"This engaging book explores the reasons we need big predators and explains the most revolutionary idea found in contemporary ecology: trophic cascades. For nearly a century ecologists have believed that nature is democratic, governed from the bottom up by the amount of solar energy converted to green biomass, the food of herbivores. Eisenberg makes the case for the alternative view—top-down control of ecosystems by predators and other keystone species—while diplomatically exploring a path for reconciling these disparate views." —Michael Soulé, Professor Emeritus, University of California, Santa Cruz
"Cristina Eisenberg weaves her observations as a scientist and her personal experiences afield into a resonant account about the web of life that links humans to the natural world. Grounded in best science, inspired by her intimate knowledge of the wolves she studies, she offers us a luminous portrait of the ecological relationships that are essential for our well-being in a rapidly changing world. The Wolf's Tooth calls for a conservation vision that involves rewilding the earth and honoring all our relations." —Brenda Peterson, author of I Want to Be Left Behind: Finding Rapture Here on Earth
"We've been practicing 'scientific' wildlife management for decades with a shaky grasp of how natural systems actually work. As the focus shifts, at last, from favored species toward biodiversity and community ecology, exciting new concepts such as trophic cascades and the keystone roles played by long-reviled predators come to the fore. This is the next level of conservation, as complex as it is crucial. You couldn't ask for a better guide than Cristina Eisenberg, blending tales from her own field studies with wonderfully clear explanations of the connections that keep nature vibrant and whole over time." —Douglas H. Chadwick, wildlife biologist, conservation reporter, and author of The Wolverine Way
"The Wolf's Tooth takes a venerable but misunderstood concept in ecology and renders it fresh, clear, and vital. In elegant prose drawn from her own deep experience in the field, Cristina Eisenberg has written a genuinely important contribution to the conservation biology canon. Besides showing how trophic cascades actually work, and how top predators can help rewild North America, her book is a fine primer for both theoretical and practical ecology." —Robert Michael Pyle, author of Wintergreen and Chasing Monarchs
"A scientist with a poet's command of language, Cristina Eisenberg writes with precision and passion…takes her reader on a breathtaking, sometimes heartbreaking tour of the planet from the Gulf of Maine to the Amazonian rain forests, the tropical coral reefs to old growth forests of the Northwest as well as rivers, lakes, and wetlands… I found the wealth of information not only accessible but riveting… Eisenberg's powerful, beautifully written book… has the potential to open many people's eyes, minds, and hearts." —Elizabeth Cunningham, Huffington Post
