Signs of Life: Field Notes from the Frontlines of Extinction
Signs of Life: Field Notes from the Frontlines of Extinction
by Sarah Cox
Goose Lane Editions, 2024; 240 pages; $24.95
Reviewed by Paul Falardeau
Sara Cox has witnessed the almost mythically endless Canadian wilderness shrink and contract, its constituent species falling and retreating before the unbridled hubris and insatiable hunger of capitalist consumption. In her latest book, Signs of Life: Field Notes from the Frontlines of Extinction, she takes us across Canada to some of the most prescient examples of our wild places being lost, our environment unravelled, and our future being drained away. These are also the stories of people resisting extinction and degradation. Some are stories of hope, ways forward, while others are testaments to despair, documents of the end of the line.
Sarah Cox writes with the careful hand of a seasoned journalist. Her writing is terse and clean, leaving breathing room for the information. While her book is a fact-based, deeply researched endeavour, Cox’s writing is easy to digest. Concepts are explained neatly, ideas flow logically, and small flourishes of imagery and description allow the reader to build a connection to places and creatures she documents.
Signs of Life holds an eye to one of the most devastating realities of our time: mass extinctions at a rate usually accompanied by an asteroid. In its early pages, Cox takes us to British Columbia, where Spotted Owls cling to survival through captive breeding. This species has become a landmark of conservation in Canada and the USA and it is a guiding case throughout the book. It encapsulates the short-sighted and greedy decisions that caused the problem, half-hearted legislation that did little to solve it, and the small, dedicated groups of people trying their best despite the odds. Beyond the Spotted Owl, animals and plants of all description that once flourished in abundance are shown here in free fall.
“The top five drivers of nature’s decline,” Cox outlines, “are: human activities like industrial logging that alter land or waters, direct exploitation of wildlife through activities such as overfishing or trophy hunting, climate change, pollution, and invasive species. In other words, us.” Throughout the book, she comes back to our massive betrayal of the Earth. Though we’ve been well-informed of our environmental impact for decades, and often had tools to do better, our governments have consistently chosen profit over sense. With measured analysis, she discusses the government policies and decisions that created, exacerbated or ignored the issue; how governments sided with resource extraction and big business over the well-being of life on the planet.
However, Cox also highlights the champions of the wild, and the herculean task they face. An ecosystem is an almost impossibly complex thing to manage and practical and philosophical challenges abound. What happens when the owls in captivity have a waning libido? Is it right to cull wolves to preserve caribou? Cox calls this “wildlife triage.” In an overwhelming system collapse, hard choices must constantly be made. What animals can be saved? Which should? Who gets to decide? Limited funds, resources, bodies, and time make these choices more and more desperate.
Yet there is hope as Cox moves between scientists, ranchers, activists, and journalists. Indeed, to borrow from Margaret Mead, a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. From unique ways of managing ecosystems blending agriculture and conservation to genomic sequencing and cryopreservation, every tool at their disposal is used to save wildlife. Notably, Cox details cases where Indigenous leaders have been the first and last line of defense against species extinction. She doesn’t shy away from the fact that the issues facing us now are caused by colonial and capitalist greed, and that environmental restoration is inexorably linked to reconciliation.
While this can be a depressing read at times, it’s captivating in its detail and breadth of evidence. Though we’ve heard calls for change going back to Silent Spring and beyond, Signs of Life is a worthy piece of environmental non-fiction. There’s hope here, too. If small, chronically underfunded groups can win, imagine if more of us were involved and if governments finally put adequate funding into the fight. As Cox finishes, “It’s time to ramp up.”