Sarah Cox’s Signs of Life (2024) vividly but succinctly describes many key figures in the conservation community: the two-legged, among them.
The way she describes Ken Wu, for instance (executive director of Endangered Ecosystems Alliance): “a mile-a-minute talker”, son of Taiwanese immigrants in Alberta, who saw a photograph at ten years old that changed the trajectory of his life. The image of four couples dancing on a red cedar stump, after an old-growth forest was felled, turned him into a “big tree fanatic”.
She puts her attention-to-detail to work in her description of double-crested cormorants too. Their population declined rapidly in the 1800s due to persecution and again in the 1950s by DDT organochlorine pesticides: this put them at risk of extinction in the 1980s.
These “slightly glossy black fishing birds” have a “golden throat patch, emerald-green eyes, and, during the breeding season, a bright turquoise mouth lining”; most impressively, part of the year they have “two tufts of unruly black feathers stick out from the sides of their heads, giving them the look of a mad scientist in comics.”
When they’re done fishing, they “spread their wings, in a pterodactyl pose”: you can just picture their social media feeds. Cox’s research into the effort to restore the cormorants to Middle Island in Ontario (a recent addon to Point Pelee Provincial Park—Point Pelee is the southern-most tip of Canada) is fascinating and inspiring. Until it’s horrifying. Because the efforts are SO successful that a new problem erupts out of a fresh imbalance.
It seems to me, this is the space in which Signs of Life thrives—forcing a broader perspective on issues which tend to be presented in polarized terms. It’s what transformed parts of the book into a page-turner for me.
Cox’s curiosity is contagious. The work with borrowing owls, for instance. (“They are only about the size of a robin and, fully grown, weigh as much as a hockey puck. Their bright yellow legs are so long they appear to be running and hopping on stilts.”) Efforts to restore a population to the wild are high-stakes and terrifically engaging.
Signs of Life caters to North American readers (with most chapters focused on Canada and the United States), but with an undercurrent dedicated to global concerns. When she writes about the western chorus frog—which is about the size of a Canadian quarter, she says—she makes reference to the goliath frog “from Cameroon and Equatorial Guinea [which] measures more than one foot across and, at around seven pounds, weighs almost as much as a gallon of milk.” The discussion of one specific frog is relevant to frogs, reptiles, around the world: their fates, our fates, are intertwined.
And she considers a variety of habitats, a variety of species. The chapter on Furbish’s lousewort was unexpectedly interesting. It’s an “unassuming member of the broomrape family, the largest family of parasitic plants” named for an 1880s female botanist who challenged a male scientist whose botany manual did not include a single plant named for a female scientist. There are only four habitats in which the lousewort grows now and two of them are vulnerable to climate change. Not glamourous, no. But Graham Forbes, who teaches at the University of New Brunswick, says: “It’s part of the ecosystem. And I would argue that it’s part of our duty or due diligence to look after species, even the ones that aren’t particularly charismatic.”
The notes I’ve made from the book are largely statistical, often facts about how spectacularly some conservation efforts have failed. Not because the laws didn’t exist to prevent that catastrophe but because nobody bothered to enforce them. Or because the competing interests (usually development and industry) presented compelling counter-arguments to delay court proceedings—for just long enough to make the argument moot.
For instance, from 2015-2022, the government of British Columbia killed more than 1700 wolves in the name of protecting caribou, even while they awarded companies and industries the right to destroy the natural habitat of the caribou. By 2022, Alberta was catching up rapidly, having killed (“culled”) more than a thousand under the same circumstances.
This kind of contradiction appears regularly in the headlines, and when we read these articles, we have the sense that they contain only half the story. The context that Cox provides is just what I was craving, the untold part of the story.
Not that it makes it make sense, but it exposes facets of the situation that invite more meaningful discussions. With a problem this large, this complex, solutions must be broad-scale too. Without fully understanding the dynamics, we don’t even know how to think.
Two other key elements of her exploration that I found interesting? What federal land means (which differs in Canada and the United States) and what it’s typically used for and how it affects conservation efforts. And the role that zoos can play, particularly the Toronto Zoo—which is the largest in Canada, and world renowned for its work collecting genetic material from more than 3000 animals, species at risk, including iconic figures like gorillas and giraffes.
