A precarious bestiary
In 48 expert and entertaining animal portraits, Heiko Werning and Ulrike Sterblich take us into a world full of strange and fantastic creatures that need to be saved from extinction.Help them!
A precarious bestiary
In 48 expert and entertaining animal portraits, Heiko Werning and Ulrike Sterblich take us into a world full of strange and fantastic creatures that need to be saved from extinction.Help them!
To raise public awareness of the biodiversity crisis, our Creatures Podcast was launched during the first lockdown in May 2020. The first two seasons are now available in printed form in bookshops – including 24 new exciting stories about wondrous, but unfortunately also endangered species and the worldwide efforts of conservationists to save them. Incidentally, anyone who buys the book – or already has it on their bookshelf at home – is already making an active contribution to species conservation: the entire fee for the Precarious Bestiary goes to Citizen Conservation, and the publisher Galiani Berlin is also supporting the project with half an euro for every copy sold. Further donations are very welcome and will help our work at Citizen Conservation to counteract species extinction in the long term.
Of Okapi, Box Turtle and Schnilch
A precarious bestiary
Zhou's Box Turtle has invented social distancing: Whenever it doesn't like something, it goes into mini-lockdown and cuts its connections to the outside world. The Tasmanian Devil is the angry citizen among the animals, jumping around stinking, screaming and with red ears. The Partula Snail, named after the trio of Roman goddesses of fate, is a real nightmare for all romantics and ElitePartner. The Tree Lobster, a deformed South Sea yeti with a wobbly gait and armour, can create clones.
As strange and different as the animals in this book are, they have one sad thing in common: their survival is in the balance and without being kept in human care, they wouldn't stand a chance.
Urbanisation, deforestation and poaching have put the species in a precarious situation. A Gallic village of dedicated animal lovers and conservationists led by the organisation Citizen Conservation are working to prevent the final extinction of the species through breeding and reintroduction projects.
Heiko Werning, one of the initiators of Citizen Conservation, and Ulrike Sterblich create a fascinating panopticon of what nature has to offer in knowledgeable and entertaining animal portraits: The preservation of biodiversity is a crucial human task!
Bibliography
Publisher: Galiani Berlin
Publication date: 10/02/2022 | 240 pages | ISBN: 978-3-86971-255-0
The brains behind the “Prekäres Bestiarium”:
Heiko Werning and Ulrike Sterblich
left in the picture, on the right the okapi
Heiko Werning
is an author by passion, a reptile researcher by vocation and an animal conservationist by necessity. He is the author of several zoological reference books, but also writes for Taz and Titanic. He regularly reads his texts at the Berlin reading stages Reformbühne, Heim & Welt and Brauseboys. He is one of the initiators of Citizen Conservation.
Ulrike Sterblich
is a political scientist and author from Berlin. She once wrote her thesis on ecological ethics and later became known as the host of the Berlin Bunny Lectures reading theatre. She has published several books, most recently "The German Girl" (Rowohlt), and has been working conceptually and editorially for Citizen Conservation and Frogs & Friends since 2018. She doesn't have any pets, but if she did, she'd love a Schnilch.
Björn Encke
is CEO of Frogs & Friends e.V. and co-founder of Citizen Conservation – and has also contributed several stories to the “Prekäres Bestiarium”.
Every donation helps – support us with a patronage!
Our aim at Citizen Conservation is to work with professional and private animal conservationists to set up coordinated conservation breeding projects for endangered species in order to tackle the challenges of species extinction.
If you would like to support our mission, we would be delighted to receive a donation, for which we would like to thank you with an individual appreciation:
Support
Bestiary patronage: € 50
From € 50 you will receive a hand-stamped, signed card with a personal greeting from the authors.
Please send us an e-mail with your name and address to bestiarium |at| citizen-conservation.org and transfer the donation amount to the account below.
Support
Bestiary patronage: € 150
Have you taken one of the precarious beasts from the book to your heart? Take on or give away a bestiary patronage from € 150. In return, you will receive a T-shirt printed with the corresponding vignette of your favourite from the book.
Send us an e-mail with your personal details to bestiarium |at| citizen-conservation.org
Your details
Name
Address
Motif animal species
T-shirt size
T-shirt cut (men/women)
Our donation account
Citizen Conservation
GLS Gemeinschaftsbank eG
Keyword "Patronage" + your name
DE38 4306 0967 1271 7068 00
BIC: GENODEM1GLS
Once payment has been received, your thank you will be sent and the patron will be mentioned by name on our homepage as a supporter. If you do not wish to be mentioned by name on the homepage, you can indicate this in your email. Please note that we dispatch from Germany. If the postage is too high in relation to the donation amount, you will have to pay for the postage yourself.
(We reserve the right to refuse to publish the names of organisations that run counter to the values of Citizen Conservation; you may then receive your donation back).
Many thanks to our patrons
Patrons of the Indian Rhino
Almut Feller
Thomas Waldhaus
Patrons of the Pangolin
Martina Burger
Patrons of the Schnilch
Almut Feller
Patrons of the okapi
Almut Feller
Carsten Noack
Patrons of the Philippine Crocodile
Almut Feller
Patrons of the Tasmanian Tiger
Almut Feller
Our donation account
Citizen Conservation
GLS Gemeinschaftsbank eG
Keyword "Patronage" + your name
DE38 4306 0967 1271 7068 00
BIC: GENODEM1GLS
Donate directly via PayPal:
Our donation account
Citizen Conservation
GLS Gemeinschaftsbank eG
Keyword "Patronage" + your name
DE38 4306 0967 1271 7068 00
BIC: GENODEM1GLS
Donate directly via PayPal:
The protagonists of the "Prekäres Bestiarium":
A creature that likes to get upset about all sorts of things and quite often jumps around stinking, screaming and with red ears. Are Tasmanian Devils the angriest of animals? Well, in a way they are quite cute, and above all they really don't have it easy at the moment.
Why is the Mangarahara cichlid something of an ugly duckling among cichlids, but a real feast for scientists?
Forever young – what people dream of and sing about has long been realised by the salamander. At least the Patzcuaro Lake Salamander has. Its fountain of youth is a lake in the highlands of Mexico, where it enjoys eternal youth. What mysterious miraculous healing powers and a nunnery have to do with it is revealed in this story, which is as fantastic as the miraculous creature it revolves around.
Well, a horse as a rare animal? It certainly is! Because wild horses are indeed extremely rare. So rare, in fact, that it's not even certain whether there are any real wild horses left. Spoiler: there are certainly none on the American continent. But what is this Przewalski's horse? And how do you even pronounce it?
It is not really clear why the Bearded Vulture has its beard. But it is very clear why the species is endangered. The animal owes its name Lammergeier to a misconception and also the fact that it was hunted down to the last specimen in the Alpine region. In fact, it is simply a very good scavenger and eats what is left over at the carcass table, namely bones.
The Creatures Podcast
Stories of rare and very rare animals.
Want to learn exciting new things about endangered species from artists, scientists and others? You can if you subscribe to the Creatures Podcast! In four seasons already, personalities such as singer-songwriter Reinhard Mey, writer Wladimir Kaminer and cabaret artist Annette Frier have lent their voices to endangered animal species, providing entertaining information about the fate of the Darwin’s Frog, Northern Bald Ibis and the like.
You can listen to the podcast on Spotify, iTunes,Podigee and YouTube: