Rewilding Oz Tim Flannery Celebrates Germaine Greer’S Foray Into Natural Science — a Chronicle of Her Rainforest-Restoration Project in a Corner of Queensland
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COMMENT BOOKS & ARTS LYNDON MECHIELSEN/NEWSPIX/REX LYNDON Germaine Greer at Cave Creek, Australia, the rainforest she has worked to regrow on land partially cleared for farming. CONSERVATION Rewilding Oz Tim Flannery celebrates Germaine Greer’s foray into natural science — a chronicle of her rainforest-restoration project in a corner of Queensland. ermaine Greer, feminist polemicist it retained extraordi- (Davidsonia johnsonii) with its large plum- and fomenter of permanent revolu- nary biodiversity. The like fruit, and the corky-barked Glenugie tion, has been hiding her light under white beech (Gmelina karaka (Corynocarpus rupestris), thrive Ga bushel. White Beech reveals her as one of leichhardtii) of the title there. Greer sees it as her personal mission the finest natural history writers to grace a is one of Australia’s to protect such rarities. page. This largely autobiographical work most majestic rainfor- White Beech meanders through history documents her restoration of around 60 hec- est trees, and Greer’s and botany like a vine looping through the tares of montane (high-altitude) rainforest in labours commenced canopy. From an exegesis on Agent Orange southeast Queensland, Australia. with the rescue of a to explanations of botanical terms such as The project was balm for a deep hurt. She dying forest giant that White Beech: The ‘glaucous’ (to describe a blue-grey waxy writes: “I had seen devastation, denuded was slowly succumb- Rainforest Years coating on leaves and stem), the book winds GERMAINE GREER hills, eroded slopes, weeds from all over the ing to overshading by Bloomsbury its way, guided by Greer’s unique sense of world, feral animals, open-cut mines as big lantana — plants of Publishing: 2014. where the light of truth lies. Botanists may as cities, salt rivers, salt earth, abandoned the verbena family, bridle at its idiosyncrasies. “Nobody,” Greer townships, whole beaches made of beer cans. introduced from the Americas. Sunlight opines, “was less likely to give up the perni- Give me just a chance to clean something up, touched it, its first flush of leaves came in, cious habit of calling plants after colleagues sort something out, make it right, I thought, and “the great old tree sent up a silent shout and friends than the egregious [Ferdi- and I will take it.” of victory and gushed torrents of blossom”. nand] Mueller.” By and large, Greer prefers The property she settled on, at Cave Cave Creek hid other botanical treasures. descriptive names for plants. And yes, she Creek, had been logged, partially cleared for Some of Australia’s most endangered plants, peremptorily strips that distinguished pio- dairy cattle, then planted with bananas. But including the smooth Davidson’s plum neering botanist Ferdinand von Mueller of 480 | NATURE | VOL 505 | 23 JANUARY 2014 © 2014 Macmillan Publishers Limited. All rights reserved BOOKS & ARTS COMMENT his barony, refusing to acknowledge that his ‘von’ was both awarded and deserved. Tracing the indigenous history of her Books in brief patch of rainforest provides grist for Greer’s extraordinary capacity for research. Having Me, Myself, and Why: Searching for the Science of Self established that there were no Aboriginal Jennifer Ouellette PENGUIN BOOks (2014) owners (nobody went there because it was What sets us apart, genetically, neurologically and behaviourally? a ‘story place’, believed to be the haunt of Science journalist Jennifer Ouellette’s exploration of the “science of vampire-like beings), Greer eventually, in self” is an engrossing and often amusing tour of elite labs and edgy 2011, gave the land to the UK charity Friends research. She is tested by US personal-genetics company 23andMe of Gondwana Rainforest. She explained, “If and in the belly of a magnetic resonance imaging machine in the I have not learnt in my seventy-four years lab of neuroscientist David Eagleman. She interviews behavioural that to love and care for something you don’t psychologists, muses on digital doppelgängers, drops LSD and dips need to own it, then I have learnt nothing.” her toe into consciousness studies. Ultimately, she concludes, the In time it will be transferred to an Australian self consists in what we make of our biological constraints. non-profit company. White Beech