Wild Edens

From the summit of Kilimanjaro, Africa's highest mountain, the author surveys the marvelous Edens of East Africa, among the last Pleistocene-like concentrations of animals left in the world today. Descending, Shomon gives a firsthand account of the great sanctuaries, providing a knowledgeable escort on safari in the scrublands of Tsavo, where elephants are imperiled. He continues on to the Ark at Aberdares, where visitors can watch, under floodlights of a watchtower, rain forest animals come to feed; to the rain forests of Mount Kenya; and to the Serengeti and Mara Plains, with their great migrating herds besieged by predators and thwarted in their journeys by swollen rivers and flooded lakes.

The journey continues through the Great Rift Valley and Olduvai Gorge to Lake Manyara with its tree-climbing lions: Ngorongoro Crater: Samburu and Meru, where the rhino is threatened: the waterways of Uganda: the Mountains of the Moon: the Kalahari Desert; and the wildlife sanctuaries of South Africa, ending the tour at the Cape of Good Hope.

Shomon argues that the growth of impersonal technology and excessive mechanization, as well as the world's focus on violence, social ills, and discord on our domestic front, consume the world's energies, leaving little interest for safeguarding and conserving Africa's wild edens.

Shomon's engaging and informative text, complemented with attractivephotographs and pen-and-ink drawings, encourages those interested in Africa and its wildlife to visit the cradle of our ancestral beginnings, if only from their armchairs, and to take an active role in its preservation and conservation.