Woodland Caribou, Common Loons, and Lake Sturgeon – what do these three species all have in common? All were once abundant around, on, or in the waters of the Great Lakes Basin. All are also greatly diminished in numbers there today. Yet they curiously persist as iconic images of this region. Scarcely any longer present, the memory of them persists. They are effectively ghosts.
In her new book Climate Ghosts; Migratory Species in the Anthropocene, Prof. Nancy Langston profiles the lives and declines of these three species, delving deep into the challenges they face and the decisions that we humans must make if they are to continue in the home ranges they have inhabited since long before our own species even arrived in North America – or was even a species, for that matter.
The most recent addition to The Mandel Lectures in the Humanities at Brandeis University series, Prof. Langston brings her readers a profound message of both warning and encouragement to action, of the potential for tragedy and the potential for renewal. While what has already happened cannot be changed, what happens next can be; but to act wisely, an understanding of these species in and of themselves as well as their existence in their environment must be achieved. Climate Ghosts is clearly a step towards such knowledge.
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