Rewilding: Real Life Stories of Returning British and Irish Wildlife to Balance

by David Woodfall (Editor)

Rewilding has become the key talking point in the modern conservation movement It is still commonly misunderstood as a campaign to fill the forests with lynxes, wolves and bears. The guiding ethos is more nuanced and broader ins scope and here 50 contributors at the forefront of nature agencies and national parks, wetland wildernesses and marshes describe their work on the wild side rewilding and restoring the Caledonian Forest, the Cairngorms National Park, Epping Forest, the Burren, the red squirrel, Cabragh Wetlands, Lough Carra, the North Atlantic salmon, conservation of butterflies and moths, great bustards, rewilding bumble bees. Isabella Tree tells us that pigs breed purple emperors, Martin Simpson says a pray for red kites at Gleadless, and at the seashore we meet little terns, whales, read a hedgehog story and about the Vetch Community Garden.

Genres: Science, Nature

256 pages, Paperback

Published October 29, 2019

About the author

David Woodfall has spent 22 years of photographing nature. BBC Wildlife has described him as 'the poet laureate of British and Irish landscapes'. In North America and Europe he is better known for his work on environmental issues.

Reviews

[Clare O'Beara · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a collection of experiences from people who are running rewilding or conservation projects around Ireland, England, Scotland and Wales. There are plenty I hadn't heard of, plenty I had heard of and plenty which weren't included or were just namechecked. So, it's great that lots of people are getting on with this work.
Not so great is the reason it needs to be done. We read of natural environments destroyed, hedges, headlands and meadows destroyed for monocrops in vast ploughed fields. Building or industry destroying open space or clean natural space. Species are being lost and as many times as we read of a species making a comeback due to one of the rewilding projects, we see another has not been recorded in years, or is endangered by rising sea, or has no way to connect with others in order to widen the gene pool.

I particularly like the story of a rare butterfly, Purple Emperor, which was recorded around oak forests, unusually. When the habitat around the oaks was varied to include other options, by moving in pigs which opened up terrain for sallow (hybrid willows) suddenly there were many more butterflies reproducing in the fringe of woodland shrubs which common sense says they would prefer. Previously, the butterflies just hadn't had the option. This 'Pigs Breed Purple Emperors' was my favourite piece.

Bogland, marine life, suburban gardens, Scottish mountainsides, Welsh beaches, organic farms, homeless people, juvenile offender programmes, all here. The striking colour photos are almost all taken by the editor and include birds of prey, hedgehogs, butterflies, beetles and quite a lot of landscapes. Some of them don't seem populated by creatures, and I guess that is the point. At one time the blanket bog would have been covered in curlews with a few birds of prey overhead to thrill observers.

While sobering to read, this varied collection is also hopeful and demonstrates how many people and groups - almost no government bodies - are currently working on biodiversity.

I read the paperback version, which is a large size book - I was disappointed to see it was printed in China. RDS Library.

[John Muggeridge · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some really great essays, some a bit more miss than hit. Worth a read.