The Book of Wilding: A Practical Guide to Rewilding, Big and Small

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We are treated to the delights of recovering wildlife in dazzling and sometimes confusing variety. Sometimes the vocabulary is unfamiliar, but the meaning is almost always clear from the context. I wasn't familiar with the verb 'cover', for example, when appplied to a bull and cows. Not hard to work out. This is not another book telling you to install nest boxes and to stop mowing in May, filled with pretty garden photos. It is a book about re-wilding our society. It will no doubt have influenced how I view and support government policies and local council/charitable projects. All of that is the core topic of the book. But the other interesting aspect was something so obvious to Tree that it took a while to dawn on me. She starts the story by describing her and her husband's efforts to intensively farm their land, winning awards and setting records for dairy production despite unfavorable heavy clay soil. And as she described that work, I was picturing their land as a dairy farm similar to the ones I grew up near: big, rural fields in the country, with a small farmhouse near the sheds and dairy barns on the road. So when they got their land fenced and introduced feral cows and pigs, it seemed fairly reasonable. It was only when she started talking about how conflicts with dog walkers limited their breed choices, and how the wild pigs tried to steal food for a wedding they were hosting, that I remembered just how different things are in Britain. Then she mentions the castle and it all fell into place.

This is a deep, dazzling and indispensable guide to the most important task of all: the restoration of the living planet”— George Monbiot Knepp has also had a profound impact on conservation charities and community groups, many of whom have embraced its rewilding model. This beautifully written and lavishly illustrated book is essential reading for anyone with an interest in rewilding, landscapes or indeed nature”— Tristan Gooley The vast lands of the family estate are given over to native seeds, wildflowers, natural processes, grazing wild animals and the re-wilding of the earth. Intervention is kept to a minimum and species start to flourish like never before, with plentiful habitats and safe spaces to breed. I was given this book, which I would never have considered buying, as a Father's Day gift. I am so grateful!I learned, too, about the importance of reintroducing keystone species, ranging from pigs (as a substitute for the politically unacceptable wild boar), longhorn cattle (substituting for bison), roe and red deer, the beaver and even - perhaps especially - the humble earthworm. The explanations for the significance of these species gave a fascinating insight into animal behaviour. Now the book. Isabella Tree writes a language as floral as the honey produced on the land, and I loved it. I found some messy sentences with missing words or clauses, or that seemed to suffer from having been poorly operated on during revisions, but my enjoyment of the book in spite of this is manifest in the fact that I managed to read it in three days. Three days of late nights spent reading. For context, I'm on my honeymoon. I'm literally honeymooning, as I type. To begin with, it seems that the target audience of this book is farmers and large estate owners. However, the book's aim is to educate those people interested in re-wilding and saving our green spaces. I know nothing about farming and next to nothing about conservation, but I was fascinated by this story of a family that turned their 3,500 acres of unprofitable intensive farmland, owned by ancestors for centuries, into a 'wilderness'. The book recounts the battles against local opposition to 'destruction' of the estate's perceived attractiveness, against blinkered bureaucracy and even against thoughtless dog owners. Along the way, we learn how Charlie and Isabella resisted the psychological pressure to set targets and manage the project, instead adopting a hands-off approach that let natural processes take over. The rapidity with which the land, the diversity of animal and plant life and the composition of the soil recovered is the natural miracle that lies at the story's core. Rewilding and ecological restoration narratives are still a very tiny genre of nonfiction, so I'm always excited to see a new one. Most of the reasons I love them are probably obvious: they're stories about nature that aren't just positive, but also proactive, progressive, and full of tantalizing hints of unexpected ecological mechanisms. The first half of this book does all of that pretty well. Unlike some of these books, there really isn't much memoir to it. The story Tree tells is about her land and their management decisions, largely made by expert advice and steering committee, and none of it feels especially personal.

Rewilding is possibly the most important and empowering revolution to have evolved out of the conservation movement in the last hundred years. This book shares the knowledge and wisdom of that movement that we all need to better understand how we can all play our part in helping nature restore the planet Her best-selling book Wilding – the Return of Nature to a British Farm is published by Picador. It won the 2019 Richard Jefferies prize for nature writing and was one of the Smithsonian’s top ten science books for 2018. The Book of Wilding: A Practical Guide to Rewilding Big and Small Isabella Tree and Charlie Burrell In current society it is so easy to feel overwhelmed by the many issues of biodiversity loss and climate change, but Isabella Tree and Charlie Burrell's guide offers some comfort, demonstrating just how versatile and resilient nature can be.

Sunday Times A poignant, practical and moving story of how to fix our broken land, this should be conservation's salvation; this should be its future; this is a new hope. The words Isabella Tree uses to describe the journey from unprofitable farm, to a haven for endangered species and reintroduced species are magical. This book is not a heavy scientific tome but it contains enough information to make you question your purchasing decisions at the supermarket, and what you consider beautiful in the natural environment. The language is sometimes too florid for my taste. At times, I was itching to take out a copy editor's red pencil, to make sentences or passages clearer.

Rewilding offers new hope for our beleaguered biodiversity. Buy this inspiring book and get rewilding!”— Dave Goulson All is not lost. Nature's capacity to heal can still overcome our tendency to disrupt and destroy. This inspiring book shows how it can be done”— Eric Schlosser, author of Command and Control

And if I had enough money to buy every Member of Parliament a copy, and the ability to force them to read it, I would.