Baron - The Beast in the Garden: The True Story of a Predators Deadly Return to Suburban America

David Barons The Beast in the Garden betrays some of the most enduring myths of the American West and the American environmental movement. Its a gripping tale of human navet, misguided intentions, and conventional wisdom gone awry. It reads like a novel but its all true. And its happening right on the edge of town.

Howard Berkes, National Public Radio

Raises powerful questions, and reminds even those of us who live in cities that we share our space with animals we see, and many that we do not.

MSNBC

Baron explores what it means that lions are repopulating developed areaswith pollution declining, wilderness acreage expanding, and lion hunting forbidden, there will be ever-more [cougars] in American and Canadian exurban areas.

Gregg Easterbrook, The New Republic Online

The Beast in the Garden is told like a whodunit, in reverse. From the beginning, we know the identity of the killer: a 100-pound adult male mountain lion spotted near the eviscerated corpse of an 18-year-old jogger in the Rocky Mountain foothills west of Denver in 1991. Baron sets out to uncover how and why an animal known to biologists to be nocturnal and elusive, likely to flee if and when it is seen, came to pounce upon a high school student out for a run during fifth period, just after a lunch of pepperoni pizza at the local 7-Eleven.

Salon

David Baron has done an extraordinary job of scoping out the personalities on each side of the issue: those officials who didnt see any reason to act, and those on the outskirts of Boulder who were seeing their pets disappear while lions sunned themselves in backyards and pressed their noses to terrace doors.

National Geographic Adventure

A chilling, cautionary tale. Its also a terrific read.

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

A real page-turner. [Baron] does a public service by presenting the harsh reality of what happens when wild creatures become habituated to humans.

Audubon

One of the very best accounts of the conflict between doing what is thought of as being environmentally correct versus using common sense.

Plattsburgh Press-Republican

Baronperceptively dissect[s] both sides of the impassioned debate these terrifying confrontations engender, revealing how nave and unrealistic the live-and-let-live approach can be, and how easy it is to take the kill-the-miserable-beasts response to unreasonable extremes.

Booklist

The Beast in the Garden brings out the deep contradictions in our attitudes toward what we loosely call Nature. In a time when our debates about the environment so often come down to strident, simplistic claims on all sides, the intelligent complexity of Barons book is refreshing and necessary. Hes packed this book with honest emotion and good sense, and hes managed to portray all the animals involved, human and otherwise, with compassion. This is an extraordinary achievement.

Gordon Grice, author of The Red Hourglass: Lives of the Predators

Its about environmentalism either gone terribly wrong or brilliantly correct, depending on your perspective. The Beast in the Garden leaves it up to you to decide.

Providence Journal

A compelling parable of man and animal, of the Old West and the New West, of wildlife that is no longer wild. [Baron] shows how mountain lions, once enemies to be exterminated, have become revered symbols of a wilderness that no longer truly exists.

High Country News

Written with the dramatic flourish of a thriller, Barons fascinating book is a cautionary tale of what happens when we destroy animal habitats: eventually, we are forced to co-exist, and, while animals may struggle to adapt to our environment, we are totally unprepared for life in close proximity to them.

The Ecologist

This book should be read by field biologists and administrators of natural resource agencies and by activists who promote the return of large carnivores in their native ranges. Restoring large carnivores is not as simple as just wanting them back. Baron reminds us of this in exquisite detail.

Conservation Biology

Anyone who cares about large predators and their future survival should read this book.

Harley Shaw, wildlife biologist and author of Soul among Lions: The Cougar as Peaceful Adversary

Denver/Boulder bestseller
Los Angeles Times Book Prize finalist
Chosen by Library Journal as one of the best sci-tech books of 2003