'Among the Islands Adventures in the Pacific'

by Tim Flannery

Atlantic Monthly Press, 246 pp., $25

In the 1980s and '90s, mammalogist and environmentalist Tim Flannery, an Australian author/editor of more than 20 books including "The Weather Makers" and "Throwim Way Leg," "had the best job in the world." For a decade, he led researchers to South Pacific islands looking for marsupials, bats and rats that lived only in these remote places.

During those pre-Internet days, even Flannery was unsure what they'd encounter. Preparations meant hunting libraries and museums the world over for books to consult and specimens to study. Then, having a clearer idea what might be out there, the teams' goal was to find new species, ascertain which known ones still existed and which had become extinct due to logging, mining, development or population growth.

And, as Flannery's title says what adventures they had. And what fun it is to follow along via his delightful stories, into jungle rain forests and up steep mountains, to erect mist nets of fine mesh to examine whatever flies into them.

All this without having to handle snakes and suffer bugs, heat, rain, mud, and weird food such as canned haggis and Kava root chewed to a pulp and served in spit. Plus no lugging heavy equipment and avoiding dangers associated with societies once known for cannibalism.

It's hard to imagine such lost worlds now, but Flannery introduces each island with a brief history and overview. He also provides several excellent maps. If you've never heard of the D'Entrecasteaux Group, for example, you can locate it near New Guinea, to which it was once attached.

While Guadalcanal might ring a bell for students of World War II, its Mount Makarakomburu probably won't. There, Flannery spotted a black honeyeater, a bird not seen for decades and known only from a few museum specimens collected in the 1920s.

"Our record," he notes, "confirmed its survival and so was an important contribution to conservation." But, as relations with locals grew difficult, Flannery began sleeping with his rifle and machete.

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'Among the Islands': through mist and mud to a South Pacific wonderland