Eight Bears: Mythic Past and Imperiled Future

by Gloria Dickie Narrated by Cassidy Brown

Overview

A global exploration of the eight remaining species of bears-and the dangers they face.



Bears have always held a central place in our collective memory, from Indigenous folklore and Greek mythology to nineteenth-century fairytales and the modern toy shop. But as humans and bears come into ever-closer contact, our relationship nears a tipping point. Today, most of the eight remaining bear species are threatened with extinction. Some, such as the panda bear and the polar bear, are icons of the natural world; others, such as the spectacled bear and the sloth bear, are far less known.



In Eight Bears, journalist Gloria Dickie embarks on a globe-trotting journey to explore each bear's story, whisking listeners from the cloud forests of the Andes to the ice floes of the Arctic; from the jungles of India to the backwoods of the Rocky Mountain West. She meets with key figures on the frontlines of modern conservation efforts-the head of a rescue center for sun and moon bears freed from bile farms, a biologist known as Papa Panda, who has led China's panda-breeding efforts for almost four decades, a conservationist retraining a military radar system to detect and track polar bears near towns-to reveal the unparalleled challenges bears face as they contend with a rapidly changing climate and encroaching human populations.

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

"Eight Bears explores the wonder and friction that characterise the relationship between bruins and people.… [R]iveting and unique."— Economist

"At once heartbreaking and hopeful, steeped in science and rich in poetry."— Ben Goldfarb, author of Crossings

"An engaging travelogue…weaving together evolutionary biology, physiology, ecology, history, culture, economics, and politics to reveal the importance of each ursine species to our own."— Henry Nicholls Nature

"Eight Bears is science journalism at its best: thoroughly researched, carefully conceived, and vividly written. Highly recommended!"— Nate Blakeslee, author of American Wolf

"[A] timely survey."— The New Yorker

"[Gloria] Dickie’s detailed, accurate, and holistic view of human-bear relationships is impressive. Even bear researchers can fall short in this regard."— Özgün Emre Can Science

"A captivating and carefully considered mosaic of stories."— Jake Buehler Science News

"A family album of the remaining varieties of bear."— Edward Posnett Guardian

"I found wonder, awe, melancholy, and terror woven amid stories of the creatures being chronicled.… [L]yrical."— Gretchen Lida Washington Independent Review of Books

"This book is not just a bear encyclopedia. Dickie wants to ask what it means to conserve a species, and in some cases how much conservation is ‘enough.’"— Katrina Gulliver, Spectator (UK)

"Superb.… [T]he crisp prose will transport readers.… [A] winning combination of travel and environmental reporting."— Publishers Weekly, starred review

"A cleareyed view of the world’s bears and the many threats they face."— Kirkus Reviews

"Eight Bears roars about the majesty and charisma of these remarkable creatures while illuminating their escalating vulnerability in a changing environment."— Library Journal

"Laced with climate change warnings as [Gloria Dickie] explores all the ways humans both love and endanger these creatures."— BookPage

"A definitive and magisterial account.… This book is essential reading about the ongoing Anthropocene collision between humanity and the rest of the natural world."— James Balog, director of Earth Vision Institute and A.D. White Professor-at-Large, Cornell University

"Written with deep compassion and striking humor, Eight Bears provides a deep and clarifying understanding of our history of ursine kinship."— Lyndsie Bourgon, author of Tree Thieves

"With deep, on-the-ground reporting and vivid writing, Gloria Dickie takes readers from the historic mythologies that have made bears the most charismatic of megafauna to the lairs and laboratories where the future for each of the world’s eight ursine species is being written. Her book is as magnificent as the animals we meet in it."— Michael Kodas, author of Megafire

"In this insightful, absorbing book, Gloria Dickie not only introduces us to the eight remaining species of bears themselves but deftly connects the plight of each species to a much larger story: the story of our ancient, fraught, irreplaceable relationship with these astonishing animals."— Michelle Nijhuis, author of Beloved Beasts

"Gloria Dickie takes us on an intimate global journey into our tangled and absorbing relationship with bears, where fur brushes close to skin, where the stakes are high, and in which the future of bears is our future as well."— Harley Rustad, author of Lost in the Valley of Death

Kirkus Reviews

2023-03-22
A look at the world’s eight surviving bear species.

As Reuters global climate and environment correspondent Dickie notes, some of the world’s embattled bears are charismatic bywords for wild animals as a whole: the polar bear, say, or the grizzly. Others, such as the spectacled and sloth bears, are scarcely known. Yet all are slipping away save for the black bear, the sole species “considered secure throughout its global range,” and 6 of the 8 are under immediate threat of extinction—all due to human interventions in their environments. Their fortunes were not always so tenuous. As the author writes, modern bear lineages appeared over the last 5 million years or so, “extremely recently in terms of geological time,” and spread to every continent except Australia. Still, their day in the sun has been curtailed: There are perhaps 500 primate species, vastly outnumbering ursines. While many hunting cultures revered bears even as they feared them, urban civilizations have tended to discount them—and to kill in the course of encounters almost always initiated because humans are intruding into bear country. This sometimes happens in unexpected places. In North Gujarat, India, for example, sloth bear attacks on humans numbered 1 per year between 1960 and 1999, on average, while today the number has jumped to nine. The culprit? Lack of water in the hot summer months, when most attacks occur, caused by climate change. Climate change, of course, is devastating polar bears, who are becoming fewer and smaller, the result of a tightening food chain and loss of sea ice habitat, which “could disappear completely as early as 2035.” Dickie concludes by noting that the future is likely bleak. By 2100, she observes, the world’s human population is projected to reach 11 billion, and “every new human exacerbates the crises faced by the natural world.”

Gloomy in outlook but a cleareyed view of the world’s bears and the many threats they face.

2023 Banff Mountain Festival Book Award, Short-listed
2024 Rachel Carson Environment Book Award, Short-listed

Product Details

BN ID:	2940159891310
Publisher:	HighBridge Company
Publication date:	07/11/2023
Edition description:	Unabridged

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