Are we all feeling a bit epochal? The Anthropocene — the brave new era of pervasive human impact on Earth systems — is due for scientific acceptance (or not) in 2016. Meanwhile, it is proving fertile ground for pop-sci, from Diane Ackerman’s The Human Age to Gaia Vince’s Adventures in the Anthropocene (reviewed here and here). Now the notion has floated far enough along the mainstream to reach TV with the five-part PBS series Earth: A New Wild, kicking off tonight.
The focus here is that rich, fraught edge environment where wild animals and humanity commingle or collide. M. Sanjayan presents. An ecologist who spent part of his childhood in Sierra Leone, he offers both scientific chops and an understanding of rural realities in developing countries.
Not least, the series shows development policy schemes in action — such as payments for ecosystem services, which enable poor communities in wilderness regions to steward the land and keep it wild. The programme is unusual in mixing such development paradigms with anthropocenic touches such as a lament for the catastrophically drained Aral Sea, or an industrial architect’s plans to reintroduce oysters round Manhattan.