FEN, BOG AND SWAMP

A BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week A subject that could not be more important A compact classic Bill McKibben I learned something new and found something amazing on every page Anthony Doerr author of All the Light We Cannot SeeFrom Pulitzer Prize winner Annie Proulx whose novels are infused with her knowledge and deep concern for the earth comes an urgent and riveting history of wetlands their ecological role and how the loss of them threatens the planet Fens bogs swamps and marine estuaries are the earth s most desirable and dependable resources and in four illuminating parts Proulx documents the emergence of their systemic destruction in the pursuit of profit and the consequent release of their stored carbon Wide ranging and idiosyncratic Proulx s explanation of wetlands takes readers to the fens of sixteenth century England Canada s Hudson Bay Lowlands Russia s Great Vasyugan Mire and America s Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge and introduces the nineteenth century explorers who launched the ravaging of the Amazon rainforest Proulx was born in the 1930s a time as she says when in the ever continuing name of progress Western countries busily raped their own and other countries of minerals timber fish and wildlife Fen Bog & Swamp is both a