ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the authors estimate that “the window for effective action is very short, probably two or three decades at most” and that their research points “to ever more powerful assaults on biodiversity in the next two decades, painting a dismal picture of the future of life, including human life”. Writing life and death means evoking absence and presence. Barbara Holloway's story “A Sheep’s Eye View” allows an ewe to narrate her own life story, which, with its description of being “owned and handled by so many different men”, echoes the exploitation of female cattle in Reines’ The Cow. Rick De Vos, in his essay “A Triumphal Entry, a Stifled Cry, a Hushed Retreat,” deploys writing in a similar way, weaving perspectives of American specimen-collector Charles McCauley Hoy and his prey, two Australian platypuses and the (Chinese) baiji or dolphin, to prompt an awareness of the implications of the colonial fervor for hunting.
