The World Without Us

David “Jonah” Western’s contribution to this book not only came from days of stimulating dialogue—and from the pilot’s seat in his Cessna— but also from a generation of colleagues he has inspired to conserve his beloved east equatorial African ecosystems. For their kindness and many good ideas, I thank Samantha Russell and Zippy Wanakuta of the African Conservation Centre; Evans Mgwani of the University of Nairobi; and Dr. Helen Gichohi of the African Wildlife Foundation.

Chicago Tribune correspondent Paul Salopek provided many helpful suggestions about African sites for this book. Long dinner conversations in Nairobi with Kelly West of the World Conservation Union’s Regional Office for Eastern Africa and Oscar Sims of Envision Multimedia were critical to connecting African environmental issues to the book’s theme. In Kenya, several guides and naturalists showed me places and wildlife that I could never have discovered on my own: David Kimani, Francis Kahuta, Vincent Kiama, Joe Njenga, Joseph Motongu, John Ahalo, Tsavo deputy park warden Kathryn Wambani and education director Lucy Makosi, and, in Maasai Mara, Lemeria Nchoe and Partois ole Santian.

In Tanzania, I thank Joseph Bifa at Olduvai Gorge and Browny Mtaki, who showed me key locales in Serengeti. At Lake Tanganyika, Karen Zwick and Michael Wilson at the Jane Goodall Institute in Kigoma and Gombe were immeasurably knowledgeable and hospitable, and worth traveling days to talk to. Late one evening, NYU doctoral candidate Kate Detwiler expounded on a theory I’d long puzzled over. I especially thank limnologist Andy Cohen of the University of Arizona for suggestions that led me to all of them, and for sharing his deep experience in the region.

My permission to visit the Korean Demilitarized Zone was kindly and swiftly processed by the U.S. Forces in Korea and the Republic of Korea Army. My preparation owed greatly to Dr. George Archibald of the International Crane Foundation and his colleagues at the DMZ Forum: Hall Healy, Dr. E. O. Wilson of Harvard, and Dr. Kim Ke Chung of Pennsylvania State University. In South Korea, I was hosted with consummate thoroughness by the Korean Federation of Environmental Movement, among the most impressive NGOs I’ve ever encountered. I fondly thank my traveling companions Ahn Chang-Hee, Kim Kyung-won, Park Jong-Hak, Jin Ik-Tae, and especially Ma Yong-Un, one of the most thoughtful, capable, and committed human beings I have the pleasure to know.

In England, I discovered a true living jewel 30 miles north of the Tower of London: Rothamsted Research. My thanks to Paul Poulton for showing Rothamsted’s magnificent archive and its long-running experiments to me, and to Richard Bromilow and Steve McGrath for discussing their work with soil additives and contaminants. Farther south, my understanding of the landscape owes much to traveling through Dartmoor with Tavistock archaeologist Tom Greeves and to a conversation with University of Exeter geographer Chris Caseldine. And, on a beach on Britain’s southern coast, Richard Thompson of the University of Plymouth launched me into an investigation of plastics that became one of this book’s most lasting—in all senses of the word—metaphors for unintended consequences. My thanks to him and his student Mark Browne, and to plastics experts in the United States he suggested: Tony Andrady of the North Carolina Research Triangle and Capt. Charles Moore of the Algita Marine Research Foundation.

To visit the petrochemical complex that stretches from Houston to Galveston is both easy and maddeningly difficult. The easy part is that you can’t miss it, because in that bend of the Texas Gulf Coast, it is practically omnipresent. The hard part, for whatever proprietary or less-justifiable reasons, is gaining entrance to petroleum and chemical plants. Journalists are regarded much like contaminants—an understandable, but regrettable, defensive reflex. I am grateful to Juan Parras at Texas Southern University for legwork he did on my behalf, and for the openness and candor with which I was eventually received at Texas Petrochemical by environmental-health-safety director Max Jones, and at Valero Refining in Texas City by spokesman Fred Newsome. In the same region, several scientists and ecologists gave me a glimpse of the world before—and possibly after—the human race’s potent, but problematic, affair with petroleum derivatives: John Jacob at the Texas Coastal Watershed Program, Brandon Crawford of The Nature Conservancy, Sammy Ray at Texas A&M-Galveston, and, especially, wetlands biologist Andy Sipocz of Texas Parks and Wildlife.