Venomous River
Changing Climate, Imperiled Forests, and a Scientist's Race to Find New Species in the Congo
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1.0 • 1 Rating
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- $19.99
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- $19.99
Publisher Description
Join herpetologist Eli Greenbaum on his race to identify a multitude of unidentified species in the Congo, a volatile African region overcome with population pressure, military oppression, and climate change. These are the backdrop challenges to the science pursued by Dr. Greenbuam in this timely work worthy of Darwin.
Venomous River chronicles a field scientist’s search for new species in the Congo Basin, one of the world’s great crucibles of biodiversity, in the face of climate change. Although tropical forests cover less than 10 percent of Earth’s land surface, they are home to about two-thirds of the planet’s terrestrial biodiversity. Unfortunately, a ballooning human population has severely damaged half of the planet’s pristine ecosystems and the biodiversity they contained, leading to an unfolding sixth mass extinction.
In Joseph Conrad’s famous 1899 novella Heart of Darkness, he described the Congo River as “a great snake.” More than a century later, herpetologist, evolutionary biologist, and seasoned expedition leader Eli Greenbaum set out to find the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s (Congo for short) incredible diversity of serpents in the flesh, along with the country’s rarest frogs, lizards, crocodiles, and turtles, which live in and along Africa’s second-largest river. For a biologist, an expedition into the heart of the Congo is a priceless gift, with its incredible species, known and unknown, lurking around every bend in the river. But the Congo is also a place of endemic political instability, widespread corruption, human suffering, and extraordinary danger. These, as much as the challenges of the natural world, confront any scientist doing field work in the Congo.
Venomous River is the harrowing story of a biodiversity scientist’s successful quest to discover several new amphibian and reptile species in the remotest heart of Africa, a wilderness where he encounters friendly peoples, a cook who is revealed to be a dangerous killer, highly venomous snakes and scorpions, deadly tropical diseases, and troubling echoes of the Congo’s colonial history.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Greenbaum (Emerald Labyrinth), a biology professor at the University of Texas at El Paso, delivers a vivid account of his quest to find new amphibian and reptile species in the Congo Basin of Central Africa, the second-largest rainforest tract in the world. Its remoteness and the region's political instability have discouraged scientific exploration of the rainforest, which has been exploited for fossil fuels, logging, and mining. With climate change threatening the planet, Greenbaum argues that conservation of the Congo Basin is crucial, as it sequesters massive amounts of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and contains undiscovered species that may be the key to curing diseases. Greenbaum recounts how he and his team, with the help of locals, collected a wide variety of organisms, including species new to science. Upon being presented with a very rare chameleon, Greenbaum writes that he "shrieked like a five-year-old on Christmas Day." Throughout, he details the dangers his team faced, like malaria and the threat of encountering deadly snakes far away from medical attention. The narrative also serves as an apt sociological account of the region; Greenbaum describes the graft of local officials, the warmth displayed by many Congolese people, and the area's rampant poverty. Readers will be captivated.
