in The Revelator
Writer Kathleen Dean Moore turns her ear to nature’s sounds and what we’re losing as species disappear. What does a biodiversity crisis sound like? You may need to strain your ears to hear it.
In the past 50 years, America’s bird populations have fallen by a third, and worldwide the average mammal population has dropped 60%, writes acclaimed environmental philosopher and nature writer Kathleen Dean Moore in her new collection of essays, Earth’s Wild Music: Celebrating and Defending the Songs of the Natural World.
And with all that loss comes an unsettling silence.
“Unless the world acts to stop extinctions, I will write my last nature essay on a planet that is less than half as song-graced and life-drenched as the one where I began to write,” she explains in the book’s preface. “My grandchildren will tear out half the pages in their field guides. They won’t need them.” FOR MORE
