Rebirding: Winner of the Wainwright Prize for Writing on Global Conservation: Restoring Britain's Wildlife

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I learned some interesting things from this book, while thoroughly enjoying it. I learned to look at the "natural" areas that my country (the US) has set aside and view them with different eyes. Are they really all that natural? Breath-based meditation does have some recorded health benefits. Research has shown that a consistent breath-based meditation practice can improve:

Landowners across the UK are leaving a lasting legacy for future generations by investing in the restoration of our degraded countryside. The wildlife NGOS and government get a bit of criticism for not having got on with this rewilding solution nearly enough. That’s partly fair and partly unfair. But it is interesting. What is the Defra position on rewilding? Where does it stand in the 25-year so-called plan for the environment? Some of the things in that plan sound a bit like rewilding and some of the outcomes sound as though they could be delivered through rewilding, and some of them sound as though they would be best delivered by rewilding – but does the word ‘rewilding’ pass the lips of Michael Gove or Therese Coffey at all? Not that I’ve noticed. Isn’t that odd? I think it’s odd. They should read this book!

Let’s be the first generation since we colonised Britain to leave our children better off for wildlife,” Macdonald exhorts. All rational argument seems to be on his side. Over the last few years, the notion of rewilding has risen to prominence. One doesn’t need to go further than social media to see this concept on a micro-level: the angst at a recently trimmed roadside margin or roundabout, the frustration of anti-birding netting on hedges and so on.Such reactions are, in their own way, an expression of the wish to reconnect with nature and let wildlife simply do its own thing. Even though the decline has been happening for a long time, it is only in the past few decades that the dramatic drop in numbers of all species has become very evident. The act of strimming, weed killing and obliterating anything that looks slightly scruffy form our urban and rural landscapes has been the final death knell. The memory of the way that the landscape and natural world used to be, has almost faded from our collective memories.

There are challenges in this for all of us but especially to the ‘big six’ landuses in the UK: deer, grouse, forestry, dairy and sheep farming.

At this stage, a lot of these people are making big leaps, by coming out of what you might call conventional positions into more radical ones,” he says. “We want to make sure that we've got a proper coherent platform, before rushing out and going public. These things take time. But you'd be amazed at the extraordinary level of interest there is out there, not just among the public, but among landowners.”