Overview

"Dubbed as perhaps one of the most important books of our time, Wildlife In The Balance unearths the untold stories of wild animals, their immeasurable impact on the health of our planet and why they are essential to win the climate fight. ""Reading this book may change your mind about almost everything. Important beyond compare, utterly engrossing, at once chilling and heartening."" Dame Joanna Lumley Many of us have marvelled at the sight of a whale, songbird or elephant, but have you stopped to consider why these animals are important? “Wildlife In The Balance” gives the answers to this simple question and explains how animals contribute to life as we know it, and why they are essential in our fight against the climate crisis. Best-selling Author and Ecologist Simon Mustoe lifts the veil on the overlooked impact of wildlife, how animals help “engineer”, maintain, regenerate and restore ecosystems and why we’re better off to change our relationship with them from one of domination to one of cooperation before it’s too late. Read Wildlife in the Balance to learn why animals are humanitys best hope."

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Reviews

Perhaps the most important book of our time. Ian Redmond OBE A wonderful book and important message to humanity. Ralph Chami, Assistant Director, International Monetary Fund The Me Too for wildlife. Ceri Levy, Gonzovationist Read the book, grasp the ideas and change our future. Dr David Hill CBE, Environment Bank A crucially important book. Carl Safina, author of 'Becoming Wild' and 'Beyond Words' You really need to read this book full-stop. Charlie Moores, Off the Leash Podcast An important book to read and act upon. Ian Dunn, CEO Plantlife International Visionary, insightful, and hugely important. Dr Charlie Gardner, Durrell Institute A remarkable new perspective on wildlife. David Casselman, Ecoflix Foundation Beautifully written and captivating from page one. Dr Anika Molesworth, author of 'Our Sunburnt Country'

Scientific endorsements: Dr Beth Fulton, CEO Science Fellow, CSIRO Simon has a long interest in ecology and especially the role of animal life in maintaining ecosystem structure and function. This has seen Simon become a passionate advocate for the restoration of ecosystems, both for their own value but also for the critical role they will have in securing humanity's collective future. It is important that people generally appreciate how ecosystem function and what keeps them ticking, something only now being appreciated by ecologists, but not something we can wait for years for society more generally to grasp. Once the functioning and structure has been eroded to the point it slips into highly degraded states it will be exceptionally difficult to reverse this, with quite significant consequences for any humans depending on that system directly or indirectly. Dr Ghislaine Llewellyn, Deputy Oceans Leader, WWF International I'm writing to express my support of Dr Simon Mustoe as a scientist, researcher and conservationist. Simon has an encyclopaedic knowledge of the oceans and coasts and is extremely rigorous and methodical in his work. He has exceptional credentials as a researcher and brings great insights to his work. I have known Simon for more than a decade. In that time Simon has produced several quality reports for WWF Australia one of which was a report on the biodiversity of the Kimberley, this report was used to lobby for increased protection and created an understanding of the wildlife and ecosystem processes driving this important regions ecology. In 2009, Simon designed and led a survey in the region for WWF, following the disastrous Montara Oil Spill. That work and Simons reports were critical evidence for lawyers that recently led to a successful class action on behalf of Indonesian marine industries. WWF commissioned this work because we needed Simons strong understanding and unique perspective of wildlife and its interaction with ecosystem processes. I would have no hesitation recommending Simon, if you need further clarification, please don't hesitate to contact me. Anissa Lawrence MSc, Director TierraMar My team and I have worked with Simon for many years. His conceptualisation of wildlife as a driver of ecosystems and nature-based solutions were recently used to help integrate ideas for restoration of fisheries-based economies in the Coral Triangle. As a result, he is now leading the development of a multi-national science proposal for TierraMar, alongside CSIRO researchers and part of a global advisory team. The idea that animals positively impact society by creating stability in food systems and climate, is building momentum and there is an urgent need for publicly consumable media, to promote this concept among the global conservation networks we work with. Dr Kim Friedman, Research Scientists, Food and Agriculture Organisation, Italy (previously, Principal Research Scientist, WA Parks and Wildlife) Simon is passionate and driven to explain and communicate ideas about the natural world and peoples place within it. At a critical time in human history we need good communicators, like Simon, that can help people conceive of different viewpoints on the way we live, and its likely impacts on the future our children will inherit. Simons science communication is well placed to expand this conversation as he presents a unique and personalized vision on the way social-environmental systems work. You know how when looking at an optical illusion, you can look and look and then suddenly, with the same visual input, you see it - or when you are shown a camouflaged gecko on bark and see only bark until you notice the eye, then suddenly it becomes clear and you wonder why you couldnt see it before? Reading Wildlife in the Balance is like seeing one gecko after another as patterns of life fall into place. Not only is it a readable romp through diverse areas of natural history, physics and philosophy, it strings together theories and facts with a rare clarity. The reader emerges with an understanding of nature and the forces that shape the biosphere, our only home, and how we are a part of it and dependent on it. Conservation of animals cannot just be about preventing extinction - our future depends on wild animals thriving, not just surviving, eventually recovering in number to provide the ecosystem services on which we depend. Wildlife in the Balance is perhaps the most important book of our time. - Ian Redmond OBE I have spent every day as an adult in the company of animals, from shy echidnas to raucous parrots: they are our culture if only you look. We can't exist without wildlife and the time has come to make sure, WITHOUT FAIL, we don't lose them. This book shows how it can be done. - Robyn Williams AO, ABC Science Show Visionary, insightful, and full of original observations, 'Wildlife in the Balance' provides an accessible and utterly compelling overview of the importance of animals in the functioning of the living world, the fight against climate breakdown and, ultimately, our own survival. I've been a conservation scientist for 25 years but still learnt enormously from almost every page, and the book has helped me see nature in new ways. This is a hugely important book, and the more widely it is read the better our futures will be! - Dr Charlie Gardner, Associate Senior Lecturer, Durrell Institute of Conservation and Ecology (University of Kent) This delightfully evocative yet sobering book is the strongest of clarion calls as to why, with the utmost urgency, we must nourish nature and change our destructive ways. For our very lives, and that of our sustaining planet, depends on we humans nourishing diversity. This book is a rich primer and wondrous feast of information and conceptual clarity that will help people fall in love with nature . - Dr. Charles Massy best-selling author, Call of the Reed-Warbler' Ranging in scope from single units of energy to planetary-scale ecosystem processes, never dry, never less than enthusiastic, fizzing with original ideas, packed with references, full of Now I get it! moments, 'Wildlife in the Balance' pulls together thousands of threads into a dizzying but utterly coherent narrative that explains in terms even the most ardent industrialist will understand how animals are critical - not just to their own survival, but to our survival too. From Blue Whales to termites, from seabird colonies to aerial plankton, wild animals of all sizes and complexity have shaped and created the world we live in, a world we evolved into, and a world we are systematically dismantling. Can we put things right? Not on our own and not without animals, and perhaps counter-intuitively the author suggests the solutions lie in NOT doing something. Hes right, but you really need to read this deeply-thoughtful book to understand why. Actually, if you want to understand why wildlife matters and has more impact in more ways than youve ever thought possible, you really need to read this book full-stop. - Charlie Moores, Unleashed Podcast A single life is finite and mortal. But, Life, as such, continues exactly because the many lives do not and cannot just live for themselves. As Mustoe clearly explains, humans cannot live without wild-life, for we are all subject to the same universal laws of dynamic interdependence and needing each other to survive ... isnt this true joy de vivre?! - Professor Richard Banati, University of Sydney This book makes it clear that we have to value and respect the role of animals in creating a habitable planet . - Leif Cocks, The Orangutan Foundation This is an important book to read and, more critically, respond to and act upon. At Plantlife International we strive for a world rich in plants and fungi, but we know this cannot happen without a world rich in wildlife. This richness needs to be both in diversity and abundance - and there is no doubt that securing this for the future is in the balance. Astutely pulling together a complex web of facts, theories and stories, Mustoe conveys just how critically important it is that all parts of the wonderous ecosystems on which we, and all planetary species depend, are able to thrive. To do so we, humans, must embrace the call to action so ably represented by 'Wildlife in the Balance' . - Ian Dunn, CEO Plantlife International - The Wild Plant Conservation Charity What would our planet be like without animals? Mustoe's lively and passionate book highlights the extent to which wildlife drive ecological processes-indeed, how animals, birds and insects create and maintain a livable world. Through research and reminiscence he shows how wildlife are essential to the cycling and conveying of energy, nutrients, and information, and why a vibrant future depends on thriving, abundant fauna. - Judith Schwartz, author of 'The Reindeer Chronicles' A remarkable new look at a story older than time! 'Wildlife in the Balance' captures the science in a way never offered before, exposing stunning and critical revelations relevant to both the layman and learned scientists alike. - David Casselman, Ecoflix Foundation

Reading this book may change your mind about almost everything. Important beyond compare, utterly engrossing, at once chilling and heartening. Dame Joanna Lumley Perhaps the most important book of our time. Ian Redmond OBE A wonderful book and important message to humanity. Ralph Chami, Assistant Director, International Monetary Fund The Me Too for wildlife. Ceri Levy, Gonzovationist Read the book, grasp the ideas and change our future. Dr David Hill CBE, Environment Bank A crucially important book. Carl Safina, author of Becoming Wild and Beyond Words You really need to read this book full-stop. Charlie Moores, Off the Leash Podcast An important book to read and act upon. Ian Dunn, CEO Plantlife International Visionary, insightful, and hugely important. Dr Charlie Gardner, Durrell Institute A remarkable new perspective on wildlife. David Casselman, Ecoflix Foundation Beautifully written and captivating from page one. Dr Anika Molesworth, author of Our Sunburnt Country

Author Information

Simon Mustoe has worked all over the world as an ecologist, expeditioner and conservationist. He’s tumbled in boats amid frigid north Atlantic storms, trekked solo into Madagascar’s remote dry forests, discovered unknown species of seabird in Australia’s tropical ocean territories and recorded previously unseen whales in West Papua. His thirty years as a researcher, communicator, expert witness and consultant for industry, governments and conservation groups have offered many oblique views of our interaction with nature and candid examples of our failure to protect it and ourselves. Telling the story about our relationship with and dependence on wildlife is Simon’s passion. He co-produced Australia’s National Landscapes Nature Series, sends his online magazine Wildiaries to a quarter of a million Australians, and illustrates his own blog, Animal Impact. Meanwhile, Simon continues to play an active role as adviser to important ecosystem restoration initiatives.

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