An ecological study tends to start with a particular species, a place or biotic community and then goes on to define it in terms of its relationships with its various members and the place itself, with its physical conditions. Sophie Yeo, the author of, “Nature’s Ghosts: the world we lost and how to bring it back”, does that, but where most of the books I’ve read take a narrower view and focus on a particular species or place, Yeo takes a both ‘local’ and a more global view as well as one that goes back deeply in time. Hers is not a book limited strictly to ecology as we generally understand it, because she is interested in it as a tool, a tool for reclaiming what has been lost, the ‘Ghosts’ of her title.

As a horticulturist, who took care of landscapes, this book has strong appeal, because not only does it look at life and all of its integral relationships, she includes us, the humans, who so often set ourselves separate in the rarified and an exceptional world of our own making. This is also a critique of this decision in which she writes to show us where and how we belong in this world, how we once were very much a part, how we behaved as a ‘keystone’ species, actors in a landscape, shapers, ‘creators’, and how now, as consumers/destroyers, because of our self ascribed position as superior beings, we became removed and exceptional, a threat to the our other community members, as we changed the world into one that allowed them less and less space. It’s a tall order, what she sets out to do here, but I think she largely succeeds and she does so in a way, with language that is almost lyrical, beautiful at times, and like a ‘bad’ scientist, introduces herself into her story, along with the emotion and clarity that being a new mother can give one’s self.  Continue reading →