The Future of Man—Evolutionary Aspects 
Human ecology involves finding out what resources are 
available in our environment and how to make the best use of 
them. We have to think first of all of material resources— 
minerals, water-power, soil, forests, agricultural production— 
but we must also think of the non-material or enjoyment re- 
sources of the habitat, such as natural beauty and solitude, 
interest and adventure, wild scenery and wild life. 
The two types of resource are interlinked. Thus in eastern 
Africa, the assemblage of splendid large mammals and birds, 
the last remnant of the climax community of prehuman evo- 
lution, is one of the world’s unique enjoyment resources. But it 
is of immediate financial value, through tourism, to the local 
inhabitants. It is also of physiological value: large areas of the 
dry savannah lands of the region degenerate if cultivated or 
used for grazing cattle. But if they are properly managed, 
their communities of wild animals yield large amounts of “ wild 
protein’ for human food—larger than can be obtained from 
domestic stock. 
During much of man’s evolution he has been busily engaged 
in ruining his own habitat. We have been doing so in Britain, 
for instance, by polluting our rivers. The Thames was once a 
fine salmon river, and Henry II is said to have fed the polar 
bear given to him by the King of Norway by letting it out from 
the Tower of London at the end of a rope to fish for itself. The 
river was also famed for its oysters. Today, almost its only 
abundant animal is the little red worm Tubzfex, which specializes 
on survival in dirty oxygen-poor mud. Detergents and heated 
cooling water as well as sewage and general filth are ruining 
one river after another. 
A new ecological threat of man against his own habitat has 
recently appeared, in the shape of pesticidal chemicals, both 
insecticides and herbicides. As Rachel Carson has brought out 
with devastating clarity in her book? The Silent Spring, these are 
now destroying the ecological pattern of the countryside. Apple 
and clover crops are failing because their pollinators, the bees, 
are being wiped out. Pesticides are depauperating the plant- 
rich verges of our country roads, and killing off lovely and 
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