The Race to Save the Lord God Bird by Phillip Hoose

It hooks the reader in immediately and one can see why this book has been chosen as a Common Core Exemplar Text for Science literature.įrom the author’s homepage…. Opening up with a prologue called “The Hostage” an exciting stage is set when an Ivory-bill is captured by the likes of Alexander Wilson (so-called Father of Ornithology). A science book at it’s core, The Race to Save the Lord God Bird takes us across 200 years of history as well. Hoose introduces us to the concept of the “sixth wave” of extinction caused by human impact on the planet and rapidly accelerating. ISBN 3-8ĭescription: Philip Hoose tells about “one of the most impressive creatures ever seen in the United States” (2004) the Ivory-billed Woodpecker and how its path crosses with Homo sapiens in more ways than one. (Aug.Bibliographic Information: Hoose, Phillip.

To him, the Ivory-bill represents no less than wilderness itself readers will sense the urgency that remains, even if the Ivory-bill is gone. 'Can we get smart enough fast enough to save what remains of our biological heritage?' Hoose asks in conclusion. His liveliest chapters concern James Tanner, the Ivory-bills' champion, who camped in swamps and climbed giant trees to document a few birds in the 1930s. In restrained language, he tells a tragic tale. In 1924, a pair of Ivory-bills were spotted in Florida, but soon vanished ' had asked the county sheriff for a permit to hunt them.' Further, Hoose explains how wars and the changing economy brought timber companies-and the free labor of German POWs-to devastate the Ivory-bills' virgin forests. Hoose also charts pre–Endangered Species Act collecting, when people responded to a rare bird by killing and stuffing it. With memorable anecdotes from naturalist writers, he tells how researchers such as John James Audubon shot Ivory-bills for study later, binoculars, cameras and sound equipment changed scientific methods. Yet Hoose shares a compelling tale of a species' decline and, in the process, gives a history of ornithology, environmentalism and the U.S. ), were neither as swift nor as wealthy as those who raced to shoot it and turn its preferred sweet-gum trees into lumber. habitat, reports Hoose ( We Were There, Too! Those who raced to save the Ivory-bill and its Southern U.S. Despite this chronicle's suspenseful title, this particular race seems to be over, and the Ivory-billed woodpecker (whose observers gasped, 'Lord God!') appears to have lost.

The Race to Save the Lord God Bird by Phillip Hoose