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A Search for One of Earth's Rarest Creatures
by William deBuys
Book Reviewed by:An award-winning author's stirring quest to find and understand an elusive and exceptionally rare species in the heart of Southeast Asia's jungles.
In 1992, in a remote mountain range, a team of scientists discovered the remains of an unusual animal with beautiful long horns. It turned out to be a living species new to western science - a saola, the first large land mammal discovered in 50 years.
Rare then and rarer now, no westerner had glimpsed a live saola before Pulitzer Prize finalist and nature writer William deBuys and conservation biologist William Robichaud set off to search for it in the wilds of central Laos. The team endured a punishing trek, up and down whitewater rivers and through mountainous terrain ribboned with the snare lines of armed poachers.
In the tradition of Bruce Chatwin, Colin Thubron, and Peter Matthiessen, The Last Unicorn is deBuys's look deep into one of the world's most remote places. As in the pursuit of the unicorn, the journey ultimately becomes a quest for the essence of wildness in nature, and an encounter with beauty.
The Last Unicorn is an enthralling and sobering account of a modern-day quest with a mythic underpinning, a tale filled with grace and eloquence and despair. It deals movingly with a brink that is much less celestial but more consequential – for the creatures of the world, and for ourselves...continued
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(Reviewed by James Broderick).
Travel literature has contributed immeasurably to many people's understanding of foreign lands and cultures they might not otherwise visit – or even become aware of. One of the many contributions of travel writers – such as William deBuys, author of The Last Unicorn – has been to raise awareness of the global epidemic of poaching, the removal of fauna and flora (almost always protected by regional and international laws), a scourge that, in addition to habitat loss and environmental pollution, threatens many species of plant and animal with extinction. The mountainous terrain that deBuys navigates is frequently cris-crossed by the snare lines of armed poachers.
As developed nations and international agencies continue to...
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Alan Weisman, author of Countdown and The World Without Us
It would be an understatement to call a forest, in all its deep complexity, merely beautiful. The same goes for The Last Unicorn. As he tracks a living myth through the jungles of Laos, deBuys' eyes and ears miss nothing, and his poetic grace conveys everything. I haven't read a journey so epic, lyrical, and meaningful since Peter Matthiessen's The Snow Leopard.
