On Extinction

‘On Extinction: How We Became Estranged from Nature’ (11 Dec 2012)

by Melanie Challenger (Author)

Pub. CounterpointPress.com ISBN: 9781619020184

An Independent Review dated 17 Oct 2012

“Melanie Challenger takes on one of natural history's most compelling and critical issues in this book: the permanent loss of a species. This book is more than simply about species loss, however, as the word 'extinction' is unfolded and spread over a flat surface for the reader to see how it manifests itself in numerous forms. Challenger examines the extinction of industry, in both the whaling town of Whitby and the tin mine district of West Penwith in Cornwall, the extinction of language in South American tribes, the extinction of a particular type of sailing boat, and the complex threat of cultural extinction faced by the Inuit tribes of Northern Canada (those interested in this part of the book should also read Jay Griffiths' work, Wild: An Elemental Journey). Challenger travels as she examines: she spends time in Cornwall, Canada, Antarctica, laying bare her research methods and revealing her own inner journey as she probes one of the most unsettling topics on earth, examining human nature, psychologically and genetically, in the process.

This book is wonderfully written: some of the turns of phrase that Challenger opts for are beautiful (she sees `dark knuckles' of granite; the `guttered brow of a Neanderthal skull', and on speaking of an abandoned tin mine, writes that `years had obscured the origins of [its] name'). Building upon this refreshing and poetic use of language is perhaps one of my favourite things about this book: its accessibility. Challenger isn't afraid to commit paragraphs reminding us of what we already hazily know, explaining history or theories with clarity, helping the reader to connect extinction in its different forms and ponder man's relationship with and involvement in it.

I'd recommend this to anyone curious about the natural world and conscious of his or her ignorance. I'd also recommend it to people who perhaps may feel connected to nature, but who haven't thought deeply on extinction before: Challenger's research and writing on nostalgia, for example, is compelling and shines a light on something that I had never previously considered. One way of redressing our separation with nature is to become curious about it again; 'On Extinction' serves as an example of how to make a start”. [Amazon Review]

Chapters

Beginnings: Natural History Museum, London

West Penwith, Cornwall

1. Wild flowers

2. Tin

3. Ghosts

Antarctica

4. Whales

5. Ice

6. Savages

North Yorkshire, Manhattan and Baffin Island

7. Bones

8. Tundra

Endings: Wicken Fen, Cambridgeshire

Commentary and selected abstracts

Beginnings “I first visited the Natural History Museum in London when I was about nine or ten. It was a panorama of metamorphosis, a treasury of the wonders of how life evolved and the sobering realities of how life could end. It was here that I was confronted by my own fragmented connection to nature. I began compiling notes on the subject of extinction, from the philosophers who grappled with the purpose of life and concluded that humans lay at its heart, to the poets of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries who saw nature as the antidote to the corrupt forces of [industrialization upon...] civilization. I began to question whether my own ignorance of nature was associated with the damage societies wrought on it.

My chief interest was in gathering a history of how we had become so destructive to the natural world and its diversity. But this curiosity, in turn, sowed the seeds of other questions. What were our emotional responses to disappearances?”

It is worth reflecting on how one of the wealthiest areas (Kensington) in one of the wealthiest cities in the world can devote so much land and property to a Natural History Museum (NHM). Rocks, Plants and Animals: all long dead, preserved in a huge magnificently gothic building. Imagine seeking planning permission for this today. But this was built in a different age. Britain had an ‘Empire’, to which the adjacent Victoria and Albert Museum is also testament. In Victorian times, and through to the mid twentieth century there was a widespread interest in ‘Natural History’. Most people had an awareness from childhood that birds nested in springtime and during the autumn harvest, those fledged chicks will need to fatten up on seeds and insects, if they were to survive into the following spring. It was a noble career to be ‘A Naturalist’. Charles Darwin was a superb naturalist who sent many specimens to the NHM and used his observations to propose the ‘Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection’, along with another British naturalist AR Wallace, both spurred on by the German zoologist Ernst Haeckel.

