Review by Choice Review
Some conservation books are of local or otherwise limited interest, but that cannot be said for this one. Jaguars are of global interest because current conservation efforts employ representative methods for transnational management, e.g., the identification and protection of habitat corridors and the use of genetic data to determine links and breeding patterns among a widespread population. Rabinowitz merits attention because he knows as much about big cats as anyone in the world; through decades of groundbreaking research, he has secured protection for big cats in diverse countries and served as director of the world's largest big cat conservation program within the Wildlife Conservation Society. More recently, he founded Panthera, which quickly amassed significant financial resources and unparalleled scientific expertise. This book is written for the lay reader, and the science is described clearly and concisely. The chapters on the historical and cultural aspects of jaguars are noteworthy. The maps would benefit from being larger but are informative. The example of modern conservation techniques in action in a transnational setting combined with the authority of an experienced and respected voice make this work an essential addition to all academic collections. Summing Up: Essential. All students, general readers, researchers/faculty, and professionals/practitioners. --Jonathan Nabe, Southern Illinois University Carbondale
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Booklist Review
Rabinowitz is the world's leading authority on the jaguar and author of Life in the Valley of Death (2007) and A Boy and a Jaguar (2014). He now presents a fascinating book that explores the human-jaguar link. Jaguars are the New World's only surviving big cat, the last one left (along with its big little cat cousin, the mountain lion) from the great Pleistocene extinction. Crucial to present-day survival of jaguars is to preserve the link between the cat and the people who live in its range. Rabinowitz has spent his professional life studying big cats, with specific focus on the jaguar; here, he combines tales of personal discovery with the politics of preserving an endangered predator as well as the drudgery and wonder of field research in remote areas. The Jaguar Corridor, the land down the spine of Central America and into South America through which jaguars move and live their lives, is mirrored by what the author calls the Jaguar Culture Corridor, where people have lived with the cat for millennia and where it is woven into the local culture. The modern-day interaction of these two corridors will absorb all lovers of the wild.--Bent, Nancy Copyright 2014 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
The jaguar, the largest extant cat in the Americas, is far more ancient than humans but, as Rabinowitz (Life in the Valley of Death) shows, its fate has been inextricably linked to humans ever since we arrived in the Western Hemisphere. Rabinowitz, CEO of the conservation organization Panthera, argues that human "health and well-being" is equally dependent on the jaguar: "This belief, this human-jaguar linkage, was... as important to the cultural fabric of the people as it was to the jaguar's struggle for survival." He combines his account of field research on jaguars in the wilds of Belize and Brazil and advocacy for conservation strategies with anthropology, zoology, and paleontology to tell the tale of an endangered species that has persisted despite very long odds. Surprisingly, as Rabinowitz himself notes, biologists now believe that jaguar populations stretching from Mexico to South America comprise a single interbreeding species rather than eight subspecies as previously thought. This insight has dramatically altered how jaguar conservation biology must be practiced and supports a need to maintain a jaguar corridor throughout their entire range. Rabinowitz's work with Panthera on this front is impressive and provides some hope for the survival of the species. (Sept.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
