Mama Poc: An Ecologist's Account of the Extinction of a Species

“This is the first careful account I have ever read of the death of one of the myriad types of creation. It covers the last twenty years not of an individual life but of a form of life. These marvelous birds deserve at the very least an obituary, and Anne LaBastille has given them a fine and moving one.” —Bill McKibben, author of The End of Nature Every day some species of plant or animal on our planet becomes extinct. In Mama Poc, the bestselling author of Woodswoman and Beyond Black Bear Lake relates her own attempts to halt the decline of a single species of bird found only in Guatemala. The giant grebe, a flightless bird living on mile-deep Lake Atitlan, came to LaBastille’s attention in 1964. Her population count revealed that a mere eighty-two birds remained. Over the course of twenty-five years, Anne LaBastille made the cause of the giant grebe her own. This is the story of her life in Guatemala, observing the birds and working to reclaim their habitat and—against odds that turned out to be overwhelming—give them a future.