what-if” perspective, rather than by reporting actual successes. Even more worryingly, they are heavily Americocentric: Rosenzweig occasionally ventures outside the United States to Europe and Israel, but beyond that, his examples are sparse and shaky. The remaining ?ve chapters of the book go from the speci?cs to the generalities; they address the science behind reconciliation ecology. Rosenzweig’s argument is a simple one, founded on a huge quantity of empirical and theoretical evidence. Human-driven habitat loss, he T his important book relates much the most optimistic treatise on conservation that demonstrates, is leading inexorably to species loss; if those species are to survive, we must therefore allow them access to those portions of the planet that we have appropriated. This logic is undeniable, even if, in a bizarre reversal of the general mood of the book, this science actually veers towards pessimism. Rosenzweig’s claim that, over evolutionary time, there is a linear relationship between the number of species in an area and the size of that area is dubious (most ecologists would argue that this relationship is a power function, implying that relatively few species are lost until most habitat has been lost). And his estimate of the extent of the planet already co-opted by people—95%—is high (of course, none of the planet is pristine any longer, but numerous studies suggest that half of the planet’s natural habitat I have ever read: many would say naively optimistic. I should say from the outset that I genuinely fear that Michael Rosenzweig’s theories and examples are less broadly applicable than he argues. And yet I want to