I had high expectations for this book and it may have affected my appreciation of it. It was entertaining, but compared to other scientific books I have read it felt superficial. It focused too much on the author himself and not enough on the owls and their ecosystem.

I tried this multiple times over the time I've had it (about a year, damn...) and I thought I would really enjoy it, but I got about a third of the way through and felt like I was reading about Slaght's observations on the Russian people rather than on the search for the owl, or the owl itself. And, sure, I'll acknowledge that people need to be involved in the search, but to be honest it's just not my kind of thing to read more about them than the owls. The writing was quite good, but quite repetitive, and I found it a little dull, so I guess this one just wasn't for me!

I think I will be in the minority here but I did not like this book. I was incredibly excited to read it because I love reading about natural history and I've worked in wildlife rehabilitation and on wildlife conservation projects so I assumed this would be up my alley. Instead I found Slaught's writing boring and repetitive. His descriptions of Primorye are probably the best thing about this book. It brought to mind John Valliant's The Tiger, which occurs in the same region in Russia. It is very obvious that Slaught is a debut author. The pacing was off and there was somehow, strangely, in a book about a specific owl, less information than I would have wanted about the owl and more observations on the Russian people Slaught encountered. Invariably that would also have made for a good story, but everything just runs together by the end. I kept reading because I kept waiting for the book to pick up, for my expectations to be met, but it never did.

One of four reviews in a roundup of science books for Book and Film Globe website.

Owls of The Eastern Ice is a travelogue and study of a rare, little seen bird called the fish owl. That sounds like a Monty Python sketch or a CRISPR project gone awry. It’s called the fish owl because, rather uniquely for owls, it thrives on fish that it hunts in rivers. They’re extremely rare, found mostly in parts of Japan and the far reaches of Russia. And they’re going extinct.

Like any good student, author Jonathan C. Slaght found this poorly-documented creature and thought, research project! A little funding, some advice from his advisers, and Slaght is off on his adventure to track down the fish owl, figure out its breeding patterns, and devise a plan to protect the poor fellow.

Slaght’s scientific odyssey involves a surprising amount of vodka. He nicely balances his book between tales of the humans he meets (like a hermit hiding from organized crime or the many, many men who produce a bottle of alcohol and prove mightily offended if he doesn’t empty it by the end of the night) and the intriguing details of this sneaky, private bird. Colorful, amusing, slightly shaggy, it’s a good tale even if it involves a great deal of waiting around in the miserable cold. No easy feat but Slaght maintains your interest. Still, I’m slightly surprised it made the long list for the National Book Award.

-- By Michael Giltz
mgiltz@pipeline.com

Jonathan C. Slaght is a wildlife conservationist dedicated to preserving and documenting the Blakiston fish owl, a rare species found primarily in Siberia. In Owls of the Eastern Ice, he documents his time in the Russian Far East, and the unique challenges of trying to research this incredibly elusive predator. Slaght also details how he became acquainted with this lesser-known bird, beginning his life-changing journey of tracking and working for their conservation. He would ultimately spend five years on visits to Russia’s remote, farthest-flung region in an attempt to research and protect the owls in their natural habitat.

Blakiston’s fish owls are huge, in owl terms. They top out at more than two feet tall with a six-foot wingspan. The first one Slaght and his fellow researchers caught weighed “almost three times the average weight of a male great horned owl,” for comparison.

It’s an informative look into what goes into this kind of tricky fieldwork and the principles of conservation — how complicated each step of the process can be, how much can quickly change, how intricate it all is. As well as the difficulties inherent in working as a field scientist. There are just so many uncontrollable factors involved in trying to locate and tag the owls. Not to mention the terrain itself — Slaght describes having to throw himself into climbing trees, staying up all night in the eerie, mysterious darkness of the Siberian forests, and of course wrangling the frightening and potentially dangerous owls when they’re able to be caught and tagged.

Slaght shows brilliantly how challenging this is, and walks the reader through the processes when issues arise, like owls shedding their trackers or confusion over their identities (with so few in the area, there were limited options as to who one might be, although it was very exciting for the scientists when it seemed there was a new one, or eggs or baby chicks in a nest).