is not without blemish. Referring to my area of expertise, mamm- Windfall: The Booming Business of Global Warming alogy, I can report a handful of issues with McKenzie Funk PENGUIN PREss (2014) her discussion of marsupials. The common This exposé of the powers and people that view global warming planigale (Planigale maculata) is not in fact as an investment opportunity is darkly humorous and brilliantly larger than the yellow- researched. Journalist McKenzie Funk looks at the impacts deemed “Give me footed antechinus a windfall for “climate capitalists”: melting ice, drought, sea-level rise just a chance (Antechinus flavipes), and superstorms. He reports far and wide, on the oil-rich far north, to clean and Greer seems to where nations jostle as the ice retreats; blaze-prone California and something confuse the two spe- its burgeoning band of firebreak specialists; water-rich South Sudan, up, sort cies of quoll found in where large tracts of foreign-owned farmland could become a gold something eastern Australia. I mine as other regions dry up; and beyond. out, make it was, incidentally, also right, and I frustrated to learn will take it.” that she gave short The Perfect Wave: With Neutrinos at the Boundary of Space and shrift to a researcher Time wishing to study the Hastings River mouse Heinrich Päs HARVARD UNIVERsITY PREss (2014) (Pseudomys oralis), one of Australia’s rarest The ghostly neutrino — a mutable, almost massless particle that mammals. Other experts will doubtless find can pass through dense substances — stars in this scientific history. trifles to quibble with. But such peccadilloes Theoretical physicist Heinrich Päs surfs the decades of dazzling are inevitable in a book that ranges so widely. research since Wolfgang Pauli first posited the particle in 1930. Päs Many of the worst weeds at the site are revisits key theorists such as Ettore Majorana, and lays out the work already controlled or eradicated, and the of groundbreaking labs from Los Alamos in New Mexico, where Fred rainforest is steadily taking over the pasture. Reines and Clyde Cowan first detected neutrinos in the early 1950s, Greer clearly has a vision of what a restored to today’s vast IceCube neutrino observatory in Antarctica. Cave Creek will look like; but nowhere does she spell it out in detail. Will every species that existed in the area in 1788 be returned? Mindwise: How We Understand What Others Think, Believe, Feel, Will fire be used as a management tool? and Want Such dilemmas dog all efforts at habitat Nicholas Epley KNOPF (2014) restoration in Australia, because people — Psychologist Nicholas Epley examines the “real sixth sense”: Aboriginals for 45,000 years, and Europeans inferring what others think, an ability essential in everything from for 225 — have hugely altered the land. high-level diplomacy to parenting. But as he shows, our conscious Greer put all she had into restoring introspection is limited, and we tend to dehumanize others, as Cave Creek. But can the immense effort well as filter our perception of them through a screen of egotism. of weeding alien species and afforestation Epley sees the solution as the face-to-face work of open, honest be sustained through a small non-profit? communication — a tough call in a society addicted to texting and Habitat restoration has become fashionable tweeting. Nuanced, authoritative and accessible. in Australia, and thousands now donate to organizations such as Bush Heritage and the Australian Wildlife conservancy, which The Antidote: Inside the World of New Pharma restore habitat on a grand scale. It is hard to Barry Werth SIMON AND SCHUsTER (2014) avoid the conclusion that some consolida- In his follow-up to The Billion-Dollar Molecule (1994), Barry Werth tion will be required if efforts like Greer’s are re-enters the tough world of big pharma to trace the trajectory of to be sustainable. ■ drug company Vertex over the past two decades. The US-based company, once an upstart setting out to challenge the giants, now Tim Flannery is head of the Australian crafts promising treatments. Kalydeco (ivacaftor), for instance, Climate Council. His latest book is Among treats cystic fibrosis by targeting the effects of a particular genetic the Islands: Adventures in the Pacific. mutation. A riveting mix of molecular science, big personalities — e-mail: [email protected] and big money. Barbara Kiser 23 JANUARY 2014 | VOL 505 | NATURE | 481 © 2014 Macmillan Publishers Limited. All rights reserved.