Planet Earth.
Alastair Fother-gill. Berkeley, CA: University of Califor-nia Press and BBC
Worldwide Americas, 2007. Pp. 312. $39.95, cloth. ISBN-13: 978-0-520-25054-3.
TEL: 510-642-4247 • FAX: 510-643-7127
This beautiful, large-format book is a companion piece to the Discovery Channel
series airing this spring. It is a record of one of the most ambitious natural
history projectsever undertaken. Using the latest aerial surveillance, state-of-the-art
cameras, and high-definition technology, the creators of this book have assembled
more than 400 stunning photographs of wondrous natural landscapes from around
the globe, including footage of the rarely spotted, almost mythical creatures
that live in some of these habitats.
Many of the images reveal inaccessible places that few have seen and record
animal behavior never filmed or photographed before. With the help of this
highly advanced technology and the world’s premier wildlife photographers,
the book takes us on a spectacular journey from the world’s highest
mountain ranges and its mightiest rivers to ancient lakes, hidden caves and
canyons, and vast deserts.
This book captures breathtaking sequences of predators and their prey (including
a polar bear taking on a young walrus and a Brazilian spider pumping digestive
juices into a snake), vast forests viewed from the tops of towering trees,
the oceans and their unfamiliar and mysterious creatures viewed from beneath
the surface, and much more. We see elusive snow leopards, the world’s
only freshwater seal, pink river dolphins, glass wing butterflies, thousands
of migrating spiny lobsters, huge bird-eating tarantulas, and scores of other
highly specialized creatures.
In the foreword to this book, David Attenborough reminds readers that, “…
within the next few years, the world itself may never look the same again.
That great, shaggy, double-humped camel—one of the hardiest of all mammals
and which once wandered in huge herds across the Gobi Desert in central Asia—has
been reduced in the wild to fewer than a thousand individuals. No more than
40 or so wild Amur leopards still survive, and their numbers continue to fall.
“And the world’s remote and unspoiled places that are the homes
of our planet’s wildlife are also in danger. Oil pipelines are being
built across the Arctic tundra and highways driven across the Amazonian jungle.
Rainforests are being felled by the square mile to make way for plantations
of oil palms, and coral reefs are being poisoned by marine pollution. Even
those parts of the wilderness that have so far escaped such despoliation may
very soon become radically changed in character as a result of the global
warming caused by humanity’s activities.
“So this remarkable and beautiful book should stand not just as a revelation
and celebration of the wonders that our planet still retains at the beginning
of the twenty-first century. It surely must also be seen as an eloquent rallying
call to all of us who care for the Earth’s welfare to redouble our efforts
to protect those wonders that still survive.”
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