Franklin Environmental Center, The Orchard-Hillcrest 103
531 College Street
Middlebury, VT 05753
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Open to the Public

“The Making of The Narrow Edge” by Deborah Cramer, Author, Visiting Scholar Environmental Solutions Initiative, MIT.

A small sandpiper—the red knot—is the first U. S. bird listed under the Endangered Species Act whose future is imperiled by global warming.  If the law isn’t eviscerated, it won’t be the last.  Each year, the birds fly between Tierra del Fuego and the Arctic and back, taking the measure of a shoreline running the length of two continents.  It is a shoreline of the Anthropocene, increasingly reshaped by development, overfishing, beach erosion and storm surges.  Along their route, the birds refuel on the pin-sized eggs of horseshoe crabs, whose numbers have plummeted, but whose blue blood safeguards human health.  Deborah Cramer accompanied the birds along their extraordinary migration to bring back a firsthand account in her award-winning book The Narrow Edge: A Tiny Bird, An Ancient Crab, and An Epic Journey. Join her to explore the kinds of choices she made as, writing the book, she sought to bridge the gap between how scientists and the public understand the world. 

Book signing to follow.

Sponsored by:
Environmental Studies

Contact Organizer

Hunt, Lily
lnhunt@middlebury.edu
443-5552