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Wilderlands: The Human History of Wild Britain
'It will radically change what you thought about 'wilderness'. CAT JARMAN
'A beautiful, deep and grounded book.' ALICE ROBERTS
When was Britain last truly wild? And what, if anything, remains? This is the unexpectedly human history of wild Britain.
In Wilderlands, archaeologist Eloise Kane unearths 12,000 years of our changing relationship with and influence on the landscape. Through prehistory, Roman occupation, the Middle Ages and beyond, we see the unfamiliar beasts of our old wild make way for species such as brown hare and fallow deer, now romanticised as eternal symbols of the British countryside, but introduced much later than we might think.
Places free from our influence haven't existed for a very long time. But Eloise Kane invites us to rethink our definition of the wild - not as separate from us. Seen anew as the result of millions of human lives lived, Wilderlands demonstrates how we are integral to the ecology and biodiversity of our land - with the power to shape its future.
'A beautiful, deep and grounded book.' ALICE ROBERTS
When was Britain last truly wild? And what, if anything, remains? This is the unexpectedly human history of wild Britain.
In Wilderlands, archaeologist Eloise Kane unearths 12,000 years of our changing relationship with and influence on the landscape. Through prehistory, Roman occupation, the Middle Ages and beyond, we see the unfamiliar beasts of our old wild make way for species such as brown hare and fallow deer, now romanticised as eternal symbols of the British countryside, but introduced much later than we might think.
Places free from our influence haven't existed for a very long time. But Eloise Kane invites us to rethink our definition of the wild - not as separate from us. Seen anew as the result of millions of human lives lived, Wilderlands demonstrates how we are integral to the ecology and biodiversity of our land - with the power to shape its future.
- GenresNonfictionHistoryNature
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Published April 21, 2026
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
April 29, 2026
This great little read was not what I was expecting, it was actually so much more and so interesting!
It tells the story of the wild Britain that once was and how the British history has shaped the wild land and also highlights how much wild land we actually have left. Its easy to say the wild land we once had was untouched and truly unique but once you read through this book it will make you really think twice about what wilderness really is and give you a completely different perspective on how we as humans are treating our lands. It also highlights the change in relationship between us as humans and the land we live on. We are nothing like our ancestors once were and it genuinely has changed my views on what our future may look like.
I’ll definitely be more mindful of the land we are on than I ever was prior to reading this. This is not just for humans, it’s not just for the wildlife either. It’s an entire system that needs to be kept separate from our ever changing world and we need more of the land to stay untouched.
It tells the story of the wild Britain that once was and how the British history has shaped the wild land and also highlights how much wild land we actually have left. Its easy to say the wild land we once had was untouched and truly unique but once you read through this book it will make you really think twice about what wilderness really is and give you a completely different perspective on how we as humans are treating our lands. It also highlights the change in relationship between us as humans and the land we live on. We are nothing like our ancestors once were and it genuinely has changed my views on what our future may look like.
I’ll definitely be more mindful of the land we are on than I ever was prior to reading this. This is not just for humans, it’s not just for the wildlife either. It’s an entire system that needs to be kept separate from our ever changing world and we need more of the land to stay untouched.
August 13, 2026
I really wanted to like this book because I agree with it's central thesis that challenges the potentially problematic notion of 'true wildness', while establishing the long history of human modification in British landscapes, and encourages embracing the everyday wild.
But, as an ecologist, I have to say that I really think this book would have benefitted from a proofread from an actual ecologist, and regularly found myself frustrated by oversimplification.
One of the central narrative threads of the book is about critiquing rewilding, by focusing on where rewilding purportedly seeks to exclude people. This is perhaps no clearer than in one of the closing quotes of the book:
"Now we seek to rewild as if the answer to our problems lies in ceasing to exist or turning back the clock when everything was better."
But this is a strawman argument, and would more accurately characterise the rewilding movement of the late 20th and early 21st centuries than the present. The field of rewilding has moved rapidly away from targeting fixed historical baselines, and the majority of academics/practioners are embracing a plurality of definitions that includes everything from the traditional 3 Cs approach of cores, carnivores and corridors to the 'wilding' of lawns, churches and agriculture. The UK is a leader in this pluraility, where projects like Knepp have embraced more diverse approaches to rewilding, including traditional livestock breeds to achieve conservation goals in-lieu of ‘wild’ animals. Purists would dismiss this as agricultural rewilding, but the UK is a leader in encouraging wilder, rather than truly wild landscapes (however we choose to define wildness). No serious academic or practioner in the UK would argue that rewilding always has to mean no people, and would suggest that there is a gradient of rewilding, along which projects sit, adapted to the needs of a given place.
