Canada Reads, Manitoba Style: Assiniboine Park Zoo vet Dr. Chris Enright tracks John Vaillant's "The Tiger"

Paging all booklovers! On January 25th, at 8 p.m., CBC Radio and McNally Robinson invite you to Prairie Ink Restaurant for an evening we're calling:
 
5 Writers,  5 Readers,  5 Minutes. 
 
Canada Reads 2012 features five non-fiction titles this year, and in our regional warm-up to the national CBC Radio book brawl, five well-known Manitobans have been matched with the five titles. Up to Speed host Larry Updike will invite each reader to share their insights with the audience, each with a unique presentation lasting only five minutes. Well, maybe ten. No debating, no brawling, but plenty of insight, humour and stories.

Here, Head Assiniboine Park Zoo vet Dr. Chris Enright tracks John Vaillant's The Tiger.

1. How does this compare with your experience/interest in the subject?
Being an animal centred book, this was certainly up my alley. I've worked in a number of different zoos in various capacities since high school. After finishing vet school and working for a few years I came back to zoos and have worked with the captive wildlife at the Assiniboine Park Zoo here in Winnipeg for the last five years treating everything from fish to birds to bears, but one of the most impressive animals I've worked with is certainly the Amur tiger. 

One of my first memories of Amur tigers is a 500 pound male tiger named Tongua jumping down from a four foot height next to me onto the floor and he made less noise than I would have. Not only are they incredibly large and incredibly powerful, they have that uncanny cat stealth when they so desire.

Also, like most people working in zoos I'm interested in the topic of conservation of wild spaces. This was a broader theme within the book, and certainly an important question of how to make room for people and wild places.

2. What surprised you about the book?
Before reading the book I was unfamiliar with the story of the Amur tiger attacks that figure prominently within. The details of this tiger, its behaviour and the human story surrounding it are surprising, and run counter to a general understanding one may have of conflicts
between people and large predators.

On a broader scale I was a little surprised by how well the book drew me in. The first portion laid the ground work with a lot of background information, then further into the book the diversions lessened and the story accelerated with the approaching confrontation.

3. What did they get right/wrong?
There was really no factual content that I would jump to question in the book. From widely distributed one line explanations such as the one describing how all cats feel more secure in an elevated position, to the several page natural history of the tiger found in the early pages of the book, the information has a ring of well-researched accuracy. I've worked with captive Amur tigers for over 10 years, and it can be hard to put into words some of the visceral reactions that may occur when I'm up close to a 500 pound predator with canine teeth as big as my thumb, but the book does quite a good job at exploring the subjective emotive experiences with these (and other) animals also.

4. What attracted you to this book?
What really drew me in once I got going was putting this single tragic story of a Russian village plagued by a series of tiger attacks into a larger context that probed at how people interact with the "natural world." This was explored using discussions of resource extraction, anthropology, cultural philosophy and evolutionary psychology to name just a few of the side topics that come to mind from within the book.

These diversions, rather than detracting from the book really served to reinforce this central theme, and made for an interesting read.

5. What kinds of books do you usually read?
I'm a bit of a bookworm. Not including technical reading to maintain currency as a veterinarian, I would say most of my reading is fiction with regular forays into popular science, history, business -- whatever seems most interesting at the time.  My last book before "The Tiger" was surprisingly related -- it was a collection of essays called "The World and the Wild" looking at wilderness conservation around the globe.