Can you remember the moth snowstorms, those evening drives when the car’s full beam would be so thick with moths and other insects that you seemed to be ploughing through a snowstorm? Do you recall your first encounter with a buddleia bush blooming with butterflies? Do you carry the memory of a bluebell wood in your heart? Michael McCarthy does, and this “astounding richness of life” flutters, scents and fills much of his book. But, in contrast to such profligate abundances, the former Independent journalist also takes us to places where nature has been withered to a dearth.Amongst the most haunting of these “deadscapes” is Saemangeum in South Korea. Until 1991, this vast bay in the Yellow Sea was host to millions of wading birds, and one of the planet's main