<
https://theconversation.com/monumental-folly-and-needless-greed-how-nature-is-suffering-the-consequences-of-climate-change-224955>
"
Review: The End of Eden: Wild Nature in the Age of Climate Breakdown – Adam
Welz (Bloomsbury Sigma)
Set aside the apple and the snake. Set aside the unforgiving God. The loss of
Eden is a story about the consequences of monumental folly and needless greed.
Having soiled paradise, we live now in a harsher, bleaker world.
In
The End of Eden: Wild Nature in the Age of Climate Breakdown, the South
African author and naturalist Adam Welz shows we are repeating those errors,
sowing and reaping our despoilation. His book is a thoughtful, perceptive,
empathetic and sorrowful account of the consequences of our increasing
subversion of the natural world that gives us life.
By now, we are all aware of the devastating losses brought by increasingly
frequent environmental catastrophes: the Black Summer bushfires, the floods,
the coral bleaching, the droughts, the mass fish kills, the retreat of
glaciers, the loss of polar ice, the days of unbearable heat.
Most people recognise that, as the creators of climate change, we are the
responsible agents; we have put ourselves on a pathway that is rushing us
towards destruction. Many of us have been directly affected; all of us will be
indirectly affected.
In
End of Eden, Welz describes some of the myriad losses of nature caused by
such disasters. One of his examples is the impact of Hurricane Maria on the
Puerto Rican parrots known as Iguacas. Following a long history of clearing of
its habitat, its remaining wild population became restricted to a single
national park in highland rainforest. By 2017, following decades of care by
conservation agencies, this remnant population was at last seemingly secure,
and the population had built to about 650 birds.
In vivid prose, Wenz describes what then happened when the hurricane tore
through and destroyed this forest. Through radio-tracking, scientists were able
to establish that maybe only one bird survived the onslaught. But after a few
days lost in the devastated landscape, that single bird succumbed too.
In this case, happily, not all was lost for the Iguacas. Although the entire
wild population was wiped out, some individuals in a captive breeding facility
survived, providing a tenuous thread for the ongoing existence of the species.
It is a story with many lessons, but preparedness for inevitable disaster is an
important message."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
