Ipswich Public Library

On extinction, how we became estranged from nature, Melanie Challenger

eng

Includes bibliographical references (p. [315]-326)

illustrations

no index present

non fiction

On extinction

bibliography

793580547

Melanie Challenger

how we became estranged from nature

How do we think about the things we have lost? How can we use what we know about extinctions - cultural, biological and industrial - to reconnect with nature? When the gigantic bones of mammoths were first excavated from the Siberian permafrost in the eighteenth century, scientists were forced to consider a terrifying possibility: many species that had once flourished on the Earth no longer existed. For the first time, humans had to contemplate the idea of extinction. From our destruction of the natural world to the human cultures that are rapidly dying out, On Extinction is a passionate exploration of these disappearances and why they should concern us. Challenger asks questions about how we've become destructive to our environment, our emotional responses to extinctions, and how these responses might shape our future relationship with nature. She travels to the abandoned whaling stations of South Georgia, the melting icescape of Antarctica and the Inuit camps of the Arctic, where she traces the links between human activities and environmental collapse. On Extinction is an account of Challenger's journey that brings together ideas about cultural, biological and industrial extinction in a beautiful, thought-provoking and ultimately hopeful book

Beginnings : Natural History Museum, London -- The first peregrination : West Penwith, Cornwall. Wild flowers ; Tin ; Ghosts -- The second peregrination : South Georgia, Antarctica and the Falkland Islands. Whales ; Ice ; Savages -- The third peregrination : North Yorkshire, Manhattan Island and Baffin Island. Bones ; Tundra -- Endings : Wicken Fen, Cambridgeshire