Guest Reader says: "Bears and salmon aren't essential to the survival of any forest. No animal is."

Something like them are, although it's true that the same purpose could be served by any animal or human that eats from food sources outside the woods, and lives and poops and dies within them. It's even a cliche: Does a bear poop in the woods? Bears are very handy because they range widely, so spread nutrients (poop) across many miles of territory. When the bear dies, more nutrients are carried from the sea back to the land and deposited essentially at random, and then spread across a smallish area by smaller scavengers.

Because water and streams gradually strip nutrients from the woods. Something has to put them back. Dust and blowing leaves won't do it.

http://www.natural-resources.wsu.edu/research/Bear-Center/doc/Spokesman-...

There's a lot of research to support this claim, but surprisingly few people willing to go out into the woods and shoot themselves in the head to replace the nutrients naturally. And even if they did, some darned fool would just haul them back out again.

As for science, you'll probably have noticed that the subtitle is "An Environmental Fantasy," which was my subtle method of hinting that the contents of the story were not rocket science. The quotes at the beginning of every chapter, all taken from a famous fantasy involving magic and illusions, may have helped to make this plain as well.

None-the-less, there is considerable science behind the story (way behind) as well as authentic mystical and "New Age" traditions (if that last is not an inherent contradiction in terms) all of which are rather carefully woven together to create a more-or-less coherent whole. In my humble estimation, it's at least as careful about fact, and real traditions, as (let's say) anything by Dan Brown.

For example, I independently calculated the sea level rise that would be caused by the collapse of the Greenland and West Antarctic ice caps, and performed careful calculations, based on topographical maps of those locations identified clearly in the story as having foundered beneath the waves, to verify that they would, in fact, be under the mean sea level if this collapse occurred. I did rely on published measurements and estimations of the volumes of ice currently locked in those ice caps, because I didn't have the means (i.e. money) to undertake independent expeditions to either location. If funding can be arranged, I stand behind my estimates, and will be glad to accompany any substantial scientific investigation and exploration to refine my estimates.

As far as I know, however, there are no cetacean experimenters involved in the long-term evolution of the human genome, although I can't guarantee that the same holds true for bears, who tend to be both terse and angry when questioned, and to react violently when required to fill out questionnaires, so I'm afraid I'll have to leave those interviews to those somewhat fleeter of foot than myself.

Liorah
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Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits, and
Are melted into air, into thin air:
And like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp’d tow’rs, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on; and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.

– Prospero, The Tempest