Owls of the Eastern Ice: A Quest to Find and Save the World's Largest Owl by Jonathan C. Slaght

From the publisher: 

I saw my first Blakiston’s fish owl in the Russian province of Primorye, a coastal talon of land hooking south into the belly of Northeast Asia . . . No scientist had seen a Blakiston’s fish owl so far south in a hundred years . . .  

When he was just a fledgling birdwatcher, Jonathan C. Slaght had a chance encounter with one of the most mysterious birds on Earth. Bigger than any owl he knew, it looked like a small bear with decorative feathers. He snapped a quick photo and shared it with experts. Soon he was on a five-year journey, searching for this enormous, enigmatic creature in the lush, remote forests of eastern Russia. That first sighting set his calling as a scientist. 

Despite a wingspan of six feet and a height of over two feet, the Blakiston’s fish owl is highly elusive. They are also endangered. And so, as Slaght and his devoted team set out to locate the owls, they aim to craft a conservation plan that helps ensure the species’ survival. This quest sends them on all-night monitoring missions in freezing tents, mad dashes across thawing rivers, and free-climbs up rotting trees to check nests for precious eggs. They use cutting-edge tracking technology and improvise ingenious traps. And all along, they must keep watch against a run-in with a bear or an Amur tiger. At the heart of Slaght’s story are the fish owls themselves: cunning hunters, devoted parents, singers of eerie duets, and survivors in a harsh and shrinking habitat.

Through this rare glimpse into the everyday life of a field scientist and conservationist, Owls of the Eastern Ice testifies to the determination and creativity essential to scientific advancement and serves as a powerful reminder of the beauty, strength, and vulnerability of the natural world.

 For those who didn't get a chance to meet me back in the Children's Room in the whole three months I was there before the world turned upside down, I was an animal keeper for almost twenty years before coming to Galesburg Public Library. I was watching a webinar on upcoming autumn books when the presenter started talking about a researcher from the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) who had worked with fish owls in Russia. Now, back in 2013 I attended a conservation conference (remember conferences?) and heard a WCS researcher talk about fish owls in Russia. If he had been talking about tigers, it might not have been the same guy, but once you get away from charismatic megafauna, the world gets pretty small. A quick Facebook search revealed that yep, Jonathan was the guy I had heard speak. NetGalley was kind enough to send me an ARC to review (thank you!), and I read through it within the week.

Owls of the Eastern Ice is a fantastic and fascinating first hand account into what goes into boots on the ground conservation. Jonathan, who is white, began working with Blakiston's fish owls as part of a multi-year study that took him into the wintry forests of Eastern Russia. Working with a number of Russian researchers and assistants, he set out to identify, trap, band, and attach monitors to the barely-studied fish owls, in addition to figuring out what type of habitat they needed. You can pass laws protecting a species from direct harm, but unless you protect the land and water that they need to feed and breed, you can still watch them slip through your fingers. Unfortunately, this basic information is lacking for many endangered species. Throughout the course of the years and the study, Jonathan and his party raced snowmobiles across melting rivers, discovered hours-old Amur tiger tracks next to their own, came up with brand new ways to trap a species rarely trapped before, dealt with temperatures that cause electronics to just give up, braved blizzards and less than hygienic food prep (seriously, A+ descriptions of field life here), and drank a lot of vodka with the locals.

One of the things that really jumped out at me was how well this book explains the basics of conservation field work. It describes how one goes about setting up a conservation biology based PhD study, including the courses you have to take during the off-season, the jobs you have to work to support yourself, the field work, and the dry statistics that come after you get home that lets you write that all important paper. Owls of the Eastern Ice focuses on how having the basic ecological information about a species, in the owls' case specific waterways and old-growth nesting trees, is so important. Targeting focused areas for preservation while freeing up other locations that can be safely used for commercial purposes is vital for getting local support for conservation.

