When the day comes that we are all once again allowed to be at liberty, I hope that all those interested in improving their understanding of the planet’s mammals will take note that during our collective social hibernation, a monumental book on the topic of mammalogy had been published in its fifth edition by Johns Hopkins University Press.
While today we often hear it said (by me, for one) that the mixing of religion and science is best avoided, not so long ago, the intermingling of religious and early scientific thought was not only common, it was in some instances – if for no other reason than due to the conflict it inspired – productive of entirely new concepts and ways of thinking about the world. In the early modern period, one of these productive interminglings involved the Old Testament story of the world-encompassing flood as recounted in the book of Genesis.
To cause the extinction of a highly localized species is of sufficient evil to classify as a sin against Nature. To do so to a species found all around the planet defies any word I know to sufficiently describe the crime committed. Yet that’s what we indeed nearly did to the Osprey through our love affair with DDT and other pesticides in the mid twentieth century.