A ray of hope. A realistic acknowledgement of advances that have been made. In Tenacious Beasts: Wildlife Recoveries that Change How We Think About Animals, Christopher J Preston, (The MIT Press, Cambridge MA, 2023) not only documents the animals on the rebound but offers innovative thinking on the emotional and conceptual changes we need to make to keep the recovery in full swing.
Here's the good news:
- From a low of around 1,200 when the hunting moratorium took effect, humpback whale numbers in the North Pacific have ballooned to over 20,000, a figure believed close to pre-exploitation levels.
- Humpback whales in the western Indian Ocean have surged from 600 in the middle of the last century to over 30,000 today.
- Northern elephant seals have recovered from less than 100 to nearly 200,000.
- Bald Eagles in the US have climbed from just over 400 nesting pairs in the 1960s to more than 70,000 today after a ban on DDT.
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