Fewer than 2,000 fish owls still survive in the wild, and logging and new roads are increasingly infringing on the endangered bird’s habitat. Prior to Slaght’s five-year project, conducted for his doctoral research, only a smattering of scientific studies-many of them decades-old- existed on the species. They feast on salmon and thrive in the inhospitable wilderness of northeast Asia, primarily in Russia but also Japan and China. Like Amur tigers (also known as Siberian tigers), Blakiston’s fish owls are top predators. In Owls of the Eastern Ice: A Quest to Find and Save the World’s Largest Owls, Slaght transports readers to the remote wilds of Primorye to join him on his quest to study one of the world’s least-known owls. The night turned into weeks and the hermit soon became a valued field assistant (albeit one who regularly asked questions like “Did the gnomes tickle your feet last night?”). But when conservationist Jonathan C Slaght ran into a man with “a crazy look in his eyes” and one missing finger living alone in an abandoned World War II hydroelectric station, rather than make a quick exit, he took the hermit up on his offer to spend the night. Some recluses in this remote region might be criminals of one kind or another: those hiding from law enforcement or those hiding from other criminals. In Russia’s far east, meeting a person alone in the wilderness is usually a bad thing.
0 kommentar(er)
