What do you think?
Rate this book
Waiting for the Macaws: And Other Stories From The Age Of Extinction
“ Waiting for the Macaws is a haunting reminder of the scale and breadth of what can only be described as a catastrophe of the human spirit and imagination.”—Wade Davis, author of Light at the Edge of the World and Explorer-in-Residence, National Geographic Society Waiting for the Macaws is a haunting and beautifully written account of the age in which we live. Journeying around the world, Terry Glavin argues that all extinctions are related and that the language of environmentalism is inadequate to describing this great unravelling. But Glavin discovers that there is hope, finding it in the most unlikely places—a macaw roost in Costa Rica, a Small village in Ireland, a community of Norse whalers on the Lofoten Islands in the North Atlantic, the vault beneath the Royal botanical Garden at Kew, and the throne room of the Angh of Longwa in the Patkai Range of the eastern Himalayas.
318 pages, Paperback
First published January 30, 2007
75 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
March 3, 2023
The Sixth Extinction is well underway ... and it comes in a wide variety of flavours!
Animals of every imaginable zoological stripe, deforestation, loss of ecosystems and specific ecological niches, trees, legumes, fruits and grasses, cultures and languages – so much of our world is under assault and treading a fine line on the edge of complete and final disappearance. Agricultural diversity is being replaced around the world with vulnerable monocultures. WAITING FOR THE MACAWS does not presume to take a hard core left wing stance and suggest that all extinctions are the result of intentional human predation or thoughtless activity. Instead, in a series of thoughtful, provocative essays, it presents a series of “catastrophes of the human spirit and imagination” and it asks us to care, to do everything we can to strengthen “the conditions that allow the flourishing of a diversity of living things, a diversity of ideas and a diversity of choices”.
A small example will serve to illustrate the depth of Glavin’s examination of the phenomenon of extinction:
“It was the Romans who spread the apple throughout Europe, and by the close of the nineteenth century, more than 7000 commercial varieties of apple were being cultivated throughout North America. A century later, almost all of those varieties had disappeared. A mere 15 apple varieties account for more than 90 percent of all North American production. In Canada, two-thirds of the apple crop is made up of only 3 varieties: McIntosh, Red Delicious, and Spartan. Two-thirds of the American crop is made up of Red Delicious, Golden Delicious and Granny Smith”.
And, of course, it is this singular (and all too common) lack of diversity that makes the entire apple species subject to loss by weather calamity, insects infestation or some biological blight.
WAITING FOR THE MACAWS is not lightweight, easy reading. But it is certainly provocative, informative, educational and profoundly disturbing. If you care about the world around you, WAITING FOR THE MACAWS is something you should be reading.
Paul Weiss
Animals of every imaginable zoological stripe, deforestation, loss of ecosystems and specific ecological niches, trees, legumes, fruits and grasses, cultures and languages – so much of our world is under assault and treading a fine line on the edge of complete and final disappearance. Agricultural diversity is being replaced around the world with vulnerable monocultures. WAITING FOR THE MACAWS does not presume to take a hard core left wing stance and suggest that all extinctions are the result of intentional human predation or thoughtless activity. Instead, in a series of thoughtful, provocative essays, it presents a series of “catastrophes of the human spirit and imagination” and it asks us to care, to do everything we can to strengthen “the conditions that allow the flourishing of a diversity of living things, a diversity of ideas and a diversity of choices”.
A small example will serve to illustrate the depth of Glavin’s examination of the phenomenon of extinction:
“It was the Romans who spread the apple throughout Europe, and by the close of the nineteenth century, more than 7000 commercial varieties of apple were being cultivated throughout North America. A century later, almost all of those varieties had disappeared. A mere 15 apple varieties account for more than 90 percent of all North American production. In Canada, two-thirds of the apple crop is made up of only 3 varieties: McIntosh, Red Delicious, and Spartan. Two-thirds of the American crop is made up of Red Delicious, Golden Delicious and Granny Smith”.
And, of course, it is this singular (and all too common) lack of diversity that makes the entire apple species subject to loss by weather calamity, insects infestation or some biological blight.
WAITING FOR THE MACAWS is not lightweight, easy reading. But it is certainly provocative, informative, educational and profoundly disturbing. If you care about the world around you, WAITING FOR THE MACAWS is something you should be reading.
Paul Weiss
August 10, 2021
Terry Glavin considers various forms of extinctions - from the titular macaws, through Amur taimen and kaluga, to cougars, whales, plants, cultures, and languages. He mourns the diversity loss among people, animals, and habitats.
As he writes in the introduction, the book is, ultimately, in defense of humankind - quite rightfully blamed for the extinctions and habitat loss, but deeply affected by it all the same.
It's a solid book, overall. Challenging, but in a good way. The chapters are a bit uneven - some great, some just okay. But all of them are interesting: reintroduction of hand-reared scarlet macaws in Curu, Costa Rica; Malayan village tigers; people welcoming cougars back despite the attacks on people; whaling culture in Norway; catching huge Amur taimen and kaluga fish with dead dogs as a lure in the Russian Far East; pollinating rare flowers by hand while hanging off a cliff; black market in fruit and vegetable seeds; a unique language used only for singing in three voices.
Good food for thought (seriously, it's a full meal).
Further reading:
Spix's Macaw: The Race to Save the World's Rarest Bird
The Lost Wolves of Japan
Into Great Silence: A Memoir of Discovery and Loss among Vanishing Orcas
The Last Lions of Africa: Stories from the Frontline in the Battle to Save a Species
As he writes in the introduction, the book is, ultimately, in defense of humankind - quite rightfully blamed for the extinctions and habitat loss, but deeply affected by it all the same.
It's a solid book, overall. Challenging, but in a good way. The chapters are a bit uneven - some great, some just okay. But all of them are interesting: reintroduction of hand-reared scarlet macaws in Curu, Costa Rica; Malayan village tigers; people welcoming cougars back despite the attacks on people; whaling culture in Norway; catching huge Amur taimen and kaluga fish with dead dogs as a lure in the Russian Far East; pollinating rare flowers by hand while hanging off a cliff; black market in fruit and vegetable seeds; a unique language used only for singing in three voices.
Good food for thought (seriously, it's a full meal).
Further reading:
Spix's Macaw: The Race to Save the World's Rarest Bird
The Lost Wolves of Japan
Into Great Silence: A Memoir of Discovery and Loss among Vanishing Orcas
The Last Lions of Africa: Stories from the Frontline in the Battle to Save a Species
August 20, 2017
Sad, beautiful, and ultimately hopeful book using well told stories to link extinctions between species, cultures and languages, and crop varieties. Interesting thoughts on conservation, Green Peace / Paul Watson critism, and cultural relativism re: whaling and sealing. Con: definitely reads as an old white anthropologist type who has to go off to some exotic local to tell someone else's story. The chapters where he has a basis and connection are more highly recommended.
January 21, 2014
This book details a list of many extinctions across the world and throughout history. It is sad, sobering, and yet offers moments of hope that extinctions are not inevitable and nature can find a way if given the opportunity to resurrect species from the brink of extinction. One of the most apt quotations from this book that serves as a theme is the following: "For all its splendid, flourishing, and elaborately interconnected profusions of life, the earth is also a tomb, and the dead breathe their stories out of the ground."
Well-worth reading.
Well-worth reading.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews