Fen, Bog and Swamp: A Short History of Peatland Destruction and Its Role in the Climate Crisis

Written by Annie Proulx

A BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week ‘A subject that could not be more important. A compact classic!’ Bill McKibben ‘I learned something new – and found something amazing – on every page’ Anthony Doerr, author of All the Light We Cannot See

From Pulitzer Prize winner Annie Proulx – whose novels are infused with her knowledge and deep concern for the earth – comes an urgent and riveting history of wetlands, their ecological role and how the loss of them threatens the planet.

Fens, bogs, swamps and marine estuaries are the earth’s most desirable and dependable resources, and in four illuminating parts Proulx documents the emergence of their systemic destruction in the pursuit of profit and the consequent release of their stored carbon. Wide-ranging and idiosyncratic, Proulx’s explanation of wetlands takes readers to the fens of sixteenth-century England, Canada’s Hudson Bay Lowlands, Russia’s Great Vasyugan Mire and America’s Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge and introduces the nineteenth-century explorers who launched the ravaging of the Amazon rainforest.

Proulx was born in the 1930s, a time, as she says, when ‘in the ever-continuing name of progress, Western countries busily raped their own and other countries of minerals, timber, fish and wildlife.’ Fen, Bog & Swamp is both a revelatory history and an urgent plea for wetland reclamation from a writer whose passionate devotion to observing and preserving the environment is on glorious display.

‘Magnificent, bringing to life hitherto overlooked habitats’ Guardian

‘Proulx's sparkling book will open your eyes to humanity's reckless trashing of wetlands’ Telegraph

‘A haunting tribute … Proulx’s poetic description of these places, and peat itself, is a pleasure to read’ Financial Times

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
• Release date: Sep 27, 2022
• ISBN: 9780008534424

Annie Proulx

Annie Proulx is the author of nine books, including the novel The Shipping News, Barkskins and the story collection Close Range. Her many honors include a Pulitzer Prize, a National Book Award, the Irish Times International Fiction Prize, and a PEN/Faulkner award. Her story ‘Brokeback Mountain,’ which originally appeared in The New Yorker, was made into an Academy Award-winning film. She lives in New Hampshire.

Reviews for Fen, Bog and Swamp

[dele2451 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A timely, important, and informative book. If you want a broad and useful perspective on peat bogs, mires, marshes, etc, this is an accessible and interesting place to start. The nature glossary is especially helpful.

[carltonc_5 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

A beautifully written short book, or rather collection of essays, delving into historic and literary references to fens (English), bogs (North European) and swamps (North American), and yes, they are defined differently, together with reflections upon man’s ecological damage to these land features. There is some unnecessary repetition from essay to essay, but not too annoying.I really enjoyed this book as I am interested in, and have read about, many of the digressions that Proulx makes, such as Doggerland (flooded area between the UK and the Netherlands) and the archaeology of the Fens. She also references novels and short stories that I have read, which added to my enjoyment. The final essay on the swamps of North America was of least interest to me, possibly because I don’t know the country, but more likely because it felt like a list of places, rather more detailed exploration of a few locations.

[bobvtreader · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I am very interested in wetlands, the biology and chemistry of the wetlands etc. I had wondered what type of book a non-scientist could write about these wetlands? As it turns out a very good and interesting book. I do wonder why the section on swamps is so short and does not sing like the the other sections of the book. Was it a time thing, or was she bored with the section. This is why I gave it only 4 stars.Overall the book is a wonderful non-scientific look at these valuable wetlands. It is more a story of the loss of wetlands and some of the efforts trying to preserve them. The story is heartbreaking and it is amazing story of stupidity and greed that has made the world a much poorer place.It is definitely a must read book and I hope that it will encourage further reading and exploring of the subject.

[ozzer_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Proulx makes a strong case in favor of three habitats that we seldom consider, and when we do, our thoughts incline toward the negative. We perceive these places as waste lands that would better serve us by being drained. They are often impenetrable and seem to impede human progress. Moreover, they can be forbidding because of their threatening flora and fauna, as well the ghosts that are buried or lost there. This well researched book is filled with many fascinating scientific, geographic, sociological and historical facts that make for an enlightening reading experience. Despite this, Proulx’s narrative style has a decidedly stream-of consciousness feel to it. Unlike her superb fiction, firm connections between the book’s various topics decidedly are lacking.Her central thesis is that these vast wetlands are incredibly important for the survival of the planet, and they are being destroyed at a frightening pace. Clearly, Proulx loves and appreciates all these low-lying and moist locales as they are. Despite some innovative restorative initiatives, we already may be beyond a tipping point to save these intriguing and vital habitats.

