Questions Raised by Quolls: Fatherhood and Conservation in an Uncertain World

‘They came at dusk, drawn to our camp site by the smell of food. We were cleaning up after dinner in the gathering dark, the pots and pans scraped empty but with traces of our meal still lingering, when we heard the noise of them: yapping calls, one to the other, or just to themselves in their excitement.’ When Harry Saddler first encountered a quoll while camping with his father, he was struck by the beauty of the rare creature who had emerged from the bush, sniffing for dinner. As Harry frantically snapped a photo, the fast-moving mammal disappeared back into the undergrowth. Many years later that blurry photo remains a memory, as fleeting as the animal it captured. After two centuries of habitat destruction, quolls are now on the brink of extinction and Harry, contemplating fatherhood, aches for the absence of all the species lost to children born today. Questions Raised by Quolls is an eloquent examination of extinction and conservation set against the backdrop of global climate change. From his own family lineage, Harry reveals how humanity’s ever-accelerating modern way of life runs parallel with the destruction of the natural world. Evocative and challenging, this eulogy to lost species will force you to question your place in the vast interconnected web of life.