Disappearing Destinations

January 28, 2008
The expression “tourist hot spot” takes on new meaning in this fact-packed survey of travel destinations endangered by global warming, environmental degradation, predatory logging, mining and fishing and the impact of too many tourists. In 37 essays, travel journalists Lisagor and Hansen vividly document places in peril, ranging from the ocean nations of Tuvalu and the Maldives, slowly submerging beneath rising waters, to the historic ski chalets of the Alps, where snow is falling less and melting faster. The catalogue of disasters is chilling: the glaciers are vanishing from America's Glacier National Park; the ancient city of Timbuktu in central Mali is succumbing to desertification; warming seas are bleaching Australia's Great Barrier Reef; dry winters and inept water management have drained life from the Rio Grande; and the relentless march of hundreds of thousands of enthralled tourists is causing irrevocable damage to the ancient Incan city of Machu Picchu. The authors' accounts of how the world's beauty is being despoiled, based on sharp on-site reporting, are a cautionary call to arms for tourists to fight environmental excesses and, when traveling, to tread lightly.

April 14, 2008
Written with care by Lisagor and Hansen, both wilderness and travel journalists, this ecologically-minded travelogue takes readers to a gaggle of stunning but delicate spots around the globe selected "because they are either unique and threatened or emblematic of... similar struggles" in multiple locations. Beginning with the Appalachians of West Virginia, a landscape mangled by mountain-top removal coal mining, each site gets a close look, including its history, ecology, geography, a detailed analysis of its vulnerabilities, and often one or two voices from it. Other destinations include the Danube River delta, Venice, the Great Barrier Reef and the Yangtze River Valley in China, now lost beneath the world's largest hydropower project (the Three Gorges Dam, five times longer than the Hoover). Though it's not meant to be a complete catalog, some spots seem (much) less significant than others-the vineyards in Napa Valley, say-and there's some easy-to-spot omissions (the only archaeological site discussed is Macchu Picchu). As a broad survey of the kinds of treasures being lost to pressures of climate change, resource extraction, modernization and development, and just-too-many people, this is a useful resource for understanding the dizzying pace of worldwide environmental degradation, including helpful lists of organizations working for preservation.

Copyright 2008 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

February 15, 2008
Dive into any chapter in this unusual and ensnaring collection, the one on Puerto Ricos bioluminescent bays, lets say, or Mount Rainer, or the Dead Sea, and you enter the pleasure zone of vivid, smart travel writing. But journalists Lisagor and Hansen quickly break the spell by chronicling the environmental devastation under way in the planets most glorious places. Lisagor and Hansen not only vividly document the problems butalso seek solutions in conversations with activists determined to halt mountaintop-removal coal extraction in Appalachia, the littering hordes wrecking Machu Picchu and Mount Kilimanjaro (nearly bereft now of its fabled snows), and the overdevelopment threatening the Galpagos Islands. But the most harrowing damage is caused by global warming. The planetsglaciers are melting, causing floods and promising severe water shortages. Ocean levels are rising, placing Venice and manycoastal areas in jeopardy, while desertification is endangering legendary Timbuktu. By reporting on observable environmental decimation in places of profound natural beauty and cultural and spiritual significance, Lisagor and Hansen seek to arouse alarm and stoke resistance to further ruination.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2008, American Library Association.)