et along with 20 percent of 350 belonging to the parrot family live on this island. New Caledonia’s national bird, kagu, is an endangered species. Its fruit bats too are threatened due to fast dwindling dry forests. It’s rich in nickel and cadmium. There’re trees that thrive on its toxic soil, for example, the cobalt loving trees belonging to the dogbane family, as also nickel and manganese loving species like the wild macadamia. Another odd specimen is the world’s only parasitic conifer that survives by tapping the tissues of other plants. The island’s native wealth of flora and fauna is threatened by the invasion by alien species of plants, vertebrates and invertebrates thanks to European settlers. Mining is destroying its ecology. The regular burning of its dry topical forests is another menace.

The rivers of Venezuela are home to water moccasins, alligators, snapping turtles, piranha, stingrays, electric eels and giant river otters (endangered) that are capable of fighting off a jaguar. Ya’Kwana Indians and local biologists have been enlisted to conserve the otter in the Orinoco and Amazon tributaries like Caura. The Manu National Park is home to at least 332 bird species including New World’s most spectacular bird the Guianan cock-of-the-rock, 13 species of primates along with jaguars, tapirs, parrots etc, not to mention the predator bird from the north - osprey. Then there are aggressive and poisonous species of Azetica and Paraponera ants – the latter’s sting can paralyze a man for hours. The forest fruit trees – especially fig – sustain such avifauna as toucans, barbets, tityras, flycatchers, tanagers etc.

Ecuador’s Galapagos Archipelago hosts one of the last sanctuaries on earth where animals live without the fear of humans. Its Genovesa island is the rendezvous for the Great Frigate Bird, and hundreds and thousands of other birds like finches and such ocean goers as boobies, petrels etc. The archipelago has 14 subspecies of giant tortoises (weighing up to 630 pounds and live to be 150 years or more), the only marine iguana, lava lizards, flightless cormorants, and the sole penguin species in the N. Hemisphere that breeds in the tropics. The marine life too is prolific – the massive spotted eagle rays, yellow-tailed surgeonfish, blue parrotfish, harlequin wrasse, flattened red-lipped batfish, long clarinet-shaped pipefish and trumpetfish, and the attractive white-and-yellow Moorish Idol; and four species of sharks, viz., white-tipped reef-sharks, Galapagos, the scalloped hammerhead and horn-shark.

Africa’s Tarangiri has six species of vultures and one of them is a vegetarian! Serengeti plains sustain a rich variety of wildlife thanks to Tanzania’s Serengeti National Park and Kenya’s Masai Mara Game Reserve. But it’s the miombo that has caught the author’s attention. Covering 1.4 million square miles straddling 11 African countries, it’s the largest block of natural habitat in sub-Saharan Africa. The miombo supports over 3000 animal and 8500 plant species. There was a time when lions and black rhinos used to abound here. In 1900, the latter were over 1 million strong, today these are mere 3600. Tragic!

The science of conservation biology was born only in the early 1980s. Would it be able to rescue and restore the geography of hope? If the experience of Montana in America’s Great Plains – where bisons, prairie dogs, black-footed ferrets, long-billed curlews, elks, pronghorns, bighorn sheep, deer, wolves and grizzly bears are being enabled to make a comeback in their natural habitat – is any indication there is a faint glimmer at the tunnel’s end.

To rescue and restore Stegner’s island of hope the likes of Dinerstein do much more than write traditional dissertations riddled with “dry verbs and bleached adjectives”. If you haven’t read this book you’ve missed something invaluable.

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