Rewilding: The Radical New Science of Ecological Recovery: 14 (Hot Science)

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Make it lovely and neat like my artificially fertilised, subsidised, chemical laden waste ground, with my animals that are cooped up day and night with intensive farming wearing them out before they've reached adulthood! For those in the farming community who are feeling skeptical about the benefits of rewilding farmland and the financial impact it might have, this book may be of interest. Rewilding is possibly the most important and empowering revolution to have evolved out of the conservation movement in the last hundred years.

Apparently once wild ponies breed and their numbers become undesirable, they bring little income when sold (! Each chapter arrives at adifferent rewilding project in adifferent country, faced with its own history, traditions and challenges.

From my vantage point, dewilding includes dramatic extinction events – (including the one dubbed the Sixth Great Extinction, unfolding today) as well as subtle losses – like the growing disconnect between children and nature. But as Lee sensitively details, it’s aland of ghosts, from the missing flowers to the last golden eagle. They were finding that they were suddenly one of the top sites in the country for creatures like purple emperor butterflies and turtle doves.

We’ve got used to living with a richer kind of nature on our doorstep and now, when we go for walks elsewhere with friends, to places we always used to enjoy, what we notice most is the silence and the stillness.The highly-experienced authors cover a lot of interesting topics, including the potential of using ancient DNA to recreate extinct species, and even dry subjects are livened up with colourful stories of people and places. Reading it gave me some hope that we may be able to avert the crash course the mass of societal pressures and economic interests would have us follow.

Not just my book of the year but I think the most enlightening book I have *ever* read in my, ahem, almost 50 years on earth. Of particular interest is the detailed explanation of challenges and difficulties that the project faced, some practical (how to move wild deer), some institutional (Natural England were wary), some cultural (local objections to the ‘mess’ and ‘waste’ compared to arable land), and some philosophical (allowing control of the land to lapse). I found the argument that Britain was not covered in closed-canopy forest during pre-history convincing, as well as useful. As a child in East Anglia, I remember vast fields of oilseed rape, with isolated snippets of uncultivated land sheltering wild species.So there’s this constant battle between vegetation succession and animal disturbance – and this is rocket fuel for biodiversity. I have had my understanding of nature completely upended, and have a new and deeper appreciation for letting plants and animals manage themselves, and the landscape.

Not sure what to do with the land, Isabella Tree and her husband Charlie Burrell made that decision to let nature take over again. In fact, there were several species that had appeared that were not fitting in the niche that would normally be expected. This change presumably - surely - started with this book and with what the author and her husband undertook at their farm in West Sussex. With Ben’s history working in Natural History TV, there’s a strong sense of story here with some astonishing statistics thrown in to emphasise quite how badly we need a conservation rethink. This very nearly made it onto the top 5 list – a great read, which explores the history and cultural importance of orchards, alongside the role they play in biodiversity.On one hand, this makes what they're doing all the more valuable and interesting, but on the other hand, it casts a somewhat different light on the dynamic between them and the angry comments they get from the public. It is crucial that rewilders understand farmers – the countryside is a shared space, and we must share a language, too. But Isabella’s captivating storytelling, evoking the sounds and sights of her and her husband Charles’ journey towards restoration, do a lot to pull you into this great book.