West Penwith, Cornwall

As the twenty first century progresses it is instructive to reflect on how little we understand about the natural world. This book reflects on how humans evolved initially as a social ape, with European evidence from 800,000 years ago. Humans had the intelligence to both shape the natural world to self advantage, and also to destroy it [‘...the farmer leads the meanest of lives. He knows Nature but as a robber.’ p.46, quoting Thoreau, 1845] The Christian Bible is quoted ‘God made mankind to have dominion over all other life on earth’ followed with ‘By the time Thomas Aquinas was writing in the thirteenth century, the ability to knowingly bring nature into service was thoroughly muddled with the presumption that the purpose of nature was to provide for humanity’ [p.47]

Antarctica

“On his voyage, the blue-whale hunt began on 15 December 1948 [note: this is still within our lifetime, or our parents], and they killed thirty-one on their first day and thirty-two on the second. I found these figures astonishing. Although we spent nearly two months at sea, I did not see a single blue whale in the Southern Ocean. In 1949 Davies and his fellow whalers regularly caught ‘big fat juicy Blues, fat with oil and bonus’. The whaling season ended in March when sixteen thousand blue whales had been caught” [p. 128, ‘bonus’ refers to the financial payment received]

North Yorkshire, Manhattan and Baffin Island

“A few months after returning from Antarctica, I visited Whitby for the first time and was immediately struck by the atmosphere. This was another landscape of extinction,” [p.217]

“From early on, fishermen and merchants colonized coastal places. In 1750 a Dr Russel, the son of a London bookseller, wrote about the beneficial qualities of seawater. Dr. Russel’s patients flocked to him in Brighton, and old communities, whose fortunes were failing, became prosperous again. Seaside towns were reinvented as salt-water spas. [p.218]

“In Whitby closeness to nature had been replaced by a proficient, implacable commercial culture. Following my time there, I sought out somewhere at an earlier point of alienation, a country or culture with the opportunity to choose an alternative course. [p.245]

Endings

“I began my thinking for this book with an intense sympathy for nature but little or no understanding of it and a growing sense of alarm at my own ignorance. [p. 297] The laudable efforts of governments, conservationists and economists remain pointless without a real, reflective understanding of our behaviour as an animal, uncomfortable though that may be. Our need to exploit nature for our own survival is balanced by an appreciation of the fitness of our own species and the desire to study imperiled nature and try to salvage it. Regardless of the origins of our behaviour, we need to believe that we have the power to act differently. Firstly, by learning as children about our connection with nature and about the wild traits that continue to affect us, we might better anticipate which of these are likely to help or hinder our progress [p.300].

By returning to a daily closeness with the natural world, and learning about species other than ourselves, we might strengthen the moral sense that nostalgia and inventiveness can come together to counteract our species’ destructive tendencies” [p.302]

‘On Extinction’ then concludes with descriptions of a journey from Cambridge in a narrowboat along to Wicken Fen where a bittern booms in the wet fen landscape. A lifelong passion to hunt down the fen violet Viola persicifolia, which has occasionally been recorded there, is partially met: “In my excitement, I somehow believed I would chance across the fen violet, as if enthusiasm alone might rush me towards its discovery. I came across a flower similar to the delicate violet with a bluish heart and rounded petals. My heart jolted. But as I flicked quickly through my wildflower book, I realized it was only a relative of the fen violet and the common dogviolet. My guide classified it as Viola tricolor, the wild pansy, common and uninspiring, perhaps. But at that moment, I didn’t want to savour what was dying out. I wanted to revel in the familiar, in something that I might be sure of greeting again. Not a ghost but an omen I could wait in hope for each spring” [p.313]

Incidentally, the Cambridgeshire Fens were constructed in the seventeenth century by Dutch drainage engineers.

[11xi2014]