[nancyadair-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

My house is on swampland. Well, it isn’t swampland now, but it was in the middle of the last century. A woman a block away told me that her son caught tadpoles in the woods were my house stands.The entire city was once swampland, as was much of Southeast Michigan. The glaciers that carved the land and melted to make the Great Lakes and the thousands of lakes in Michigan left behind waterlogged land.The year we moved into this house a torrential rain flooded most of the city.The Oakland County Landscape Stewardship Plan of 2017 stated:“The development of the southeastern zone, and the conversion of historically wetland area toresidential properties, has led to a number of complications including a major loss instormwater storage and flood control capacity. These communities have struggled to adapt tothe loss of these natural stormwater retention areas as hardscape cover has expanded withcontinued development. These issues were highlighted in 2012 and 2013 when rainwater fromsevere storms closed highways, flooded homes, and stopped commerce and business in thisregion for several days. It is important that land managers and foresters understand thesymbiosis that exists between wetlands and forests, and that they ensure the protection of theseadjacent wetland areas is worked into any forest management plan.”I thought that I had an idea of what the area would have looked like before it was turned into a suburban neighborhood because a few blocks away is Cummingston Park, created in 1925. For as long as I have known the park it has been wet and flooded. But I learned that in the 1950s while a college student, my sixth grade teacher documented it as a wonderful wildflower haven…until the land around it became developed and the water accumulated in the park with no where to go.Ok, then, I turned to the other local nature park, Tenhave Woods, a mile and a half away, next to my high school. It was formed in 1955. It was fenced after my high school classmate’s brother was murdered in the woods in 1967. Tenhave has a vernal pond and swampland and it is documented that it always had swamp land. It has a high fence to keep out deer and protect the wildflowers. Every spring we visit to see the trillium and other wildflowers that take over the ground. My high school biology teacher was part of the society that formed to protect both of these woods.My husband’s family also lived on swampland. His great-grandparents and great-great-grandparents settled in Lynne Township, St. Clair County, Michigan on reclaimed swampland. In fact, the 1865 map shows A. Scoville’s land bordered the swampland. The 1897 map shows all that swampland was privately owned farms. When we visited the area we could see the drainage ditches.How much of its wetlands has Michigan lost? I was shocked to learn that the greatest loss was around Lake Huron and Lake St Clair. Why would I be surprised? Constance Fenimore Woolston’s 1855 story St. Clair Flats tells of a man’s enchanted encounter with the St, Clair marshes only to return five years later to find them destroyed and replaced by a canal.That’s a lot of wetlands loss.Annie Proulx wanted to understand and organize the massive amount of information about wetlands and their loss and the impact on climate change. Her essay turned into a book. In brief, wetlands store CO2, and their destruction releases it into the atmosphere. Once lost, wetlands are not easily restores. But across the world, we are endeavoring to reclaim lost wetlands.The book considers the various forms of wetlands:fens, fed by rivers and streams, usually deep, peat-forming, and supporting reeds and marsh grassbogs, shallower water fed by rainfall, peat-forming, and supporting sphagnum mossesswamps, a peat-making, shallow wetland with trees and shrubsI was quite charmed by the book. Proulx delves into so many aspects of wetlands. She describes humans who once lived in harmony with the land, before land was privatized and turned into ‘productive’ farmland to increase the owner’s wealth. The English fens once covered 15,500 square miles and now less than 1 percent remains. The abundant life of the fens also disappeared. My mind was set alight reading about the lost Doggerland which connected Britain and Europe, suddenly flooded by seawater from glacial melt at the end of the Ice Age. I dreamed of those people that night. “I wonder if, as the waters rose, metamorphosing proto-England from the doorstep of a vast continent to a small island, some landscape memory of hugeness underlay the country’s later drive for empire,” Proulx muses.The sphagnum moss of the bogs “holds a third of the earth’s organic carbon,” I learned. When drained, the soil still leaks CO2 for a hundred years. “It can take ten thousand years for a bog to convert to peat but in only a few weeks a human on a peat cutter machine can strip a large area down to the primordial gravel.” In ancient times, humans made offerings to the bogs. Including humans. Bog people have been discovered across the world, preserved by the acidity and low oxygen, telling their gruesome stories of human sacrifice.In 1849 Congress passed the first Swamp Land laws that allowed states to sell wetlands for draining. The land made first rate farm land. The Great Black Swamp, the Dismal Swamp, the Kankakee, mangrove swamps, the Limberlost–all their stories are told by Proulx.Proulx describes the beauty of these vanished landscapes.The fen people of all periods knew the still water, infinite moods of cloud. They lived in reflections and moving reed shadows, poled through curtains of rain, gazed at the layered horizon, at curling waves that pummeled the land edge in storms.from Fen, Bog, & Swamp by Annie ProulxMy husband recalled when he worked as a grants officer that Duck Unlimited was a major contributor to wetlands protection as supporting duck hunting. And pages later, Proulx commented on this ironic support. Her descriptions of the multitude and number of species that flourish in wetlands is wondrous. And when we discovered them, what did we do? We brought our guns and hunted for the sake of shooting. As if our only response to being awestruck by the magnificence of the natural world is to destroy it.And by destroying wetlands, we have increased the CO2 that drives climate change. Some wetlands are being restored as we realize their benefit.Is it too late to stop or reverse or slow climate change? Can humans alter their concept of using the natural world to respecting it? The rights of nature is an emerging concept, and if we can alter our behavior and laws, perhaps the very worse can be avoided. Maybe.So, I enjoy my house, inherited from my parents who bought it five years after it was built, a house which sits where once a pond existed, where even fifty years ago garter snakes and toads visited the yard. And realize that my gain and benefit had a huge cost on the local and world environment.I received a free ARC from Simon & Schuster. My review is fair and unbiased