Existential extinctions

Canadian poet and naturalist Neil Griffin has written a historic and personal globe-spanning account of massive extinctions over centuries, caused by weather disruptions and by mankind. It’s a detailed, well-written account, sometimes with a touch of humour, but predominantly a frightening and depressing look at the losses and consequences.

Griffin opens by describing artifacts on his desk, “a pocket gallery of past and present ruin” — memento mori collected during his former life as a wildlife biologist and “cold reminders of what was and will not be again.”

The author combines geological and natural history with observations of his own, made during travels to destinations such as Canada’s boreal wetlands, the jungles of Belize, Kenya’s savannahs and the mountains of Rwanda — all places where he encountered endangered species.

Griffin takes readers through Earth’s five mass extinction events caused by upsets in the carbon capture cycle, planetary wobbles causing climate change, volcanic eruptions, meteors and how the “bad behaviour of Earth’s inhabitants” impact so many species. More than 99 per cent of Earth’s total plant, animal and fungal life is now extinct, and human beings will also be extinct someday, he writes, recognizing that extinction is a natural phenomenon, but that current extinction rates far exceed the norm.

“Contemporary knowledge of the world is a fraction of a fraction of a whisper of understanding,” Griggin laments, adding that the science of extinction is younger than the invention of the bicycle.

He states early in Endings that the book is not journalism, but it is contemporary; it’s not a scientific work, although it draws on scientific research, but rather a story of extinction and his encounters with it. While it may not satisfy someone who has immersed themselves in the science or follows the daily news about extinction, Endings is an informative, well-written overview of the situation by someone who feels deeply about the loss of life and habitat and who can combine science, history and personal observations in a package that will inform readers and perhaps encourage them to learn more.

Griffin uses the decimation of buffalo herds as a prime example of human wantonness encouraged by governments of the day, an example close to home to Canadians and all North Americans. Everyone from Edmonton to Corpus Christi, Texas should know the sight, sound and smell of the seasonal migration of a massive buffalo herd, he writes, instead of maybe seeing one in a zoo or small protected ranch. The pretense of their survival in captivity is couched in the language of conservation, which really means: “We came, we saw, we conquered.”

When he reaches his last chapter, Griffin declares he can’t write about hope, offers no instruction manual, no prescription and only limited practical advice about how to deal with the endless scourge of extinction. He does, however, urge “presence and careful interaction with the non-human world” while acknowledging that spending more time with nature won’t stop civilizational collapse, but that “large practices grow from small beginnings.”

That said, as an observer and chronicler of the wanton slaughter of so many species, often spawned by colonial nations for profit, Griffin is left with this: “I don’t know how to live, really, as a settler in this legacy of violence and extinction.”

Chris Smith is a Winnipeg writer.