ANIMAL DIASPORA

A continuing story of animal migration millions of years in the making.

Environmental journalist Struzik takes readers back to the last ice age to unravel “a story of visionaries” tracking animal migration. The author has reported on Canadian and U.S. environmental science for decades, including much of the scientific research into animal migration and extinction across North America. In the last ice age, animals, including humans, were able to travel from Asia to North America across Beringia, a thousand-mile-wide tundra connecting Siberia to Alaska. Rising sea levels at the end of that ice age roughly 11,000-13,000 years ago submerged Beringia, cutting off land migration—but not before millions of mammoths, reindeer, and early humans, moved into the Americas. Explorers have documented millions of fossils and other artefacts from the area since the 1700s. Struzik deftly weaves old and new research findings into a vivid tapestry, reconstructing the animals’ journey and lifestyles. He describes the fate of Beringian animals, among them also saber-toothed cats, dire wolves, and others now extinct, as well as survivors and even thrivers, such as horses, caribou, grizzly bears, polar bears, hundreds of bird species, butterflies and moths, all tracing their ancestry back to the trek across Beringia. The author calls the migration a “diaspora” because this movement occurs when animals (or humans) move from one region to another without returning; the end of the last ice age flooded Beringia and cut off access to and from Asia, making return impossible. Struzik also reports on the mixed results of efforts to restore and sustain animal populations affected by land conversion, deforestation, climate change, and habitat destruction. International efforts such as migration corridors between Canada and the U.S., the banning of DDT and other chemicals, and the establishment of wildlife refuges, sanctuaries, and wetlands may help preserve species presently under threat and perhaps facing greater threat from the predicted next ice age that many scientists say is already underway.

With a million plants and animals facing extinction, this is a timely and comprehensive status report.