Through the Russian Wilderness in Search of the World’s Largest Owl

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/04/books/review/owls-of-the-eastern-ice-jonathan-slaght.html

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OWLS OF THE EASTERN ICEA Quest to Find and Save the World’s Largest OwlBy Jonathan C. Slaght

The wildlife biologist Jonathan Slaght first viewed the forests and mountains of the Primorye at 19 years old, when the wild terrain seemed to call him to explore and ultimately protect the inhospitable land from those who would plunder its timber, minerals and salmon. A veritable Noah’s ark of animals coexist in this extraordinary habitat: tigers, bears, leopards, moose, wild boar, sable, fox, deer, elk — and Slaght’s chosen subject, Blakiston’s fish owl. Slaght’s hope, and the premise of his engaging tale, is that uncovering the secrets of this mysterious raptor will help win it protection. In conservation, saving one species often means saving many.

Slaght’s story begins in 2005, when he teams up with a motley Russian crew to conduct research and build a conservation plan for the owls. From the warmth of an office, it sounds straightforward enough. Slaght has spent years researching wildlife in the Primorye and is well accustomed to the region’s peculiarities and privations. Still, he is not wholly prepared for what is to come.

The best time to research fish owls is winter, when the owl’s strange tracks lie etched on snowy riverbanks, and their feathers flutter visibly in bare branches. It is also a brutal season in the Russian Far East, one that continually threatens to annihilate Slaght and his team as they navigate frozen rivers and their deadly thaw, with massive cracking sheets of ice and sudden slush that could swallow man, beast and snowmobile whole.

The Primorye can be pitiless, full of “quiet violence.” Those who manage to survive have been ravaged by the elements, by scarcity and by the forest itself. Deep in the woods it gets strange, and Slaght’s tireless search for owls is relieved by entertaining accounts of eccentric recluses, hunters and mystical hermits. Though “meeting a person in the woods was usually a bad thing,” Slaght observes, his crew had little choice. On their shoestring budget they need all the help they can get and repeatedly endure the social-bonding ritual of draining a bottle of vodka (or ethanol) to gain a welcome and possibly a floor to sleep on.

Mostly this is a book about the rigors of fieldwork, about cohabitating in close quarters, being stranded for weeks by storms, floods and melting ice, rejiggering strategies, “aching” immobility, malfunctioning equipment and various other misfortunes, all vividly rendered. Slaght knows this life, but he has never burrowed so deep into its dark, silent heart. We are plunged along with him into “poking thorns, prodding branches and unexpected falls,” into long frozen nights, meals of moose meat and hard candy, shredded clothes, endless paths and trails beaten, rivers forged, catastrophic weather and near-death adventures. And waiting. Lots of waiting.

Slaght has spent so much of his life waiting that waiting has long since evolved into a Zen-like state of noticing, of presence. Keeping us tucked close, we discover what it feels like to become aware of every little thing, to fully inhabit a living landscape. For this reason and others, this is an unusual (and welcome) book for our times.

Halfway through the story floats a feather from Slaght’s other life, a brief sentence about a fiancée and a wedding to plan. As if we’ve found a mango in the snow, we pause, curious. But then it’s back to the owls, and the unlikely (but very true) romance of nights waiting “in silence, like suitors,” for them to sound their enchanting synchronized duets.

The enigmatic fish owls, when they appear, are surprisingly un-owl-like, not gliding down from the trees so much as “dropping” like sacks. At a meter high, they are at once imposing and comical, a jumble of feathers with ragged, twitching ear tufts. Hunting underwater prey, they have lost their adaptation of silent flight, as well as the disk-shaped face designed for maximum audio performance. They seem endearingly awkward creatures, stalking the riverbank like hunched feathery gnomes, peering for glimmers of fish, then hurling themselves talon-first into the current.

As the team members struggle to gain a working knowledge of their subject, chasing its calls in the dark of night, scanning trees for its bulky outline, they are often humbled, their theories upended. After managing to capture and tag a good number of birds, Slaght is flummoxed that the researchers still can’t tell the male from the female. It is with heroic persistence and a bit of luck that they succeed in collecting enough data for a conservation plan. Some would run gleefully from this 20-month ordeal, but Slaght finishes the project with reluctance.

It is a testament to his talents as a writer-researcher that we appreciate why Slaght loves it here. The primal forces of the Primorye have drawn him close to his essence; to his strengths and vulnerabilities — to his impermanence. There is peace and healing to be found in such a life, and perhaps just the right balance for his soul.

After being away, Slaght writes upon his return: “I was truly comfortable here, alone among the trees, breathing in the cold air.”