This was certainly an interesting read! It's basically a series of case studies, set within the United States, of various species and the challenges of developing useful conservation strategies to deal with them. Most of the case studies here follow a very similar pattern: European colonists arrive in North America, and start exploiting beaver, birds, what have you, until their populations absolutely tank. At which point conservationists begin to appear, and start passing laws and developing wildlife refuges in order to save the remnant scraps of population from extinction. They are very successful... too successful.

It's clear that Sterba isn't referring to all (past or present) endangered species here, or even a good chunk of them. His focus is on the species that adapted, very quickly, to living with humans in built environments. The Canada geese that colonise city parks, the beavers that cause suburban flooding, the white-tail deer that start chewing on plants in people's gardens. The comebacks for these once endangered animals have become so successful that their populations have skyrocketed, in some cases past their natural carrying capacity... and that's not getting into monstrously effective introduced species like domestic cats. Sterba argues that many of these species are over-protected, to the point where their populations are causing enormous damage to ecology. And, in a New Zealand context, I get it. Possums were introduced here from Australia and have absolutely decimated the local flora and fauna, and if anyone tried to tell me they shouldn't be hunted or culled I would huff at them and repeat, as I have a thousand times before, that the only good possum is a dead possum. They are ecological menaces.

Sterba, though, makes no bones about the difficulty of managing two conflicting goals: protecting the animals and managing the ecology. There's so much emotion tied up on either side - cat lovers don't want the feral moggies killed, bird lovers are all for getting shot of kitties (often literally); people love beavers in their backyard until their property gets damaged, what about sportsmanship in hunting, how do we feel about bears really, and let's make sure we cull the geese before the school bus rolls by. It's just a welter of competing priorities and emotional minefields, as dedicated people on all sides argue about what's best for ecology and conservation management. I winced a little, sometimes, while reading, but these are arguments taking place now, and there's no solution to them yet.