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Rebirding: Winner of the Wainwright Prize for Writing on Global Conservation: Restoring Britain's Wildlife

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If you want to try rebirthing, find a practitioner with a good track record and some medical credentials. Apart from the mendicants at our nest boxes and bird feeders, Britain’s wild creatures are increasingly left homeless and starving.

Stuffed full of information and ideas, Macdonald travels beyond our shores, which is unsurprising for an author who has visited so many different places in his career (including working as a film-maker on the popular recent Netflix serious Our Planet). We have the determination, economic and social arguments to achieve this within the conservation movement. There iInstead, one day she clambered up to the loft and saw the remains of an old swift nesting spot, but one which had been sealed up by the previous homeowner using expanding foam. It’s about simulating the sensations of birth in a nurturing way so as to re-­flip the “switch” of turning on everyone’s instincts. MacDonald’s book is about the UK and paints a convincing picture of what rewilding could do for Britain’s birds (and other wildlife, and people, but the emphasis is certainly on birds which may irritate some).

Last December, a few months after he had given that interview, came news which would have alarmed not just Prince Charles, but anyone invested in the fate of the birds, which are a symbol of the British summer. Some see the new emerging landscapes as untidy and the resort of weeds (which is by and large untrue), while others feel that the messiness is profoundly unBritish. The dense walls of spruce and larch seemed forbidding but enchanting and the cathedral oak trees, with very little underneath, seemed impressive. But increasingly as we embark on DIY projects, renovate our houses and install modern insulation it removes opportunities for swifts and house martins to build their nests. What’s more, our approach to species recovery, which puts a focus on diagnosing the causes of decline before seeking sustainable solutions, underpinned many of the successes cited in the book such as bittern, corncrake and white-tailed eagle (which of course is now the subject of an exciting reintroduction on the Isle of Wight).

While I have to admit to occasionally skim-reading some nature books as they can turn into endless lists of unconnected stories, Ben has a structure that works, that builds an argument, that takes you from imagining the past to imagining our future. It also shows how urgently our attitudes towards nature and conservation need to change in this country to prevent the collapse of ecosystems and build nature back up. That is the title Elizabeth Kolbert, a seasoned journalist with a gift for writing, adopted for her 2015 Pulitzer Prize-winning book, which lays out in stark terms exactly what we are facing. Reintroductions of red kites and white-tailed eagles following their extermination have redressed the balance to some extent, and Macdonald even dares to dream of Dalmatian pelicans soaring again in Cambridgeshire skies.

The vast majority of our birds are evolved to exploit dynamic mosaic habitats – but it was the wonderful animals we once had that created and ​ ‘gardened’ such habitats in the firstplace. Throughout Rebirding, the work of conservation charities, landowners and government departments is appraised with the same unflinching conclusion: none of it has prevented the catastrophic crash of British wildlife – and it is time for something new.Diary of a Young Naturalist by Dara McAnulty chronicles the turning of the then 15-year-old’s world and breaks the mould of modern nature writing.

Note: I have an Advanced Review Copy so I cannot easily comment on the look and feel of the finished article – but I’ve read the words]. It is a gripping story of the fate of species we have lost, and those we stand to lose if we sit idly by and do nothing.Consider that this therapy isn’t something most licensed psychologists, psychiatrists, and counselors would recommend. Some are perfectly feasible – with environmental and green narratives rising to prominence more and more in society, the rewilding of our back gardens and parks is surely realistic. There is a sense here that the polarised fight which we see in action in the English uplands could, in Ben’s eyes, be solved more subtly by championing European-style hunting. Dung beetles, in particular, benefit from the presence of free-roaming cattle herds, but most farms are now deserts for them. But we also need top-down directives from the CEOs of our nature charities, telling their reserve managers to respect dynamism and chaos, and front-page headlines in their members’ magazines.

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