Where the Grass Still Sings: Stories of Insects and Interconnection (Animalibus: Of Animals and Cultures)

Through narrative, verse, and art, Where the Grass Still Sings celebrates the many tiny creatures that play crucial roles in our ecosystems―as well as the people on the front lines of the fight to save them. Weaving art and science with inspiring stories of people doing their part to protect insects and the environment, author Heather Swan takes readers around the globe to highlight practical solutions to safeguard our fragile planet. Visit a sustainable coffee farm in Ecuador and a frog expert combating animal trafficking in Colombia. Explore a butterfly sanctuary in an Andean cloud forest and learn about a family of orchid farmers who are replanting a mountainside to attract native pollinators. Meet a bumblebee expert helping Wisconsin cranberry growers, a bark beetle specialist in a new-growth forest in Georgia, an entomologist collecting for the Essig Museum in California, and more. Against a backdrop of climate change, ecological injustice, and impending mass extinction, this book rekindles wonder and hope. Featuring works by artists deeply invested in preserving the smallest beings among us, Where the Grass Still Sings is a paean to the natural world. Beginning with a visit to an insect museum curator and then on to meetings with people in Ecuador and Colombia, two of the most biologically diverse countries in the world, and eventually to the midwestern United States, where you can witness the devastating effects of industrial monocropping with agrochemicals, the book illuminates our precarious and crucial interdependence with insects. Each chapter introduces another story about innovative people and projects aiming to preserve an appropriate balance so that insects and humans (and other nonhumans) can thrive.