From Amazon.com
When Bill Laurance went to northern Australia in the mid-1980s, it was to study the teeming life of a classic rainforest. The problem was, the rainforest of Queensland, already limited in extent, was fast disappearing, logged and bladed into oblivion; even its legendary stinging trees, "a good hit [from which] can hurt for months," seemed in danger of becoming mere memories. Laurance's fieldwork became a running chronicle of what happens to the rainforest's creatures--tree kangaroos and vipers, redback spiders and pygmy possums, and countless other species that are little known outside the area--when once-unpeopled habitats are overrun. (One of the few species to benefit from the region's decline, Laurance observes, is the antechinus, a wolverine-like marsupial that thrives on disturbance.) Laurance soon realized, as he relates in his memoir, that he'd have to couple scientific information with activism in order to protect what little of the forest remained--activism that included recommending the area for a listing under the United Nations' World Heritage program, and that put him squarely at odds with the suspicious loggers who were his neighbors. Although confronted with death threats and an actual attempt on his life, Laurance pressed on, eventually winning over enough Queenslanders to launch a small but growing ecotourism industry. Well-written and often quite funny,
Stinging Trees and Wait-a-Whiles will hearten any environmentalist and tropical traveler.
--Gregory McNamee
From Publishers Weekly
In this amusing memoir, Laurance, a senior research scientist at the Smithsonian, recalls the 18 months he spent doing fieldwork for his dissertation in north Queensland, Australia. A budding ecologist, Laurance traveled from UC Berkeley to the rural outpost of Millaa Millaa (population 320) to study the effects of fragmentation on tropical rainforests. To help with this work, he recruited a band of high-spirited volunteers; here he describes how they gamely faced down biting water rats, stinging trees, leeches and crotch rotAsometimes motivated by little more than the promise of copious amounts of beer, whiskey and barbecue. Laurance recounts the lighter side of fieldwork (food fights help blow off steam and wrestling matches keep his volunteers in line) as well as more serious events, like hostile encounters with local loggers and farmers deeply suspicious of his outspoken proconservation stance. When a fierce political battle erupted over a proposal to create a World Heritage site to protect Australia's remaining rainforests, Laurance found himself in the center of a maelstrom of conflict. Sympathetic and evenhanded, his account blends serious warnings about environmental destruction with humorous observations about the weirdness of field research. Impassioned and accessible to a range of audiences, this is a laugh-out-loud, engaging account of the antics of a clever, impetuous Yank "gone troppo" in the Australian outback. Illus. not seen by PW. (Sept.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.
