As I work my way through my large virtual backlog, I have read quite a few non-fiction that have taken me on different journeys. The particular book was particularly enlightening.

I did not expect the Netherlands to be at the centre of a lot of the topics discussed here, and that brought the content a little closer home (since I live here now). The author also has a very interesting style of narration. There is an upbeat, chatty nature to the way things are told without pushing it too far away from the animals being discussed or the seriousness of what changes human history has done to the animals in the now-populated areas.

The chapters are divided by the animals they focus on while sometimes talking a bit about a previously discussed creature. The author includes a ‘how to read the book section in the very beginning, which effectively captures his intention with what we are about to read, and I think that paragraph is enough for readers to decide if the book is for them or not. Basically,(and I am quoting here) he highlights the changes each recovering species demands. He has managed to talk about different viewpoints (along with his own).

There is a lot of information within these pages – history and geography also play an important role in setting the scene. I left this book on my virtual shelf for a long time before getting to it. When I finally did, I ended up working my way through it very quickly.

I would highly recommend this book to anyone with even a remote interest in nature and wildlife.

I received an ARC thanks to NetGalley and the publishers but the review is entirely based on my own reading experience.

While most natural science books currently become very doom and glum about global warming, Tenacious Beasts is a look into just how resistant to humans nature can be, focusing on species that have to recover and come back from the brink of extinction. It's full of love for the natural world and just how powerful it is. It is full of love for every animal featured and love for the research that was put into all the discoveries.
Reading this book felt like going back to lectures, and I mean the good ones. Instead of making you feel like there is nothing that can be done about global warming and the impact of humans on nature, it shows you what is possible. How the natural world can adapt to humans and the positive research/change you can make. Preston goes out to find all these stories and tells them all with such excitement you find yourself excited about salmon sperm.
I am excited to start trying to find ways to incorporate this new knowledge into my programming and continue spreading the word.
Thanks to the author and publisher for providing a free ARC copy through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

This was a well-written, compelling look at what human activity is doing to our planet and what we might hope to achieve if we can summon the will to reverse it. As someone deeply engaged in climate issues, I try to add optimistic books to my reading as often as I can, to balance out the doom-and-gloom that comes with the territory. I sought this book out for that reason, and felt the familiar comfort of learning that smart, thoughtful people are trying to do good things. But like the author and some of the experts in the book, I wonder about how much human manipulation is too much, and about the nature of “nature.” This book may have raised more questions than answers for me, but it was certainly thought-provoking and the case studies were interesting to read about. I was already familiar with a handful of the examples, but others – like salmon, actually – were new to me, and I really enjoyed learning more. I’d have loved a section at the end with guidance about how readers can take action to reduce their climate impact – whether individually or by supporting collective efforts – but hopefully readers will be inspired to do their own research after reading this book. I appreciated the opportunity to review this title; thank you to the publisher for making it available.

I have finally finished reading this phenomenal, epic book. It took me a while because I was interested in everything, and it’s packed full of…everything. I’m a lover of animals and nature, and if you are, too, then this is a must-read.

Per Tenacious Beasts, many animals have come back from the brink of extinction (local, or global), and Preston details how this has happened—sometimes through human intervention, and at other times in spite of us. Foxes, whales, owls, wolves, bison, sea otters, and others have been imperiled by human activities. What sets this book apart is the massive amount of work Preston put in, from research, to extensive interviews with all kinds of people: those working in conservation, activists, and even farmers affected by human-wildlife interactions.

There are numerous delightful details (my copy of the book is rather well-highlighted now). For example, male barred owls are smaller than females, and females are much more aggressive, and sea otters are kelp forest rescuers with a huge appetite for sea urchins, which are ruiners of kelp forests. There’s a huge amount of information in the book that will stick in your head and make you wildly popular at parties, if those are the parties you go to.

I’ve also spent some time contemplating the arguments presented in the book for how to think about our present and future, encompassing climate change, wildlife extinction/recovery, and human intervention in environmental management. Although Preston does not advance overtly political views, I’m more persuaded than ever that capitalism and colonialism (with technology as their tool) were the architects of our current problem, and that Indigenous ways of seeing were always the correct approach and will be the solution, something Preston also ponders in the book. Preston also talks about the dangers of “Fortress Conservation” (not explicitly mentioned in those terms, but the concept is referenced), warning that this will not be the way back. In all, I appreciate Preston’s analysis of the current situation, and his conclusions about the way forward.

Thank you to MIT Press and to NetGalley for this illuminating and engrossing read.

