Animal Memoirs Gone Wild

CONSERVATION EFFORTS OFTEN RELY on charismatic megafauna: large, endangered species that serve as poster children for the fight against extinction. It is because their numbers are in decline that these creatures accrue value. But in her 2014 memoir H is for Hawk, Helen Macdonald argues that the rarer an animal gets, the fewer possible meanings can be ascribed to it. “How can you love something,” she asks; “how can you fight to protect it, if all it means is loss?” Her book is an answer to that question: its careful portrait of her bond with her goshawk, Mabel, shows that predatory birds are worthy of our attention not just for their rarity but also for their long history as trained hunting companions, and what that history reveals about the human capacity for cruelty and care.