The Hunt for the Golden Mole by Richard Girling

I thought this would be the author's travelogue on his journey to find the Somalian Golden Mole. Well it is, but he takes a lot of digressions on the way! 

The Somalian Golden Mole was first described in 1964, based on a few bones found in an owl pellet by Professor Alberto Simonetta. Since then, no trace of it has ever been found again. 

Richard Girling sets out to see the evidence of the mole's existence and to ponder why such an insignificant species should matter, and along the way looks at the history of our human relationship with wildlife. We are told how many animals have been driven to extinction, not helped by the fact of how often capturing wild animals for zoos would lead to animals dying in transit. He talks about the history of conservation organisations and their work in the field and the importance of the Red List of endangered animals, which can act as a driver to enhanced conservation measures for imperilled species. There are many species that have rarely been seen, and yet for many of them little effort is put into finding them and securing their existence. Trophy hunting is a huge risk to big game species and yet the rangers who are employed to protect the animals are at a great disadvantage compared to the hunters, many rangers are killed in their line of work. 

The author makes the point that: "[c]onservation cannot succeed without popular support, and people as well as animals need to see the benefit", later adding "the tourist is a vital link in the chain of virtue that keeps animals alive and strengthens local communities". He makes a good point, but omits to add that it needs to be the right kind of tourism. He looks in some detail at the Ol Pejeta Conservancy  where tourism brings in income for local education and other community projects. 

We're introduced to moles as a group of animal quite late in the book, and told that golden moles are not actually related to European moles, with interesting details about how scientists, particularly in the last, would base their ideas on relations between species on superficial resemblances, whereas nowadays, we can investigate the similarities in the DNA to clarify family trees. 

He talks about reintroducing species to areas where they've been lost and emphasises the importance of the right habitat still being available if such reintroductions are to be successful. 

Finally, after all these digressions (fascinating, but still, definitely digressions) the author gets to meet Professor Alberto Simonetta himself, and in fact is allowed to handle the bones of the only known Somalian Golden Mole. The professor makes the point that we need to conserve insignificant species "precisely because we don't understand their value.... we have no idea what we might be losing."

The Hunt for the Golden Mole by Richard Girling, published by Chatto and Windus (2014)