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Tue Mar 4 16:45:48 EST 2008
Rachel Carson's
alarming prediction of a "silent spring," but few remember that she
also
predicted a
"fruitless fall." This dire phenomenon is inevitable: if the bees,
bats,
butterflies, birds, and beetles that pollinate plants go extinct, the
plant
species
they fertilize will die, too. What we're really seeing in the loss of
biodiversity
is the "extinction of ecological relationships" between plants and
animals.
Nature
is, after all, interaction and mutuality. Buchmann, a research
entomologist, and
Nabhan, author of eight books, including The Geography of Childhood
(1994), and
director of science at the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum, offer their
own form of
mutualism in this eye-opening and, thanks to illustrations by Paul
Mirocha,
eye-pleasing book. Buchmann and Nabhan take turns relating their
fascinating
observations of the habits of various pollinators in such diverse
locales as
Utah's
Virgin River watershed and the Galapagos Islands in an effort to
convey a sense
of
what exactly is at risk: nothing less than our sources of
nutrition--ultimately,
our
very lives. Donna Seaman Copyright 1996, American Library
Association. All
rights
reserved --This text refers to the hardcover edition of this title
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