The Rape and Murder of Mother Nature

The deep conflict between wild animals and people led the author to a life-long determination to comprehend why governments are driven to get rid of Nature and turn its land into farms and cities. Civilization as we know it is built on the ruins of Nature. More than half of Nature has been cleared away to enable economic growth. What remains will be gone in just 80 years’ time. The present book is a zoologist’s perspective of the behaviour that drives us to destroy Nature, however much we may at the same time claim to cherish it. Conservationists fail to influence governments simply because they appeal to reason by spelling out the undesirable consequences of destroying the natural world. The author’s thesis is that governments don’t listen because they can’t hear. Their deafness is owing to their slavish commitment to expanding their economies, which, in turn, means expanding human populations to drive those economies. These deep-seated convictions are entirely instinctive. Has any government ever planned continuous economic expansion, or looked into its possible consequences? No - they just do it without asking themselves why.