Tony Juniper

Spix’s Macaw: The Race to Save the World’s Rarest Bird

Tony Juniper

An environmental parable for our times – the story of a beautiful blue bird meeting its nemesis at the end of the 20th-century.In December 1897 the Reverend F. G. Dutton lamented that ‘there are so many calls on a parson’s purse, that he cannot always treat himself to expensive parrots.’ He was hoping to purchase a Spix’s Macaw, a rare and beautiful parrot found in a remote area of Brazil. Today, the parson’s search would be in vain. By the turn of the millennium only one survivor, a lone male, existed in the wild.Spix’s Macaw tells the hearbreaking story of a unique band of brilliant blue birds – who talk, fall in love, and grieve – struggling against the forces of extinction and their own desirability. By the second half of the 20th-century the birds became gram for gram more valuable than heroin; so valuable that they drew up to $40,000 on the black markets. When, in 1990, only one was found to be living in the wild, an emergency international rescue operation was launched and an amnesty declared, allowing private collectors to come forward with their illegal birds, possible mates for the last wild Spix.In a breathtaking display of stoicism and endurance, the loneliest bird in the world had lived without a mate for fourteen years, had outwitted predators and second-guessed the poachers. But would he take to a new companion? Spix’s Macaws are like humans – they can’t be forced to love. With exquisite detail, this book tells the dramatic story of the rescue operation, and of the humans whose selfishness and greed brought a beautiful species to the brink of extinction. The long, lonely flight of the last Spix’s Macaw is both a love story and an environmental parable for our times.

Harmony: A New Way of Looking at Our World

Tony Juniper

A practical guide to what we have lost in the modern world, why we have lost it and how easy it is to rediscover. Harmony is a blueprint for a more balanced, sustainable world that the human race must create to survive.Long before the phrase climate change was a universal catchphrase, His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales was studying the impact of industrialization on the environment. Now in this fascinating cross-discipline work, the Prince of Wales calls upon his years of research and explores the way in which mankind must work to restore the delicate balance with nature that we've lost in the centuries since the industrial revolution began.In 'Harmony', His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales draws upon a variety of elements from our modern world, and discusses how areas as diverse as architecture, farming, medicine have each abandoned the classical balances with nature that existed in pre-industrial times. From the rice farms of India to America's corn belt, 'Harmony' spans the globe, dissecting the specific practices of modern life that have put us at odds with nature and showing how these trends manifest themselves throughout the world.Contrasting current styles of architecture with traditional design, modern medicine techniques against those of the past, he paints a clear portrait of what we as a species have lost in the modern age. More than simply another treatise on global warming, 'Harmony' tells a story that presents a clear, thoughtful look at how our disassociation from nature has helped to in the greatest environmental crisis in the history of mankind.