What would you suggest as a companion read for Sarah Cox’s Signs of Life (Goose Lane Editions)?
I’m reading an Australian nature memoir (of sorts) atm called Human/Nature by Jane Rawson. It sounds like it is covering some of the same topics but with a Tasmanian perspective.
It has been very disheartening watching our current govt (which I had reasonably high hopes for) crumble under the pressure of big business at every turn. The whole moving to renewable energy thing is a debacle as all the coal-fire power stations have not had any significant maintainence done to them for years and now they are crying poor and the govt has to bail them out to keep on running until there are enough renewables. Gahh!!
Waaaait, I’ve got that one, I’ve got that one. /scurriesaway Bill put me onto one of her novels for another Gen event (the SF one) and I really loved it.
Yes, it’s exactly that kind of planning-to-not-do-anything, which is so infuriating. And it requires constant vigilance on the part of voters/constituents, and that’s something we struggle with in this era of fractured attention-spans.
I’m really enjoying it, and learning quite a bit too which is always a bonus.
I just finished the first essay, but her tone is inviting straight away. Looking forward to your post!
This is the sort of book I’d love to read if I had time to read more than I currently have time for! If that makes sense. The wolves and caribou and development story is one that plays out all the time here too. Conservationists (and their supporters) understand the dynamics, but we sure don’t understand the politics that ignores them. Which is another way of saying that we understand “the politics” too well, but are still gobsmacked when once again politicians and officials let us down with their short-term decisions that favour development over the long haul view.
Agreed: it is very hard to make a space in the stacks for this kind of writing. At the same time, I’m not sure there are very many other stories that we should be reading. These are urgent matters, but we treat them like a serial that we’ll catch up on, when “we’ve got the time”. And, yes, I know that I should know better than to be naive about political influence but, still, I was shocked by some of the details.
You raise a good point here – I often feel like I’m only getting half the story when I see things like this in the headlines. I think I have this book on my shelf actually, Goose Lane sent it to me awhile ago but I haven’t picked it up. Will I find this depressing, hopeful, or a little bit of both?
Oooohhhh, I would love to discuss parts of it: I hope you do read it! Perhaps a new year’s read-o-lution? There are a couple of things that made me really angry (not sad, but also they are sad situations-no getting around that, eh?) but, on balance, there was so much information and a lot of the kind of detail I like, that I did not find it depressing overall. And the specific individuals she profiles are inspiring, which counters the negative aspects of general human behaviour: so there’s that.
There was a time, let’s say the 1970s, when it looked like we humans understood the problem – preserving the ecology of our planet – and would therefore do something about it. We underestimated the power of big business – the fossil fuel companies who would not only insist on their right to continue extracting and selling fossil fuels, but would extort, still extort, huge subsidies from supine politicians to keep expanding their operations; Monsanto killing everything in and around the monoculture crops they forced onto farmers; land developers, farmers, rural communities, trade unions who insist on ongoing land clearing, destroying forests and grasslands, destroying habitats, destroying diversity; nations who will continue fishing until the oceans are deserts; and on it goes.
I admire these people working hard to preserve individual species, but it’s too late.
Too late, for what, is the question, though. Too late to preserve all those lost species, yes. Too late to prevent the loss of still more, to prevent even more (different kinds of) harm. But not too late to reduce the harm done. Although I hate that that is what the conversation has become.
Monsanto is still in the courts here; I suspect that Australia was more responsive on that matter (as were parts of Europe), but it feels as though “we” are dragging our heels on the simplest issues. Reading Sarah Cox’s book really did help put some push-pull matters into a different context for me. Illuminating the delay-tactic doesn’t descrase the cost of the delay, but it means we’re less gullible going forward, I think?
Your description of Signs of Life kind of reminds me of Ed Yong’s Immense World. He overuses the word “umwelt,” but it is otherwise full of fascinating information about how animals perceive the world and lots of statistics. 🙂
Well, if one is going to have a fatal flaw, he could do worse! heheh
I can see the hold list for this book has finally reached a point where I could request it in a few weeks.
But I can’t complain: I’m happy so many people love his books (I’ve only read Multitudes).