“All the news outlets had this narrative that it’s the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere and has 2 percent forest cover.

“I heard that 2 percent number quoted everywhere,” he said. Over the next five years, as Wampler crisscrossed the country for his research, he began to undergo a cognitive dissonance. But as Wampler would discover, Haiti’s reputation as a deforested wasteland is based on myth more than fact - an example of how conservation and environmental agendas, often assumed to be rooted in science, can become entangled with narratives about race and culture that the powerful tell about the third world. And as the recent destruction wrought by Hurricane Matthew shows, Haiti is tragically vulnerable to natural disasters. David Brooks, the conservative New York Times columnist, once cited Haiti’s lack of trees as proof of a “complex web of progress-resistant cultural influences.” More recently, a Weather Channel meteorologist reporting on the advance of Hurricane Matthew made the absurd claim that Haiti’s deforestation was partly due to children eating the trees.įew places in the world have as dismal a reputation. Journalists describe the Caribbean nation’s landscape as “a moonscape,” “ravaged,” “naked,” “stripped” and “a man-made ecological disaster.” Deforestation has been relentlessly linked to Haiti’s entrenched poverty and political instability. Each chapter in this beautifully written book focuses on a unique species, from the charismatic northern white rhinoceros to the infamous passenger pigeon and the people entwined in the animals' fates.Haiti is frequently cited by the media, foreign governments and NGOs as one of the worst cases of deforestation in the world. In stories of sixteenth-century galleon excavations, panther-tracking in Florida swamps, ancient African rainforests, Neanderthal tool-making, and cryogenic DNA banks, O'Connor investigates the philosophical questions of an age in which we 'play god' with earth's biodiversity.

Paradoxically, the more we intervene to save species, the less wild they often become. O'Connor explores the extreme measures scientists are taking to try and save them, from captive breeding and genetic management to de-extinction. In a world dominated by people and rapid climate change, species large and small are increasingly vulnerable to extinction.

Nice to meet you, Neanderthal: Homo neanderthalensis.

Regenesis of the passenger pigeon: Neo-Ectopistes migratorius.Metaphysical rhinos: Ceratotherium simum cottoni.Mysteries of the whale called 1334: Eubalaena glacialis.Exuberant evolution in a desert fish: Cyprindon tularoa.Tracking chimeras in the Fakahatchee Strand: Puma concolor coryi.An ark of toads: Nectophrynoides asperginis.Bibliography Includes bibliographical references (pages 248-259) and index.

Resurrection Science by M.R. O'Connor