And this is where the book is at it’s worst, when trying to explain or engage with ecological theory. In seeking to encourage a new wild, the author grossly downplays the challenges that nature faces in the UK, even saying at one point that “Britain is not an ecological wasteland”. While this is highly emotive language, the fact that UK’s biodiversity is some of the least intact in the world is not really treated with the urgency that it derserves.
Many examples of biodiversity given by the book are really examples of where nature persists in spite of human pressures, not because of us:
“Our canals have become refuges for trout…and the road verges can be havens for pollinators”
“Grassland that may not have existed had we not cleared the forests harbours hares and lapwings and the management of woodland rides can ecourage woodcock”
The idea that grasslands were originally cleared by humans is a highly contested point in paleoecology. Newer studies increasingly find that European vegetation was far more open than previously believed, challenging the long held notion that forests were cleared by humans, increasing biodiversity across the UK and Europe (examples include Pearce 2023, but there are many more). This debate is not well covered in the book, instead we are loosely introduced to the idea of the wildwood early on, and we are told that it’s clearing for agriculture may have lead to increases in biodiversity. This is hotly disputed and the truth is likely to be far more nuanced.
In trying to breakdown the nature-culture dichotomy, in some ways this book holds it up further, by implying that we must choose between landscapes for nature and landscapes for nature and people. But this is a false dichotomy, and perhaps we can do both. Rewilding Britain’s approach to a wilder Britain advocates for 5% of land to be set aside as core areas of nature dedicated to nature recovery. 25% would be ‘wilder’ and managed in a nature-friendly way (e.g., as lower intensity, organic extensive farming). Positioned like this, 95% of land dedicated to people and nature, with only 5% set aside as being primarily for nature (excepting things like ecotourism) can hardly be described as removing people from nature. Would the author find this excessive? And if so, why is it that in the UK we cannot imagine such a small proportion of land being given over to nature? The heavy interventionism associated particularly with British and Dutch landscapes is more a quirk of our histories with nature rather than a global reality. Most other countries would roll their eyes at our inability to set aside even a modicum of land for the primary purpose of protecting nature. To demonstrate this, we can look at the International Union for the Conservation of Nature’s (IUCN) standardised classification of nature areas. Ranging from Categories 1 to 6, from most protected and regulated by natural processes, to least protected and resembling cultural landscapes rather than areas for nature. Not a single one of the UK’s National Parks falls in the top 4 categories. None of this is to say that we must separate people from nature to protect nature, rather, we should ask ‘why is that we are incapable of setting aside any land for the primary purporse of nature protection (even when that is as small as 5% of land)?”
There are other things that I could touch on, but this review is long enough already, so I will close this off with a few smaller frustrations:
1) No real attempt to address capitalism as the unifying driver of nature loss
2) Very little attempt to discuss larges increase in meat consumption and how this affects the environment
3) Largely skips the latter half of the 20th Century, as highlighted by other revieweres
4) Description of bear-baiting as a working class sport is not strongly supported by the historical evidence
5) Parroting of the hunting lobbing claim that states that the decline of fox-hunting has led to foxes declining in population. Again no strong evidence of this claim
But, as an ecologist, I have to say that I really think this book would have benefitted from a proofread from an actual ecologist, and regularly found myself frustrated by oversimplification.
One of the central narrative threads of the book is about critiquing rewilding, by focusing on where rewilding purportedly seeks to exclude people. This is perhaps no clearer than in one of the closing quotes of the book:
"Now we seek to rewild as if the answer to our problems lies in ceasing to exist or turning back the clock when everything was better."
But this is a strawman argument, and would more accurately characterise the rewilding movement of the late 20th and early 21st centuries than the present. The field of rewilding has moved rapidly away from targeting fixed historical baselines, and the majority of academics/practioners are embracing a plurality of definitions that includes everything from the traditional 3 Cs approach of cores, carnivores and corridors to the 'wilding' of lawns, churches and agriculture. The UK is a leader in this pluraility, where projects like Knepp have embraced more diverse approaches to rewilding, including traditional livestock breeds to achieve conservation goals in-lieu of ‘wild’ animals. Purists would dismiss this as agricultural rewilding, but the UK is a leader in encouraging wilder, rather than truly wild landscapes (however we choose to define wildness). No serious academic or practioner in the UK would argue that rewilding always has to mean no people, and would suggest that there is a gradient of rewilding, along which projects sit, adapted to the needs of a given place.
