The Love of Nature and the End of the World: The Unspoken Dimensions of Environmental Concern

Virtually everyone values some aspect of the natural world. Yet many people are surprisingly unconcerned about environmental issues, treating them as the province of special interest groups. Seeking to understand how our appreciation for the beauty of nature and our indifference to its destruction can coexist in us, Shierry Weber Nicholsen explores dimensions of our emotional experience with the natural world that are so deep and painful that they often remain unspoken.The Love of Nature and the End of the World is a gathering of meditations and collages. Its evocations of our emotional attachment to the natural world and the emotional impact of environmental deterioration are meant to encourage individual and collective reflection on a difficult dilemma. Nicholsen draws on work in environmental philosophy and ecopsychology; the writings of psychoanalytic thinkers such as Wilfred Bion, Donald Meltzer, and D. W. Winnicott; and ideas from Buddhist and Sufi traditions. She shows how our emotional responses to the vulnerabilities of the natural world range from intense caring and compassion, through grief and outrage, to diffuse depression. Individual chapters focus on silence and the process whereby we move from the unspoken to the spoken, the love of nature, the "perceptual reciprocity" with the natural world to which we might mature, beauty in the human and natural realms, the psychological impact of the destruction of the natural world, and reflections on the future.

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Saving the Gray Whale: People, Politics, and Conservation in Baja California (Society, Environment, and Place)

Once hunted by whalers and now the darling of ecotourists, the gray whale has become part of the culture, history, politics, and geography of Mexico's most isolated region. After the harvesting of gray whales was banned by international law in 1946, their populations rebounded; but while they are no longer hunted for their oil, these creatures are now chased up and down the lagoons of southern Baja California by whalewatchers. This book uses the biology and politics associated with gray whales in Mexican waters to present an unusual case study in conservation and politics. It provides an inside look at how gray whale conservation decisions are made in Mexico City and examines how those policies and programs are carried out in the calving grounds of San Ignacio Lagoon and Magdalena Bay, where catering to ecotourists is now an integral part of the local economy. More than a study of conservation politics, Dedina's book puts a human face on wildlife conservation. The author lived for two years with residents of Baja communities to understand their attitudes about wildlife conservation and Mexican politics, and he accompanied many in daily activities to show the extent to which the local economy depends on whalewatching. "It is ironic," observes Dedina, "that residents of some of the most isolated fishing villages in North America are helping to redefine our relationship with wild animals. Americans and Europeans brought the gray whale population to the brink of extinction. The inhabitants of San Ignacio Lagoon and Magdalena Bay are helping us to celebrate the whales' survival." By showing us how these animals have helped shape the lifeways of the people with whom they share the lagoons, Saving the Gray Whale demonstrates that gray whales represent both a destructive past and a future with hope.The peninsula of Baja California is a place little known even within Mexico, a place, until very recently, of isolated fishing villages and single-lane roads. Now great fleets of fishing boats from all over the world, coupled with a gigantic saltworks and other industrial development, threaten the waters off Baja California--a favored habitat of the gray whale, a creature that has received much attention in recent years.

Once endangered throughout much of its range, the gray whale has made a comeback thanks to international efforts to preserve the species. Ecologist Serge Dedina discusses how those efforts can be extended to Baja California, where much of the whale's habitat is threatened. Dedina proposes ways to involve local fishing people in whale conservation, by, for instance, developing a locally owned, whale-watching-based tourist industry of the sort that brings millions of dollars to California and British Columbia, other stops along the gray whale's migratory route. "Conservation," Dedina writes in this engaging study, "is more than a political process. It intersects with the way people live, perceive, and interact with the animals and landscape around them." His book, full of useful lessons, will be of much interest to conservationists working with animals and habitats of all kinds, as well as to anyone concerned about the gray whale's future. --Gregory McNamee

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