Tag Archive for: rewilding

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The Man Who Planted Trees | Jim Robbins

 

“When is the best time to plant a tree? Twenty years ago. The second best time? Today.”—Chinese proverb

One day, David Milarch, a Michigan nurseryman derailed by alcoholism, had a near-death experience from which he emerged with the conviction that human life was in jeopardy because trees were dying. The solution, he understood, was to clone the champion trees of the world—the largest, the hardiest, the ones that had survived millennia and were most resilient to climate change—and create a kind of Noah’s ark of tree genetics. Twenty years later, his team had successfully cloned some of the world’s oldest trees including giant redwoods and sequoias, and grown seedlings from the oldest tree in the world, the bristlecone pine Methuselah. Milarch’s absorbing story, masterfully told by New York Times journalist Jim Robbins, is a moving account of one man’s mission to protect the forests that are essential to human survival.

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A Sky Full of Kites: A Rewilding Story | Tom Bowser

 

An inspirational account of one family’s journey from farming to rewilding and how they brought Red Kites back into Scotland’s skies.

Once Britain’s most common bird of prey, Red Kites had been wiped out by the early 1900s in Scotland and England following centuries of persecution. When some reintroduced kites began roosting on their 1,400-acre farm at Argaty in Perthshire, Tom Bowser’s parents, Lynn and Niall, decided to turn their estate into a safe haven. They began feeding the birds and invited the world to come and see them, learn about them and fall in love with them.

A Sky Full of Kites is the story of the Argaty Red Kite project, and the re-establishing of these magnificent raptors to Scotland, but it is also much more than that. Ill at ease with the traditional rural values of livestock farming, Lynn and Niall’s son Tom, who returned to work on the farm after a career in journalism, reveals his passion for nature and his desire to dedicate his family’s land to conservation.

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Abundance: Nature in Recovery | Karen Lloyd

How should we restore nature and species, and why does it matter? What is lost when we choose not to engage in restoration of the natural world? And which parts of ourselves might we also lose if we choose not to help restore and renew the natural world before it’s too late?

In this collection, Karen Lloyd explores abundance and loss in the natural world, relating compelling stories of restoration, renewal and repair, describing how those working on the front lines of conservation are challenging the inevitability of biodiversity loss, as well as navigating her own explorations of the meaning of abundance in the Anthropocene.

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The Heart of the Woods | Wyl Menmuir

 

In his follow-up to the award-winning The Draw of the Sea, Wyl Menmuir weaves personal reflection, ecological insight, and historical context into a rich exploration of the complex relationship between humans and the natural world. Menmuir, also an acclaimed novelist, beautifully captures the emotional and symbolic weight that forests carry in our collective consciousness through myth, ritual and folklore. But while deeply contemplative, the book is also a call to action, and a must-read for anyone concerned about Britain’s threatened wildlife habitats.

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Rebugging the Planet: The Remarkable Things that Insects (and Other Invertebrates) Do – And Why We Need to Love Them More | Vicky Hird

 

Rebugging the Planet shows us how bugs are beautiful, inventive and economically invaluable. Responsible for pollinating plants, feeding birds, defending crops and cleaning water systems. With 40% of insect species at risk of extinction and a third more endangered, our planet is heading towards an insect apocalypse. She suggests we have to start giving worms, spiders, beetles, ladybirds and butterflies the space they need to flourish.

Rebugging the Planet is a manual written with infectious joy presenting practical bug-friendly suggestions for gardening and farming. It shows how small changes can have a big impact on our littlest allies.

The Royal Entomological Society write that Rebugging the Planet, “is a manifesto for a green revolution aimed at the layman, a tool kit to enable individuals to make changes to the way that they live, and offers advice on how to put pressure on various layers of society, from friends and neighbours to local politicians and national government, in order to bring about a greener, more diverse world.”

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Rewilding the Sea: How to Save our Oceans | Charles Clover

 

This hopeful book celebrates what happens when we step aside and let nature repair the damage. Whether it is the overfishing of bluefin tuna across the Atlantic, the destruction of coral gardens by dredgers in Lyme Bay or the restoration of oysters on the East Coast of America, Charles Clover chronicles how determined individuals are proving that the crisis in our oceans can be reversed, with benefits for both local communities and entire ecosystems.

Trawling and dredging create more CO2 than the aviation industry, damaging vast areas of our continental shelves and preventing them them from soaking up carbon. Glover explains how we need to fish in different ways, if we fish at all. Rewilding the Sea gives us a positive vision of how we can mitigate climate change and restore the biodiversity in our oceans.

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WILDING | ISABELLA TREE

“I recommend anyone prone to despair to read Wilding – for Isabella Tree’s apparently quixotic tale of Exmoor ponies, longhorn cattle, red deer and Tamworth pigs roaming free on an aristocratic estate is a hugely important addition to the literature of what can be done to restore soil and soul. The book describes an attempt to renew the ecosystem, after decades of intensive agriculture of some 1,400 hectares owned by Tree’s husband Charlie Burrell at Knepp in West Sussex. The project, which began in 2001, is perhaps unique in England, and the results have been spectacular. Tree is a trenchant critic of the intensive agriculture that has led to soil degradation and erosion. She questions the goal-driven frameworks of much conservation work: when there is no preferred end state, formerly rare and even vanished species tend suddenly to reappear. And she battles heroically against the English addiction to tidiness. For a nation obsessed with orderliness and boundaries, land that is endlessly morphing, on its way to being something else, can be discomforting. She also makes the case that it is possible to feed 10 billion humans on this planet while also leaving more space for the wild.” – Caspar Henderson

God Is An Octopus | Ben Goldsmith

“Sparked by the sudden death of his teenage daughter Iris, Goldsmith’s memoir of grief, loss and regeneration is a celebration not just of her life, but of the living world and all its inhabitants. Wise and beautifully written, it’s an inspiration to anyone with access to a patch of land, however small. And a reminder to anyone who has lost a loved one that the best way to honour their memory is to cherish the planet.” – Liz Jensen