Owls of the Eastern Ice

Jonathan C. Slaght is an American biologist, researcher and writer with extensive field experience in the remote regions of the Russian Far East. It is here that he takes us in his Owls of the Eastern Ice, originally published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. The book chronicles four years of research on Blakiston’s fish owl, an endangered species that inhabits Primorye—a narrow stretch of coastal land on the border between Russia, Japan, China, and North Korea. This is a land of vast coniferous forests, blanketed in snow and ice for much of the year, harsh and inhospitable. But this is not a treatise on ornithology. It is a captivating story, in which one can lose oneself as in a grand adventure, with its vivid naturalistic descriptions and tales of the people who call this extreme environment home, seen through Slaght’s keen anthropological eye. We encounter this “dishevelled mass of wood-chip brown”—a colossal owl, “almost too big and too comical to be a real bird”—but also fishermen stranded at sea, the hushed wilderness where deer, Amur tigers, and giant salmon roam, and the scattered human outposts where the author meets an eclectic cast of characters in search of refuge or adventure: former KGB agents, hunters, hermits, and criminals on the run. A thrilling read, Owls of the Eastern Ice invites us to reflect on the delicate balance of nature and the impact of humans on fragile ecosystems.

Owls of the Eastern Ice
Jonathan C. Slaght
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2020