Islands of Abandonment: Life in the Post-Human Landscape

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Posted in ecology, environmental issues, wildlife conservation and tagged book review, evolutionary biology, HarperCollins, invasive species, nature writing, pollution, post-industrial sites, radioactivity, urban environments, warfare, wastelands, William Collins on September 8, 2021 by inquisitivebiologist. This book explores the extraordinary places where humans no longer live – or survive in tiny, precarious numbers – to give us a possible glimpse of what happens when mankind’s impact on nature is forced to stop. Some locations Flyn visits have almost become popular attractions, such as the decaying boomtown of Detroit, but most are not places you want to be. Elsewhere, she travels to Estonia and the land that was once the site of Soviet-era collective farms, and to Plymouth in Montserrat, a town entombed under 40 feet of mud and lava save for the tops of the buildings. From Tanzanian mountains to the volcanic Caribbean, the forbidden areas of France to the mining regions of Scotland, Flyn brings together some of the most desolate, eerie, ravaged and polluted areas in the world – and shows how, against all odds, they offer our best opportunities for environmental recovery.

An abandoned botanical garden in Tanzania offers the chance to talk invasive species and make several sharp observations. These abandoned sites offer many case studies of how our actions affect evolution in animals and plants. The rock elder statesman brings wit and warmth to his reading of his memoir, in which he traces his beginnings from the Virginian suburbs, to playing drums in Nirvana and filling stadiums in his band, Foo Fighters.A vivid reflection on the “post-human landscape”, Islands of Abandonment finds its author embarking on a series of bold expeditions to examine the marks left on our land after humans have retreated. A haunting journey through the world’s abandoned places, Flyn’s wide-ranging and reflective meditation on how nature continues in humanity’s absence is an eerie yet ultimately optimistic account of ecological diversity. I was very pleased (though I am, of course, biased) to see her discuss evolution this much—and get it right.

In West Lothian, Scotland, Flyn climbs enormous slag heaps of spent shale dating to Scotland’s 1860s–1920s heydays of oil production. Ebooks fulfilled through Glose cannot be printed, downloaded as PDF, or read in other digital readers (like Kindle or Nook). Guardian Australia acknowledges the traditional owners and custodians of Country throughout Australia and their connections to land, waters and community.By turns haunted and hopeful, this luminously written world study is pinned together with profound insight and new ecological discoveries that together map an answer to the big questions: what happens after we're gone, and how far can our damage to nature be undone? I hope that it will make people focus on the future and when I say the future I mean not next year or the year after but possibly beyond our own generations. She asks whether these sites are portents of civilizational collapse when overpopulation, overconsumption, and climate change will finally take their toll. Exploring some of the eeriest, most desolate places in the world, Cal Flyn asks: what happens after humans pick up and leave? I know that when I think about the environment when I think about climate change and all the damage that's been done, it is overpowering and I think to move on and to keep going every day it is important for us to have that sense of hope and optimism.

Author and journalist Cal Flyn explores thirteen such locations and here reports their sights, sounds, and smells.

Cal Flyn takes us on a mercurial expedition into the strange lands of human surrender … Thoughtful, careful, fascinating, poignant, mysterious, surreal, compelling, pace pitch-perfect. Exploring extraordinary places where humans no longer live – or survive in tiny, precarious numbers – Islands of Abandonment give us a glimpse of what nature gets up to when we’re not there to see it.

In this time, nature has been left to work unfettered – offering a glimpse of how abandoned land, even the most polluted regions of the world, might offer our best opportunities for environmental recovery. Devoid of self-indulgence or decadent ruin porn, I instead found Islands of Abandonment a thoughtfully written and utterly spellbinding book. But what we need to be thinking about is what are the results in 50 years, and 100 years, what are the results of withdrawing from an area and allowing nature its head? Cal Flyn’s Islands of Abandonment is a book about abandoned places: ghost towns and exclusion zones, no man’s lands and post-industrial hinterlands – and what happens when nature is allowed to reclaim its place.This book explores the extraordinary places where humans no longer live - or survive in tiny, precarious numbers - to give us a possible glimpse of what happens when mankind's impact on nature is forced to stop. Her first book, ‘Thicker Than Water’, was a Times book of the year and dealt with the colonisation of Australia and questions of inherited guilt.