The End of Eden

July 17, 2023
Environmental journalist Welz debuts with a lucid survey of the “ways that our gas emissions are fracturing and reshaping the entire natural world.” He explains how rising temperatures, water shortages, and extreme weather have impacted ecosystems across the globe, highlighting the plight of the Kalahari savannah’s yellow-billed hornbills, California’s Joshua trees, and Puerto Rico’s wild parrots, among others. New England’s moose population, Welz notes, has been decimated by winter ticks, which used to freeze to death en masse during the colder months, but have been surviving at higher rates as their environs warm. In Mannus Creek, Australia, in 2020, forest fires devastated Macquarie perch, which suffocated as ash driven into the creek by rainfall clogged their gills. Welz also discusses how some animals are successfully adapting to climate change; for example, some of California’s butterfly species are expanding their habitat by taking refuge in the “cooler microclimates” of urban gardens. Though textbook explanations of photosynthesis, hurricane formation, and genetic mutation might elicit yawns, Welz more than makes up for that with lyrical descriptions of the locales and their animal inhabitants (he writes of a Namibian cheetah: “She indulged in a long, tongue-flexing, canine-baring yawn as the first pulse of real blue began to wash the stars from the eastern sky”). It’s a beautifully rendered tour of a natural world on the brink.

July 15, 2023
Detailed case studies of climate breakdown. Attempting to fully comprehend the magnitude of global climate change can feel next to impossible. In this deeply researched and disturbing book, photographer and environmental writer Welz helps us understand it "through smaller stories." Moving among far-flung ecosystems--e.g., the Mojave Desert, South Africa's Cape Floral Region, the high-altitude grasslands of Central Asia--the author presents climate change in focused snapshots. Each case study of an ecosystem tracks how small increases in local temperature ripple through and cause damage. In New England, where cold winters once killed off most winter ticks, "a tiny increase in winter minimum temperatures" now helps ticks survive the cold months to infest and kill 90% of moose calves before they can reach adulthood. In the Kalahari, where average midday temperatures rose 3 degrees Celsius in the past decade, hornbills are lethally overheating as they try to gather food, unable to adequately feed themselves or their young. Through these eye-opening stories from around the world, Welz makes a vigorous, multifaceted case for acting against species extinction as the planet keeps warming. He is convincing in his arguments that plants and animals have intrinsic rights to exist; destroying biodiversity impoverishes the human experience of the world; and, because organisms on Earth have evolved remarkably wide-ranging adaptations, we can't possibly anticipate how those that seem to have no "obvious use" to us now may become necessary to our survival as our environment changes. Reading this catalog of extinctions and near extinctions feels dismal, but Welz closes with energy and hope. "Dominant moral values and habits can shift over the span of a single generation," writes the author, and fossil fuel interests are vulnerable. Though our failure as a species is possible, not acting at all makes it certain. A poignant elegy for creatures lost to climate change and a rigorous call to arms against further devastation.

COPYRIGHT(2023) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

August 18, 2023
Photographer and filmmaker Welz draws on decades of experience as an "old-school naturalist" in this overview of the devastating impact of global warming on several species around the world. Favoring the terms climate breakdown and global weirding over climate change, he writes of vanished birds in the Mojave, a massive herd of dead antelope in Siberia, tick-plagued "ghost moose" in northern Maine, and starving lizards in Death Valley (which he assumes are now all dead). This catalogue of suffering is the author's way of conveying the seriousness of the planet's ecological situation. He places special emphasis on the activities near his South African home of Cape Town, but the book has a broad focus based on his experiences living in or visiting various countries. He includes further information about many personal trips over the years and it is clear his personal passion infused his research choices. The book does not offer much coverage of solutions and should be directed towards those seeking details on specific ecosystems in crisis.

COPYRIGHT(2023) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.