This book is a wonderful look at a little-known species that looks like it came from the Jim Henson Company, a fantastic escape to a very different part of the world, and a well-written account of what goes in to saving a species. The book comes out on August 4 of this year, and Galesburg Public Library will have a copy. Thank you to NetGalley and Farrar, Straus and Giroux @fsgbooks for the ARC.

A Sand County Almanac by Aldo Leopold

How have I not read this before? Lovely, lyrical writing that made me pause to admire turns of phrase. For example, in July, as the author waxes poetical about bird song, “We sally forth, the dog and I, at random. He has paid scant respect to all these vocal goings-on, for to him the evidence of tenancy is not song, but scent. Any illiterate bundle of feathers, he says, can make a noise in a tree.”

I loved the almanac structure and how it reflects the changing seasons. For example: “By September, the day breaks with little help from birds. A song sparrow may give a single half-hearted song, a woodcock may twitter overhead en route to his daytime thicket, a barred owl may terminate the night’s argument with one last wavering call, but few other birds have anything to say or sing about.”

“In June it is completely predictable that the robin will give voice when the light intensity reaches 0.01 candle power, and that the bedlam of other singers will follow in predictable sequence."

This is a very birdy book overall, which of course delighted me as a birder. “Distant crows are berating a hypothetical owl, just to tell the world how vigilant crows are”.

I was not enamored of all the hunting, but that’s a sign of the times, and at least even then Leopold showed restraint as a hunter and acknowledged the danger of over hunting. Leopold lamented our use of economic value to determine importance in 1949, and things have gotten much worse in that regard.

“The fallacy that economic determinists have tied around our collective neck, and which we now need to cast off, is the belief that economics determines all land use. That is simply not true.”

Reading A Sand County Almanac left me both awestruck at the beauty of the natural world and melancholy about the disappearance of wild places.

If you enjoy reading about nature and are worried about the future of our wild places, I recommend A Sand County Almanac.

The Galesburg Public Library has A Sand County Almanac in print and as an ebook. The Food for Thought book group will be discussing the book on August 23.

Half-Earth by Edward O. Wilson

Publisher description: Half-Earth proposes an achievable plan to save our imperiled biosphere: devote half the surface of the Earth to nature. In order to stave off the mass extinction of species, including our own, we must move swiftly to preserve the biodiversity of our planet, says Edward O. Wilson in his most impassioned book to date. Half-Earth argues that the situation facing us is too large to be solved piecemeal and proposes a solution commensurate with the magnitude of the problem: dedicate fully half the surface of the Earth to nature. If we are to undertake such an ambitious endeavor, we first must understand just what the biosphere is, why it's essential to our survival, and the manifold threats now facing it. 

***

Edward O. Wilson knows his subject backwards and forwards, and his passion is admirable. This short work covers a lot of ground, meandering about on a large variety of topics. 

Although I agree wholeheartedly with the author’s suggestion to set aside half the planet for nature and am also passionate about the biosphere, I found the book a bit preachy and dull in parts. It was kind of like reading a really long sermon. The text was also a bit repetitive, in the way of people trying to convince others to understand their passion. I found some of the chapter transitions very abrupt. Much of the information in Half-Earth was not new to me; I'd heard or read a lot of it before. As so many environmental works are, it was also downright depressing to read.

On the plus side, Wilson quoted Victorian poet Gerard Manley Hopkins, one of my favorites, who noticed man’s movement away from the natural world over a hundred years ago. Occasional sentences jumped out at me and made me think, like “Keep in mind that every surviving species (including us) is therefore a champion in a club of champions. We are all best of the best, descendants of species that have never turned wrong in the maze, never lost. Not yet.” (p. 117 of the digital advance reader copy) 

Depressing as they are, I feel it is important to read books like this one if we are ever to change the way humans treat the rest of the biosphere. Half-Earth proposes a bold idea and would be a good book for discussion. Short as it is, it would also be a good starter book for someone not already well-read on the subject.

Half-Earth is scheduled to be published March 7. I read a digital advance reader copy.