The Ghost with Trembling Wings: Science, Wishful Thinking and the Search for Lost Species - Softcover

Weidensaul, Scott

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0865476683 ISBN 13: 9780865476684

Publisher: North Point Press, 2003

Synopsis

"A thoughtful examination of the machinery of extinction . . . By turns harrowing and elegiac, thrilling and informative." ―Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times

Three or four times an hour, eighty or more times a day, a unique species of plant or animal vanishes forever. And yet, every so often one of these lost species resurfaces. "Having adventures most of us can only dream about" (The Times-Picayune), Scott Weidensaul pursues stories of loss and recovery, of endurance against the odds, and of surprising resurrections.

About this title

About the Author:

Scott Weidensaul is the author of Living on the Wind: Across the Hemisphere with Migratory Birds, which was a Pulitzer Prize finalist, and Mountains of the Heart. He lives in the Pennsylvania Appalachians.

From Publishers Weekly:

Approximately 30,000 species of animals and plants go extinct every year. Weidensaul's narrative concerns those rare occurrences when a supposedly extinct animal makes a surprise reappearance, and the much more frequent occasions when scientists or civilians only think they've sighted a vanished creature. His suspenseful naturalist detective stories take readers all over the globe to Madagascar, Indonesia, Peru, Costa Rica in search of these lost species. In the swamplands of Louisiana, the author and his guide brave swarming mosquitoes and deadly vipers to check out reports of an ivory-billed woodpecker. Weidensaul (Living on the Wind) recounts famous success stories, like the recovery of the coelacanth, a fish believed to be extinct for about 80 million years until fishermen landed one off the coast of South Africa in 1938, as well as various wild goose chases and his own obsessive search for the South American cone-billed tanager. Along the way, he shows how humans and nature have unwittingly conspired to condemn animals to oblivion, such as the dozens of Great Lakes fish species lost to overfishing and the inadvertent introduction of parasitic lampreys from canals built in the 19th century. For the most part, though, Weidensaul's gracefully written book strikes a hopeful note, reveling in the exhilaration of the searches themselves: the greatest gift these lost creatures give this too-fast, too-small, too-modern world [is] an opportunity for hope. Illus. and maps not seen b.
- an opportunity for hope. Illus. and maps not seen by
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About this edition

• Publisher: North Point Press
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 0865476683
• ISBN 13: 9780865476684
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 352