Future Evolution

Those familiar with "The Future is Wild" series based on the Dougal Dixon book of the same name will find a starkly different version of future evolution here. Whereas Dixon's Future is Wild posits a future voluntarily abdictated by man leaving other creatures to fill the evolutionary void, Ward's future is one of desolation where man cotinues to reign, albeit with a diminishing small number of species left to join him. The reason for such global catastrophie? Man's own abuse of his environment says Ward who notes that some eighty percent of megammamals worldwide have been brought to extinction in the past 20000 years owing to man's plunder. Aside from domesticated animals Ward sees rats, snakes and weeds as the likely beneficiaries of a world dominated by man. Interestingly Ward and his artist collaborator Alexis Rockman draw out family trees of these creatures showing the various ways in which they may come to differentiate to occupy their various ecological niches. Throuh it all he sees a mankind, safe from extinction owing to his sheer numbers and mastery of the environment around him. On the one hand the picture is optimistic in that it posits long years of survival by mankkind. On the other hand, the picture is bleak, basically of a species forced to live the consequences of its misdeeds and lay in its own bed for a very long time. While obviously the future itself will alone ultimately reveal its secrets Ward's book is terrifying glimpse of would could be.