Wild Souls

What We Owe Animals in a Changing World

Emma Marris

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
• Year: 2021
• Topic: Biological Sciences
• eBook ISBN:
  9781635574968
• Subtopic: Environmental Conservation & Protection
• Index: Biological Sciences

Winner of the 2022 Rachel Carson Environment Book Award * Winner of the 2022 Science in Society Journalism Award (Books) * Finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize

"Thoughtful, insightful, and wise, Wild Souls is a landmark work."--Ed Yong, author of An Immense World

"Fascinating . . . hands-on philosophy, put to test in the real world . . . Marris believes that our idea of wildness--our obsession with purity--is misguided. No animal remains untouched by human hands . . . the science isn't the hard part. The real challenge is the ethics, the act of imagining our appropriate place in that world." -- Outside Magazine

From an acclaimed environmental writer, a groundbreaking and provocative new vision for our relationships with--and responsibilities toward--the planet's wild animals.
Protecting wild animals and preserving the environment are two ideals so seemingly compatible as to be almost inseparable. But in fact, between animal welfare and conservation science there exists a space of underexamined and unresolved tension: wildness itself. When is it right to capture or feed wild animals for the good of their species? How do we balance the rights of introduced species with those already established within an ecosystem? Can hunting be ecological? Are any animals truly wild on a planet that humans have so thoroughly changed? No clear guidelines yet exist to help us resolve such questions.
Transporting readers into the field with scientists tackling these profound challenges, Emma Marris tells the affecting and inspiring stories of animals around the globe--from Peruvian monkeys to Australian bilbies, rare Hawai'ian birds to majestic Oregon wolves. And she offers a companionable tour of the philosophical ideas that may steer our search for sustainability and justice in the non-human world. Revealing just how intertwined animal life and human life really are, Wild Souls will change the way we think about nature—and our place within it.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Advance Praise for Wild Souls
• Half Title
• Dedication
• By the Same Author
• Title Page
• Epigraph
• Contents
• 1: The Flight of the ‘Akikiki
• 2: Our Animal Kin
• 3: Philosophies of the Non-Human
• 4: Between Dog and Wolf
• 5: The Lion in the Backyard
• 6: The Autocratic Menagerie
• 7: The Dignity of the Condor
• 8: Are Species Valuable?
• 9: Feeding Polar Bears
• 10: The Arrow’s Tip
• 11: Bloodshed for Biodiversity
• 12: The Friendly Toutouwai
• 13: Compassionate Conservation
• 14: Bilby Thunderdome
• 15: How to Be a Good Human to the Non-Human World
• Acknowledgments
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index
• A Note on the Author
• Copyright