‘A truly marvellous book. At the hand of a writer like Witty, we have not just a brilliantly readable account of environmental dramas and tensions – described in extraordinary and often exasperating clarity – but also a timely story of profound importance. Not only are these stories of heroic underdogs riveting, but they are told in effortlessly soaring prose. This book sets a new high-water mark in popular science writing.’ Darryl Jones, author of Curlews on Vulture Street
A devastating, brilliant book that will change how you think about the habitat around you
In 2024, an earless dragon was spotted – the first in over 50 years. Within weeks, ecologists and sniffer dogs patrolled the grasslands, as development ground to a halt. A species of lizard had effectively exacerbated the housing crisis, forcing an uncomfortable question: what matters more – our right to shelter or theirs to exist?
Across Australia, native species often get caught in the tug between environmental protection and urban development. Some – whether the koala (New South Wales), the orange-bellied parrot (Tasmania), the Boggomoss snail (Queensland), the pygmy blue-tongue lizard (South Australia), the plains-wanderer bird (Victoria) or the tiny peacock spider (Western Australia) – are so crucial to the ecosystems they inhabit that their demise can herald collapse. How did we come to see nature as a resource to exploit rather than an integral part of our future?
The dragon’s disappearance mirrors the vanishing of Victorian grasslands, Australia’s most endangered habitat. Both are part of a deeper story: one that connects John Batman’s vision of Port Phillip to the sprawling suburbs now built over ancient habitat. A story about how the men who declared Australia terra nullius and the modern developers who reshape it share more than we’d like to admit.
This is a book about what we miss when we don’t look closely and about the long shadow colonialism casts on how we treat the land. Weaving science, philosophy and history, it’s a reckoning with our past, and an urgent meditation on how we might change.