Slaght’s writing is well polished and accessible for lay readers without much background in any of his topics — conservation, owls, or Siberia, and he colorfully weaves in some of the culture and atmosphere of this remote but fascinating area of eastern Russia. His descriptions can be absolutely amazing, describing one man encountered thus: “He walked gingerly, with knees that had borne his weight for close to six decades and grown weary of the task.”

Or my favorite, when an Amur tiger had been sighted in the region, causing their Russian host, a colorful Siberian local, to set out to try and find it before it found them: “The sight parodied a tiger hunt from imperial India: a royal riding proudly upon an elephant’s back in search of his elusive striped prize. Only here it was an eccentric Russian straddling a wheezing tractor in his underwear.”

As good as this objectively was, and as important as I think it is for understanding of animal conservation, I didn’t feel as intense an interest as I expected to. I guess I’m more generally interested in stories and experiences from Siberia, and so I found myself less invested in the details of the actual fieldwork around the owls (I know that sounds awful — I’m sorry, owls! I still want the best for you!). I so loved his descriptions of traveling through the Primorye region, and the locals who assisted the scientists, that I wanted much more of this. What’s there was still very much a highlight though. For those with a strong interest in natural science and learning about the nitty gritty of conservation efforts, as well as this species of owl that I, and I suspect many others, have never heard of, it’s an excellent guide from the most preeminent scientist working to protect them.

For those who didn't get a chance to meet me back in the Children's Room in the whole three months I was there before the world turned upside down, I was an animal keeper for almost twenty years before coming to Galesburg Public Library. I was watching a webinar on upcoming autumn books when the presenter started talking about a researcher from the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) who had worked with fish owls in Russia. Now, back in 2013 I attended a conservation conference (remember conferences?) and heard a WCS researcher talk about fish owls in Russia. If he had been talking about tigers, it might not have been the same guy, but once you get away from charismatic megafauna, the world gets pretty small. A quick Facebook search revealed that yep, Jonathan was the guy I had heard speak. NetGalley was kind enough to send me an ARC to review (thank you!), and I read through it within the week.

Owls of the Eastern Ice is a fantastic and fascinating first hand account into what goes into boots on the ground conservation. Jonathan began working with Blakiston's fish owls as part of a multi-year study that took him into the wintry forests of Eastern Russia. Working with a number of Russian researchers and assistants, he set out to identify, trap, band, and attach monitors to the barely-studied fish owls, in addition to figuring out what type of habitat they needed. You can pass laws protecting a species from direct harm, but unless you protect the land and water that they need to feed and breed, you can still watch them slip through your fingers. Unfortunately, this basic information is lacking for many endangered species. Throughout the course of the years and the study, Jonathan and his party raced snowmobiles across melting rivers, discovered hours-old Amur tiger tracks next to their own, came up with brand new ways to trap a species rarely trapped before, dealt with temperatures that cause electronics to just give up, braved blizzards and less than hygienic food prep (seriously, A+ descriptions of field life here), and drank a lot of vodka with the locals.

One of the things that really jumped out at me was how well this book explains the basics of conservation field work. It describes how one goes about setting up a conservation biology based PhD study, including the courses you have to take during the off-season, the jobs you have to work to support yourself, the field work, and the dry statistics that come after you get home that lets you write that all important paper. Owls of the Eastern Ice focuses on how having the basic ecological information about a species, in the owls' case specific waterways and old-growth nesting trees, is so important. Targeting focused areas for preservation while freeing up other locations that can be safely used for commercial purposes is vital for getting local support for conservation.

This book is a wonderful look at a little-known species that looks like it came from the Jim Henson Company, a fantastic escape to a very different part of the world, and a well-written account of what goes in to saving a species. The book comes out on August 4 of this year, and Galesburg Public Library will have a copy. Thank you to NetGalley and Farrar, Straus and Giroux @fsgbooks for the ARC.
Originally published at Books You Can Die in the Middle of: https://lookgoodifyoudie.blogspot.com/2020/07/owls-of-eastern-ice-quest-to-find-and.html