Industrialization has had a catastrophic effect on life on earth. What can we learn from animals that have come back from the brink of extinction? This book is a loving homage to the diversity of species. It's full of factual information, but it's also full of hope that we can all learn to live better together.

Thanks, NetGalley, for the ARC I received. This is my honest and voluntary review.

Tenacious Beasts: Wildlife Recoveries That Change How We Think About Animals
By Christopher J Preston

I want to thank the publisher and NetGalley for letting me read this informative and interesting book.
This book focuses on several different animals and describes their decline in numbers and the reasoning behind it and then how they are making a comeback. Along the way we learn about other animals that are effected in the interlocking web of life.
Some of the animals discussed are wolves, whales, bison, and owls. But many other animals are mentioned. We also learn how humans have played a role in helping with the comeback. I guess it's only fair since we helped in the decline.
The book is easy to read and informative on various subjects. You really have to want to know about animals before starting this book due to all the facts it has. To me it was an eye opener. I read a lot on nature books so most of the basics I knew but I really did learn so much!

It's nice to have stories about some wins in the animal kingdom, especially since I feel like I am bombarded constantly with news about the destruction of the planet.

An interesting book that speaks to how species can come back from the brink. Preston’s writing style is enjoyable and informative even for someone that doesn’t typically read non fiction nature books.

Tenacious Beasts, by Christopher J. Preston, is a rarity among environmental/ecological books nowadays — an uplifting work that highlights positivity, resilience, and hope for the future. As such, it’s a highly rewarding book and a breath of fresh air amongst all the depressing numbers out there having to do with our world and the creatures we share it with.

That isn’t to say Preston turns a blind eye to those depressing numbers. Far from it. In fact, he begins by listing some of those very numbers:
“Wildlife populations have declined 20 percent over the last century. More than nine hundred species have been wiped off the face of the earth since industrialization. At least a million are threatened with extinction … The collapse is almost certain to get worse … Ninety-six percent of the weight of the world’s mammalian life is either human or domestic animals.”

He’s crystal clear regarding humanity’s catastrophic impact and quite keen early on and throughout to emphasize that “highlighting the recoveries is not to question the established wisdom about species loss.” But plenty of books exist to emphasize that loss, while this one’s intent is instead to highlight the (possible, tentative, cross-one’s-fingers-and-hope) recoveries of several species that we’ve managed to (maybe, perhaps, please-oh-please) pull back from extinction’s edge: the American bison, the beaver, the sea otter, the whale, and others. Preston makes this his focus not to muddy the issue of the ecological damage humans have caused but to point to a new way of viewing our relationship to animals, one that “challenge[s] entrenched ways of thinking and shake[s]us from well-worn habits of mind” so that “things might be different this time.”

Each chapter mostly focuses on a single species (with brief digressions to consider other animals, as well as on occasion plants and insects), setting the context for just how endangered they were, describing their current status, explaining how they got from one stage to the other, and then looking at what the future may hold. In addition to focusing on the animals, each section also raises a sort of essential question, a change in mind or habit that is required for these creatures to first survive, then thrive side-by-side with humanity.

To learns about the animals and the methods that have managed to bring them back from the brink of extinction, Preston travels around America and overseas, interviews a number of people (scientists and non-scientists), and gets his hands dirty more times than not, as when, for instance, he helps get semen out of a salmon.

He begins with a chapter on wolves. While Americans are probably aware of the successful rewilding of wolves in Yellowstone, while this success story crops up, Preston here is much more focused on the wolves’ resurgence in Europe and particularly their very recent [re] entry into the Netherlands. One of the pleasures in this book is its wider world view, not just with regard to the geography of the animals but also in how it examines the cultural differences that affect rewilding efforts. Geographically, for instance, much of Europe simply lacks the wide-open spaces of America’s western states; there is no Yellowstone to let wolves run free in, seen only by the occasionally lucky hiker or tourist with a spotting scope. Instead, European wolves by simple physical necessity prowl human spaces, trotting along vineyard rows or through olive groves. As well, because wolves are expanding on their own into countries, they are not “tainted” with the idea of being “forced” upon an unwilling populace by the government, something that has exacerbated conflict over the reintroduction of wolves into the Rockies (though Preston makes clear lots of farmers and livestock owners in Europe share the concerns of their American versions).

Later, in a chapter on attempts to reintroduce (or actually introduce — the genetic history is complicated) the steppe bison to England, Preston explores how the British have been completely cut off from any exposure to large animals, unlike Americans, who have lived near (or are at least able to travel to see) bear, mountain lions, bison, etc. England, on the other hand, is “one of the most nature-depleted countries in the world … in the bottom 10 percent of countries for the animals and plants is has left”, and all of those relatively small.

