Katherine Rundell / Doubleday / 224 pages
Katherine Rundell’s Vanishing Treasures: A Bestiary of Extraordinary Endangered Creatures offers a brisk and enjoyable examination of a wide range of species, all remarkable in their own right—and all at risk of being lost forever. Rundell, a fellow of the University of Oxford’s St. Catherine’s College, deftly weaves an array of literary and historical sources throughout the book to underscore our longstanding fascination with these creatures and situate them within a much broader historical discourse.
Each chapter highlights a particular species and its extraordinary traits. For instance, the Greenland shark has the longest lifespan of any vertebrate on the planet; indeed, it’s possible, says Rundell, that some of the Greenland sharks slowly traversing the ocean depths “are well into their sixth century.”
The book features a wide range of highly disparate species (from awe-inspiring elephants to tiny iridescent golden moles) that are imperiled because of human activities. Sometimes inaction or apathy is allowing it to happen; many times, however, there is specific intent to kill. Rundell notes that the United States is a primary driver of the steep decline in giraffe populations and that American hunters imported a staggering 3,744 giraffes trophies during a recent 10-year period—a number corresponding to roughly 5 percent of the number of giraffes left alive today. In some cases, extinction is actually the goal: Rundell grimly observes that “poachers have been paid to shoot even those wild rhinos without marketable horns.” The reason? Hastening their final demise translates into skyrocketing prices for those who already have horns stockpiled.
As its title strongly suggests, Vanishing Treasures is an urgent plea for humanity not to allow these gems to be lost to the annals of history. The book is a frank exhortation for our own species to try harder to protect other species with whom we share the planet. By inculcating a sense of wonder at the remarkable adaptations and characteristics of these extraordinary creatures, Rundell hopes to reinforce a sense that they—and countless others—are worth far more alive than dead.