The Case of the Green Turtle: An Uncensored History of a Conservation Icon. Alison Rieser. Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2012. xii and 340 pp., map, photos, notes, bibliog., index. $45.00 cloth (ISBN 978-1-4214-0579-7).

This is a marvelous study of the history of global efforts to conserve the wide-ranging green turtle (Chelonia mydas). The author has done a thorough, scholarly job of researching archives and surveying the scattered literature on the ecology, reproduction, and harvesting rates of one of the most endangered sea turtles. What sets this study apart from the other books on marine turtles is the deft treatment of the politics of conservation. Well versed in environmental law, the author takes us with great patience and skill on a long journey through the contested seas of government bureaucracies, international conservation organizations, and commercial interests.

But first the groundwork. Rieser profiles the pioneers who tried to understand the life cycle of the green turtle and possible interventions to stem the tide of destruction. The green turtle has long been sought for a variety of products, from meat and calipee to make soup, reptilian leather, and even oil for the cosmetics industry. Archie Carr, former professor at the University of Florida, features prominently throughout the book. Among his many accomplishments, Carr was instrumental in persuading the Costa Rican government to set aside Tortuguero beach on the Caribbean coast as a park and sanctuary for one of the most important nesting sites for green sea turtles. His 1967 book, So Excellent a Fishe, helped generate interest in the plight of sea turtles and inspired many to take up the cause of sea turtle conservation, especially graduate students. Carr's (1956) lyrical The Windward Road, reached an even broader audience with its eloquent and passionate prose.

Rieser also pays tribute to two cultural geographers, both of whom trace their roots to the Berkeley school of geography founded by Carl Sauer. In her book, Rieser devotes a chapter, “The Geography of Turtle Soup,” to the contributions of James J. Parsons to the cause of sea turtle conservation. Parsons (1962) published an influential and well-reviewed book, The Green Turtle and Man, on the history of green turtle exploitation, a work that influenced Archie Carr such that the two became firm friends and colleagues. In his foreword to Parsons's book, Carr observed that “A geographer is a man to envy. Being by definition a student of the earth, he is free to go anywhere he can get a ticket to and tell of almost anything he can understand. … One function of geography is to account for man as a feature of the landscape” (82). Parsons spent his entire academic career at Berkeley and Carr placed Parsons's book on the green turtle as in the same league as Rachel Carson's (1962) Silent Spring, which appeared in the same year even though it did not have the same impact as the latter. One reason, undoubtedly, is that few people in the United States had ever seen a green turtle, whereas many had heard a dawn chorus.

Another geographer profiled in a chapter of Rieser's engaging book is Barney Nietschmann. Nietschmann, who also served as a professor in the Department of Geography at Berkeley, posed the intriguing question, “Who will kill the last turtle?” (124). Nietschmann undertook his dissertation field research among the Miskito communities of Nicaragua's Caribbean shores. He documented the cultural importance of the green turtle to the Miskito and how their diet and livelihoods changed drastically when factories were installed along the Caribbean coast of Nicaragua to process green turtles for export (Nietschmann 1973, 1979). The field insights garnered by Carr, Parsons, and Nietschmann were instrumental in launching campaigns to safeguard sea turtles and the native peoples who depend on them.

One of the central questions of Rieser's book is whether raising green turtles in captivity is a way not only of generating income for developing countries but also a means to relieve pressure on wild populations. That question became a lightning rod for divergent views in the environmental community, including scientists and government bodies authorized to oversee trade in wildlife products. Some argued that mariculture, as turtle farming is sometimes referred to, would not only provide jobs, but would reduce the take of wild green turtles by undercutting the price obtained by poachers. Others, including Archie Carr, expressed their doubts, fearful that turtle farms would still need eggs laid in the wild to sustain their operations, at least for the foreseeable future. Rieser does a superb job of highlighting the divergent interests and viewpoints of different actors, exposing fissures and rifts as well as alliances among scientists, government agencies, business interests, and international organizations involved in wildlife conservation.

Rieser's tour-de-force makes compelling reading because it is packed with intrigue, almost like a spy novel. It is a page turner and a must-read for all those engaged in trying to stem the illicit trade in wildlife products. The green turtle story has relevance, for example, to the ongoing slaughter of elephants and rhinos for the ivory trade as well as the tragic demise of bluefin tuna stocks.