Preston doesn’t only highlight differences across countries or geographic regions, though. He also spotlights differing attitudes towards animals and nature between Native Americans and non-Native-Americans in the US, particularly in discussions of the resurgence of the American bison, salmon, and whales. The bison story is a well-trod one, but the connection of the bison — of today’s bison — to Native Americans is a tale told far less often, with most explorations of the subject only bringing in the Native Americans as a historical artifact side by side with the sweeping herds of 19th Century bison. The same holds true for Preston’s look at dam removal as a means of revitalizing salmon runs and Native American hunting/collecting methods as a means of a more sustainable and healthy ecologic system encompassing whales, otters, shellfish, and kelp (somewhat similarly, it was a pleasure to see how many female scientists/researchers are heard from).

Even in the sections that deal with more familiar stories, such as the slaughter of the bison and whale, Preston finds a way to bring something new and surprising into the mix. With the bison, along with centering the Native American connection to the species’ rejuvenation, there’s the idea of bringing them to England (a country I’m guessing most readers do not associate with bison), as well as the fascinating question of just how much genetic purity matters when one is discussing the revitalization of a species (just what percentage of cattle genes prevents us from calling a bison a bison if they look the same and perform the same ecological niche role?). With the whale and sea otter segments, the surprise (for me at least) came when Preston brought in a connection to climate change, not in the expected fashion of it being bad for animals, but in how both species can contribute to a sort of biological carbon capture system, thus helping reduce increasing greenhouse gases.

Preston is an engaging tour guide through the world of species recovery, offering a nicely non-American-centric point of view, a conversational tone with occasional lyrical flights, a host of fascinating details, and a number of stimulating and deeply thoughtful questions about how we can change in the way we talk and think of our relationships to the animal world. Though clear-eyed about the realities of our destructive nature and the appalling toll that nature has taken on the creatures we share the planet with, Tenacious Beasts gifts us with a few positive stories amidst the tragedy and carnage, and offers up a glimmer or two of hope if we can only heed the lessons those stories are trying to tell us. Highly recommended.

Preston presents an overall positive outlook for the animals we share the planet with, their amazing ability to bounce back from the brink if we can just stop actively killing them. The animals are grouped roughly be ecosystem. And the ecosystems are just as vital to the narratives of survival here as the animals are. Preston shows how the balance between creature and place is pivotal, and how our desire to protect majestic animals can run parallel to our desire to protect our natural places.

An educational read that people should pick up and read. I found it to be insightful and very educational.

An educational and hopeful read and a must read for anyone interested in animal recovery and environmental reading.

As someone who reads a lot of nature and pop science writing, especially on the topic of rewilding, I wondered going into this book whether enough of the material would be new to me. I'm very pleased to say: YES.

Preston's style of writing somewhat straddles the "poetic nature writing" camp and the "harder-edged pop science writing" camp. It's a good balance. Hs descriptions of the places he visits are brief but vivid enough. There are some lines of soaring beauty. He sticks to the template of a researcher going around and interviewing various scientists and other experts, but his chosen case studies are fascinating enough that the narrative remains compelling throughout.

I relished the amount of detail the author gave to each species he focused on. Some pop science books whiz through a huge variety of species, but I tend to find them less satisfying. In 'Tenacious Beasts', the animals are familiar ones - American bison, American wolves, whales, etc. - but I learned a great deal of new things about how exactly they have managed to return to old haunts. I suspect the fact that Preston is British, albeit a Brit who has spent some of his life living in the USA, also gives him the advantage of a fresh perspective on conservation and rewilding in that country. On the other hand, bear in mind that the book is very American-centric, though there are some pleasant forays in the UK and Italy.

One final piece of praise for me is the number of female scientists in the book - I'm still grumpy from a recent nature/conservation book in which every person featured was male.

HIGHLY recommended to anyone with an interest in rewilding and conservation, and a need for hope. The one real downside for me is that cover - I had to carefully read the blurb to make sure I wasn't about to dive into a children's book!

(With thanks to MIT Press and NetGalley for this ebook in exchange for an honest review)

I really enjoyed reading this, it was what I was hoping for from the description. It was written really well and I enjoyed the way Christopher J. Preston wrote this. I was invested in what was going on and thought it was a great animal story. I look forward to more from Mr. Preston.

I wasn't expecting this to be so verbose. I teach high school science, so this is slightly above my students' grade level in reading (sadly), but I would love to adopt some paragraphs for use in our science reading sections. I found it especially interesting when genetics was discussed. This would be a wonderful college level text, or even for AP Biology.