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Poet and linguist Melanie Challenger tours half the the world in On Extinction: How we became estranged from nature

鈥淭HIS consideration must surely tell us that all living things were not made for man.鈥� Thus mused the great naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace in his classic 1869 book The Malay Archipelago. He was describing his first sight of the king bird of paradise, an exquisite red and golden denizen of the forests of New Guinea 鈥� a 鈥減erfect little organism鈥�, he called it 鈥� and reflecting on the relationship between our species and the many others with which we share the planet.

It is not just scientists who have been prompted to ponder this relationship. In On Extinction, poet and linguist Melanie Challenger takes us on three 鈥減eregrinations鈥� 鈥� journeys in both space and thought 鈥� to contemplate the meaning of loss. The 鈥渆xtinction鈥� of the title refers not only to extinction of species, today referred to as the biodiversity crisis, but also to the loss of languages, cultures, ways of life, industries and, centrally, the loss of a connection with nature itself.

With the obligatory nod to Charles Darwin on the way, Challenger draws on widely varied sources, including Aristotle, ancient Anglo-Saxon and T. S. Eliot, and events from the bombing of Hiroshima to the rise of GM crops. The book begins as if there will be a right way to think about the topic, but the reader is soon, and in my case happily, disabused; this is a book to make you think.

Challenger begins the journey with a childhood fascination with the life-size model of a blue whale hanging in London鈥檚 Natural History Museum. As a museum scientist, it is thrilling to me to see how a specimen can spark such exploration. Whales, along with wildflowers and boats, are among the many threads Challenger weaves through the book, which is full of skilful connections between the seemingly unrelated, such as Dracula and eugenics via fear of 鈥渟avage鈥� nature.

Challenger travels through Cornwall in the south-west of the UK to Antarctica and Tierra del Fuego in South America, then to New York City and Baffin Island in the Canadian Arctic, before ending up back in the UK at the Wicken Fen nature reserve near Cambridge. There, searching for fen violets, she discovers for herself something I have long thought: that human beings have an astoundingly short ecological memory. This lies at the heart of our ambiguity over what counts as natural, and what constitutes nature itself.

鈥淗umans鈥� short ecological memory lies at the heart of our ambiguity over what counts as 鈥榥atural鈥欌��

People鈥檚 unease with new technologies is often articulated as a concern with the unnaturalness of things. Take genetically engineered crops, for example 鈥� are any crops natural? In a similar vein, Challenger vividly describes the technological advances in whaling, which have caused the near-extinction of these great creatures. Yet she met an Inuit hunter on Baffin Island who, despite the culture鈥檚 historically sustainable approach to hunting, felt that only a modern gun could have killed the whale they had struggled to catch.

Landscapes like the moors of Cornwall are seen as natural in the UK even though they have been profoundly altered by the activities of previous generations. Does this make them unnatural? To what state should we return if we desire a reconnection with nature?

Challenger exposes these for the incredibly tricky questions they are. Her observation that 鈥渢he indefatigable action of time made it impossible to fix on a point for return鈥� to me sums up the nature of nature itself and the ambiguity of our relationship with it. What is nature though? Is it good and pure as some might have us think, or bad and to be subdued as the utilitarian John Stuart Mill thought?

The book ends with Challenger discovering her local environment from her narrowboat in Wicken Fen, and with the idea that a personal connection to nature, whatever that might be, is a good start. On Extinction doesn鈥檛 offer answers to any of the complex questions it raises, but it will make you pause to consider your own relationship with the natural world that surrounds you.