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... Phoebe crisscrossed the globe with ever-deepening abandon, staking out rare and spectacular birds in the wildest places on earth. She still took … - Olivia Gentile
" "... Phoebe crisscrossed the globe with ever-deepening abandon, staking out rare and spectacular birds in the wildest places on earth. She still took tours, but she took increasingly fringe ones, and as time went on she took more trips on her own, hiring local guides to show her around. She slept in s, at truck stops, and by the side of the road; she traveled in tiny planes, in canoes, and on horseback. Once, she was chased by tribesmen with ten-foot-long spears; another time, she was boat wrecked in the middle of the ocean. On the island of , she was carjacked, kidnapped, and brutally assaulted by five thugs. Ten years after being diagnosed with terminal cancer, Phoebe had become obsessed with the notion of seeing eight thousand species, more than any other birder in history. She had also lost the capacity to take into account her family, her health, and her safety.
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About Olivia Gentile
(born 1974) is a journalist and biographer, known for her 2009 book Life List: A Woman’s Quest for the World’s Most Amazing Birds. The book is a biography of Phoebe Snetsinger, a and the first person to see birds from more than 8,0000 different species. Gentile graduated in 1996 with a bachelor’s degree in social studies from Harvard University and in 2003 with an M.F.A, degree in nonfiction writing from . She was a reporter for from 1999 to 2001 and from 1996 to 1999. She won the Vermont Press Association's Rookie Reporter of the Year Award and the Connecticut Society of Professional Journalist's Magazine Writing Award. Gentile has published articles in , , , , and .
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... Phoebe married a few days after she graduated, became a housewife in the Minneapolis suburbs, and had four children in quick succession ... She tried being a teacher and a leader, but didn't take to either. Then, one sunny spring morning when she was thirty-four, when only one of her kids had started school and the youngest two were still in diapers, an neighbor took her out birdwatching. As she beheld the blazing orange throat of a that was perched in the top of a tree, she had an epiphany akin to a religious awakening.
, in some ways, is like a religion. Some people get hooked on birds gradually, but many other have an experience like Phoebe's, an awakening triggered by a "spark bird." Many religious people seek to transcend the everyday by praying or meditating; birders seek transcendence by spending time in nature. Bird clubs give them a sort of church, a community of like-minded people who offer companionship and support.
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Last month, the , in conjunction with several conservation organizations, released a State of the Birds report, an assessment of the health of the country’s 800 bird species. The findings were mixed. On the one hand, nearly one-third of our birds face the possibility of extinction, have suffered a serious population decline or are in danger of such a decline. On the other hand, many of the species that were in trouble several decades ago, such as the and dozens of wetland birds, are now thriving precisely because our conservation efforts have paid off.
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The banning of DDT and other toxic pesticides also has led to the recovery of the and the in recent decades, according to the report. Over the same period, s, which give hunters and bird watchers a year’s access to National Wildlife Refuges for $15, have generated hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue, nearly all of which has gone to expanding wetland refuges. As a result, wetland bird populations have increased by nearly 60% since 1968, the report found. Species that have made particularly impressive recoveries include the , and .
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