Simon Pooley Discovering the Okapi review, recensie en informatie Engels boek over westerse wetenschap, inheemse kennis en de zoektocht naar een raadsel in het regenwoud. Op 11 november 2025 verschijnt bij Johns Hopkins University Press het boek van Simon Pooley over de zeer zeldzaam geworden Okapi. Er is geen Nederlandse vertaling van het boek verkrijgbaar.
Simon Pooley Discovering the Okapi review en recensie
- “Pooley has written a comprehensive account of the Western ‘discovery’ of the okapi. His dissection of this conceit is accompanied by an equally impressive account of okapi research during the imperial era. Throughout, he cultivates an intense empathy for an exceptionally beautiful animal—an emblem for one of the most complex communities on earth, and one of the communities most threatened by unbridled logging today.” (Jonathan Kingdon, author of Origin Africa: Safaris in Deep Time)
- “In Discovering the Okapi, Simon Pooley has produced a rich history of one of Africa’s most enigmatic and endangered animals. Pooley shows how science, art, economics, and politics made this secretive animal into a powerful symbol both of the global biodiversity crisis and of the perils of colonial conservation efforts intended to stop it.” (Peter S. Alagona, author of The Accidental Ecosystem: People and Wildlife in American Cities)
Discovering the Okapi
Western Science, Indigenous Knowledge, and the Search for a Rainforest Enigma
- Auteur: Simon Pooley (Engeland)
- Soort boek: Okapi boek, dierenboek
- Taal: Engels
- Uitgever: Johns Hopkins University Press
- Verschijnt: 11 november 2025
- Omvang: 392 pagina’s
- Uitgave: paperback / ebook
- Prijs: $ 39,95
- Boek bestellen bij: Amazon / Bol / Libris
Flaptekst van het boek over de Okapi van Simon Pooley
The captivating history of the okapi and its symbolic role in science, culture, and conservation.
In Discovering the Okapi, Simon Pooley offers a fascinating portrait of the okapi—an elusive short-necked giraffid with zebra stripes, surviving in the rainforests of central Africa’s Congo basin—and unpacks the complicated layers of Western science and Indigenous knowledge that shaped the world’s understanding of this unique creature.
Pooley tells the story of the okapi’s “discovery” in 1900 by British naturalist Sir Harry Johnston, as well as the overlooked contributions of the Indigenous African people whose expertise made this sighting and subsequent hunt for specimens possible. The book traces how colonial politics and scientific racism shaped early accounts of the animal’s study and examines the enduring biases that continue to influence conservation efforts today. The okapi became a symbol of scientific curiosity, colonial power, and conservation challenges, revealing complex intersections among biodiversity, cultural heritage, and environmental stewardship. Its precarious existence in captivity and the wild exposes how Western and Indigenous approaches to conservation can—and must—find common ground for its survival.
Simon Pooley is the Lambert Lecturer in Environment at Birkbeck, University of London. He is the coeditor of Histories of Bioinvasions in the Mediterraneanand the author of Burning Table Mountain: An Environmental History of Fire on the Cape Peninsula.
