Intimate, savory portraits of imperiled animals and environments, by the author of A Natural History of Love (1994), etc. Extinction is a natural part of evolution, often "unmalicious, intentionless, random." We humans too are part of the natural matrix and may wish to explain our agency in the extinction process as such—natural, evolutionary. But it is well to remember, advises Ackerman, that mass extinctions—like what is happening right this minute—tend to wipe out the culprits as well, and that means you and me. Ackerman finds our role in the destruction of creatures and places reprehensible; she states, "As a member of the species responsible for their downfall, I feel an urgent need to witness and celebrate them before they vanish." And celebrate them she does, beautifully, in six finely crafted evocations: monk seals and golden lion tamarins, the Florida scrublands and the Amazon, the migration of monarch butterflies. Ackerman drinks in the whole picture; she went to the remote, storm-tossed island of Torishima, off Japan, to observe the short-tailed albatross ("vibrant white, with radiant yellow heads and coral-pink bills tipped in blue"), but she is just as attentive to the landscape, "a glacier of crushed lava . . . ground singed with bright yellow sulphur salts and hot black scabs." As always, she likes her nature raw, "dizzyingly sensuous and deeply spiritual," reveling in the promiscuity of it all, and as for her oft-mentioned anthropomorphism, she has a neat response to the chiding she takes at the tamarin camp: "As a higher primate female, I'm hard-wired to respond to the young of all mammalian species as cute. . . . Think of it as part of my evolutionary program." Smart and polished and totally entertaining, Ackerman is a pure pleasure.
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1995
ISBN: 0679776230
Page Count: 206
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 14, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1995
An absorbing and pointed account of the taming of Washington's Columbia River and the consequences—both beneficial and disastrous—on the economy, the inhabitants, and the wildlife of the Pacific Northwest. Once a fearsome force whose whitewater frequently took the lives of fur traders and explorers, the Columbia, writes Dietrich (The Final Forest, 1992), a Pulitzer Prizewinning science reporter for the Seattle Times, is now as ``prim and controlled as an English butler as it steps down its staircase of dams.'' Fourteen major dams, including the massive Grand Coulee and Bonneville, as well as some 500 smaller ones, provide cheap hydroelectric power, deliver water for irrigation and industry, and facilitate barge traffic from the Pacific coast as far inland as Lewiston, Idaho. While not denying the advantages of harnessing the river's energy, Dietrich decries the lack of forethought by the Army Corps of Engineers and the Federal Bureau of Reclamation in building the large, New Dealera dams. The migratory chinook salmon runs, once the basis of Native American existence in the Columbia River Basin and already severely overfished by the early 20th century, were further depleted by the dams. And despite the incredible 640,000 acres irrigated by the waters held back by the Grand Coulee Dam (an area nearly the size of Rhode Island), far fewer families and corporations actually farm the land than were envisioned when the dam was built. But what Dietrich laments most is the docile, regulated predictability of a once wild river. He crams an immense amount of information into this book: Besides statistics that describe both natural and man-made features along the Columbia, readers can learn about Woody Guthrie's part in publicizing hydroelectric power; the glacial flood in the last Ice Age that carved out the Grand Coulee; and why an art museum called Maryhill was built in 1914 on a desolate bluff above the Columbia. A must-read for anyone interested in the interplay of technology, nature, and human ambition.
Pub Date: April 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-671-79650-X
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1995
Dispatches from the Yeti watch, with entertaining rambles into the deep, near-mythic valleys of Nepal. Yeti, Abominable Snowman, Bigfoot. Taylor-Ide (founder of the Woodlands Mountain Institute) wanted to know more about that inscrutable denizen of the snowy wastes. He grew up in India, learned the appropriate languages, spent countless hours in the Himalayan landscape as a boy. Now he heads back, this time as a father and freelance researcher and explorer, to find new samples of those famous footprints that Eric Shipton photographed in 1951. Together with his family, he camps out in wild, uninhabited valleys deep in Nepal, where, indeed, he finds footprints almost immediately. But then the focus of the story changes. The Yeti gets shuffled to the background as Taylor-Ide begins to suspect that the tracks were made by what may be a new species of tree-living black bear. He tries to interest various parties—the Smithsonian, the World Wildlife Fund—in financing additional forays afield to stalk the beast but gets the bum's rush because he's not an ``expert.'' So he goes back time and again on a shoestring, collecting bear skulls, taking photos, deciphering clues. Slowly it dawns on him that more important than the tree bear, more important even than the Yeti, is protecting the wondrously rare environment he has been trekking through, so that the cloud leopards, musk deer—who knows, maybe the Abominable One—still have a place to live. To that end, he helps establish wilderness parks in China and Nepal. When he hits his stride, Taylor-Ide has a talent for the quick, pungent sketch—of people, landscapes, family dynamics. His narrative—much of it in dialogue—can also be stuffy and stilted, but not so frequently as to compromise the book. While Yeti enthusiasts may be disappointed, Taylor-Ide has been where few have tread and emerges with a fascinating portrait. (b&w photos)
Pub Date: April 1, 1995
ISBN: 1-56279-073-0
Page Count: 328
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1995
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