REVIEW: Pests: How Humans Create Animal Villains (nonfiction book) by Bethany Brookshire

Pests: How Humans Create Animal Villains is nonfiction. I bought my copy new.

Review:

I picked this book up because I wrote my undergrad thesis on a similar subject (although my focus was entirely on rats). 

The introduction, which included a rant about "F***ing Kevin," a squirrel (or likely multiple squirrels) that has repeatedly interfered with the author's attempts to garden, had me wondering whether I'd made a mistake. Thankfully, the book did improve.

Initially, it seemed like the text would be organized to cover one animal per chapter. Chapter 1 was rats, chapter 2 was snakes, chapter 3 was mice (I raised an eyebrow at this, since there would inevitably be overlap with info from the rat chapter). The organization scheme slipped a bit in Chapter 4, which started with pigeons but repeatedly slipped into "rabbits in Australia" territory. This happened a lot, to the point where I wondered whether the author had originally wanted to write a book about invasive species in Australia.

The author's overall argument is that "pest" is a category we put animals into when we don't like them in what we consider to be "our" space, but that the reality is more complex than that. Also, rather than total eradication of animals perceived as pests, we should be focused on coexistence - recognizing that human and animal spaces overlap, and changing human behaviors to reduce the likelihood of human-animal conflict. Supporting evidence included things like 1950s China's attempts to get rid of sparrows in order to protect crops, which in turn resulted in a higher than usual insect population and even more damage to crops.

"But what about those invasive species?" you may be wondering. Things get murkier there. The author acknowledges that invasive species can and do cause problems for native species. However, the author also highlights various ways attempts to deal with invasive species have caused even more problems, as well as the difficulty with completely eradicating invasive species. She includes examples of instances where native ecosystems have been flexible enough to adapt to invasive species, and quotes scientists who argue that the issue is more complex than "invasive vs. native species" - that invasive individuals' existence matters as much as native individuals, and that even total eradication of invasive species wouldn't necessarily save certain threatened native species (due to other factors, such as climate change).

This wasn't a bad book, but it could be a bit repetitive at times, and some of the examples really muddied up the author's overall arguments.