STORY AND PHOTOS BY KAREN BOSSICK

When “Tenacious Beasts” author and philosopher Christopher J. Preston addressed a Sun Valley audience last winter, he did so with a note of optimism.

“There’s a lot of bad news out there, but tonight I’m going to make you happy,” he said, launching into a story about how humpback whale, once hunted to the brink of extinction, were “doing incredibly well.”

“This quintessential tenacious beast stared extinction in the face and something changed. Now they’re doing well,” he told a full house at The Community Library.

Christopher J. Preston’s “Tenacious Beasts” notes that more than 900 species of wildlife have been wiped off the planet since the Industrial Age began.

The same could be said for the red deer, wolf, bison, pronghorn and beaver, Preston said. Brown bear are again roaming forests of Europe while sea otter have rebounded from a thousand at one time to 125,000.

But on Thursday night, as Preston returned to The Community Library, he was more measured as he talked about his new book “The Synthetic Age.”

Whereas “Tenacious Beasts” examines the natural ways wildlife once on the brink of extinction are rebounding, “The Synthetic Age” looks at a future in which humans are reshaping the natural world using nanotechnology, genome editing, climate engineering and de-extinction, or the process of generating an organism that resembles an extinct species.

The idea is you push back against climate change not by cutting pollution but with engineering solutions, Preston told the crowd. Man is trying to get into the metabolism of the earth, and a lot of that is being engineered by commercial interests, he added.

We’ve all heard that there are no longer any places left on Earth untouched by humans, that you can’t go anywhere without seeing the impact of humans, Preston said.

“For the most part, that was by accident. We didn’t intend to change climate. But, with technology, we’re deliberately changing the earth, we’re actively changing how the earth functions. And this is something more significant and something that needs to be talked about more.”

Before, he explained, planetary change was the unintended consequence of our Industrial age. This age we’re entering into involves a world in which engineers deliberately manipulate the planet, shifting from a world where man are caretakers of the Earth to a world where they’re shaping the Earth, he added.

That includes engineering’s attempts to manage solar radiation by synthesizing a volcanic haze or creating artificial trees that remove carbon from the atmosphere.

“ ‘The Synthetic Age’ is about technology replacing nature,” he said.

In contrast, “Tenacious Beasts” is about the resilience of the wild, the tenacity of wildlife.

“The return of animals demands something from us and, in turn, teaches us better ways of being in the world,” he said.

Inherent in that is an evolving mindset.

In the 1800s, for instance, farmers on the frontier didn’t want elk eating crops. Modern-day Americans look at wildlife as something to be treasured.

“One of the reasons you like it here is that you get to see wildlife populations,” he said.

Similarly, people in the 1800s looked upon Moby Dick-type whales as big fish in the sea that could make them money. Today whale watching is a big tourist industry. And, scientists are learning, whales can help fight climate change by storing carbon in their bodies and stimulating the growth of phytoplankton, which provides food for shrimp, snails, and other sea creatures.

“They’re things we love to have around, and they’re things we need to have around,” he said.

That said, humans need to shift their state of mind to exercise compassionate conservation—times when noisy tourist boats are not allowed to go out and watch whales to give the whales a break.

“We not very good with etiquette around wildlife,” Preston said.

Rewilding has taken off in Europe in order to restore ecosystems, Preston noted: “In the early 2000s Europeans said land doesn’t have to be so manicured, so controlled. So they’re rewilding landscapes for wildlife, and that can actually help communities.”

He noted that bison were reintroduced to Kent in the United Kingdom in July 2022 after 30,000 years of being off the land to help with woodland recovery.

“When I grew up in England, the biggest animal I saw was a rabbit,” he added.

Researchers learned that spotted owl, once thought to be down to a half-dozen birds—were being killed by barred owls in the Pacific Northwest. Preston recounted following a conservationist whose job it is to shoot barred owls.

“He’s shot more than 350 owls, and he’s okay with it,” he said. “If he doesn’t shoot them. we won’t have spotted owls.”

Recovery can change how we think about animals, Preston said. Beavers, once on the verge of extinction now number 15 million because people now realize beavers know how to create healthy ecosystem.

Bison have helped the prairies of Montana recover, and they can reproduce at 17 percent a year under right conditions.

“If I got a 17 percent return on my investments, I’d be super happy,” Preston said.

Preston talked of Europeans’ attempts to reengineer the aurochs, an extinct ancestor of modern cattle slightly smaller than elephants. Ecologists believe these mega cows, which once roamed Europe, Asia and North Africa, are needed to protect biodiversity. They also graze the land, keeping it from becoming densely forested so other life can prosper.

“Tenacious Beasts” notes that more than 900 species of wildlife have been wiped off the planet since the Industrial Age began. But there are glimmers of hope bears in Italy.

Preston said “Tenacious Beasts” is a book about hope, a book he says he hopes will move people to action.

“Hope is incredibly important because it gives us a sense of where we could go that would be a better destination,” he said. “Species want to live—give them a chance.”