EIGHT BEARS

Mythic Past and Imperiled Future By Gloria Dickie Norton

■ When Gloria Dickie arrived in Boulder, Colorado, a decade ago to study environmental journalism, she became intrigued by the number of black bears that wandered into town to scavenge ‘the endless availability’ of human food. Now Dickie has written an illuminating book that explores the past, present and future of the world’s eight bear species.

The author traipses through the shrinking cloud forests of the Andes in search of the elusive spectacled bear, goes undercover in Vietnam to witness illicit bear bile farms and travels to Canada’s Arctic tundra to see polar bears, which ‘will likely not persist much beyond the end of this century’.

With a chapter dedicated to each species, Dickie skilfully probes everything from the bears’ genomic origins and their relationship with humans to their conservation status and what may lie ahead for the ‘occasional bipeds’. The book is packed with vibrant anecdotes featuring colourful characters she meets along the way. She also highlights the mammals’ special place in popular culture – think Winnie the Pooh, Paddington and the enduring ‘Teddy’ bear.

While cautionary, this isn’t a book of doom. As well as exploring the many threats the eight bears – which span four continents – face, Dickie also underscores successful conservation efforts.

Largely owing to a half century of such efforts, today, in the American West, the once critically endangered grizzly bear – a brown bear subspecies – is ‘expanding into areas where they haven’t been seen in generations’. But conflict is increasing at these new frontiers and farmers are questioning the grizzly’s protected status. Even Dickie asks: how many bears is enough?

She travels to India to see the lesser-known sloth bear, which is being adversely affected by the country’s sprawling population and is responsible for the most annual human fatalities of the eight species. Then there’s the universally adored panda, which China’s government ships around the globe as ‘fluffy diplomatic bribes’. Given how close pandas once were to extinction, that’s as remarkable as it is controversial.

In a world grappling with myriad environmental crises, Eight Bears serves as a timely reflection on the impact humans are having on the natural world, and what it could mean for the planet’s ursine inhabitants. ‘We have turned bears into spectacle, commodity and champion,’ Dickie writes. ‘And now, we will determine their future.’