And this is where the book is at it’s worst, when trying to explain or engage with ecological theory. In seeking to encourage a new wild, the author grossly downplays the challenges that nature faces in the UK, even saying at one point that “Britain is not an ecological wasteland”. While this is highly emotive language, the fact that UK’s biodiversity is some of the least intact in the world is not really treated with the urgency that it derserves.
Many examples of biodiversity given by the book are really examples of where nature persists in spite of human pressures, not because of us:
“Our canals have become refuges for trout…and the road verges can be havens for pollinators”
“Grassland that may not have existed had we not cleared the forests harbours hares and lapwings and the management of woodland rides can ecourage woodcock”
The idea that grasslands were originally cleared by humans is a highly contested point in paleoecology. Newer studies increasingly find that European vegetation was far more open than previously believed, challenging the long held notion that forests were cleared by humans, increasing biodiversity across the UK and Europe (examples include Pearce 2023, but there are many more). This debate is not well covered in the book, instead we are loosely introduced to the idea of the wildwood early on, and we are told that it’s clearing for agriculture may have lead to increases in biodiversity. This is hotly disputed and the truth is likely to be far more nuanced.
In trying to breakdown the nature-culture dichotomy, in some ways this book holds it up further, by implying that we must choose between landscapes for nature and landscapes for nature and people. But this is a false dichotomy, and perhaps we can do both. Rewilding Britain’s approach to a wilder Britain advocates for 5% of land to be set aside as core areas of nature dedicated to nature recovery. 25% would be ‘wilder’ and managed in a nature-friendly way (e.g., as lower intensity, organic extensive farming). Positioned like this, 95% of land dedicated to people and nature, with only 5% set aside as being primarily for nature (excepting things like ecotourism) can hardly be described as removing people from nature. Would the author find this excessive? And if so, why is it that in the UK we cannot imagine such a small proportion of land being given over to nature? The heavy interventionism associated particularly with British and Dutch landscapes is more a quirk of our histories with nature rather than a global reality. Most other countries would roll their eyes at our inability to set aside even a modicum of land for the primary purpose of protecting nature. To demonstrate this, we can look at the International Union for the Conservation of Nature’s (IUCN) standardised classification of nature areas. Ranging from Categories 1 to 6, from most protected and regulated by natural processes, to least protected and resembling cultural landscapes rather than areas for nature. Not a single one of the UK’s National Parks falls in the top 4 categories. None of this is to say that we must separate people from nature to protect nature, rather, we should ask ‘why is that we are incapable of setting aside any land for the primary purporse of nature protection (even when that is as small as 5% of land)?”
There are other things that I could touch on, but this review is long enough already, so I will close this off with a few smaller frustrations:
1) No real attempt to address capitalism as the unifying driver of nature loss
2) Very little attempt to discuss larges increase in meat consumption and how this affects the environment
3) Largely skips the latter half of the 20th Century, as highlighted by other revieweres
4) Description of bear-baiting as a working class sport is not strongly supported by the historical evidence
5) Parroting of the hunting lobbing claim that states that the decline of fox-hunting has led to foxes declining in population. Again no strong evidence of this claim
June 6, 2026
Very insightful and consistently engaging. My only criticism is the strange brushing over of the single most impactful development for wildlife in Britain, that of industrial agriculture since the 1950s. A little out of the remit of an archeologist I guess, but more time is spent on carbon credits and rewilding than pesticides and fertilisers. Rivers and coastal waters largely ignored too. Glaring omissions really, given she addresses plenty of other recent developments, but a brilliant read for everything pre 1900.
April 27, 2026
Fascinating and engaging. Clear and detailed analysis of how human influence actually pervades most of what is now thought of as 'wild' from forests to moorland. Argues for accepting this and changing how we value 'wild' spaces, acknowledging that human influence is a key consideration when making management and conservation decisions and learning to see the importance and beauty of 'wild' spaces even if they are not untouched by human hand.
May 14, 2026
4/5
Insightful and heartbreaking! I got to tell people at least two fun facts organically thanks to this book. I love this sort of autoethnographic non-fiction style, it makes everything more vibrant and personal. Near the end I got pretty sad and wished I was a horse which had no responsibilities, but what can you do!
Insightful and heartbreaking! I got to tell people at least two fun facts organically thanks to this book. I love this sort of autoethnographic non-fiction style, it makes everything more vibrant and personal. Near the end I got pretty sad and wished I was a horse which had no responsibilities, but what can you do!
July 19, 2026
I have read a few of these books investigating what British/Europe wild ancient landscape really looked like. Wilderlands is thought-provoking in its analysis making it clear early mans' influence left its mark taming the ancient wood at will. The effect is far reaching and fascinating.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews