'One of Wanderlust's Books of the Year' and 'The Scotsman's Travel
Book of the Year'
"Sometimes it feels as though the whole planet has been so polluted and
ravaged that there are no Edens left, but they are there to be found by
those who step off the beaten track... So it was with mine."
Fifty years ago the interior of Borneo was a pristine, virgin rainforest
inhabited by uncontacted indigenous tribes and naïve, virtually tame,
wildlife. It was into this 'Garden of Eden' that Robin Hanbury Tenison
led one of the largest ever Royal Geographical Society expeditions, an
extraordinary undertaking which triggered the global rainforest movement
and illuminated, for the first time, how vital rainforests are to our
planet. For 15 months, Hanbury Tenison and a team of some of the
greatest scientists in the world immersed themselves in a place and a
way of life that is on the cusp of extinction. Much of what was once a
wildlife paradise is now a monocultural desert, devastated by logging
and the forced settlement of nomadic tribes, where traditional ways of
life and unimaginably rich and diverse species are slowly being driven
to extinction. This is a story for our time, one that reminds us of the
fragility of our planet and of the urgent need to preserve the last
untamed places of the world.
