Wild Fell: Fighting for nature on a Lake District hill farm

Product Information

Beautifully written, with an urgent sense of the need to protect our endangered landscape, this is a manifesto for a wilder future. * Daily Mail * Restoration in the Lake District. Interview to talk about river restoraion. BBC Radio 4 Open Country/August 2020 Wild Fell is a call to recognise that the solutions for a richer world lie at our feet; by focusing on flowers, we can rebuild landscapes fit for eagles again. A landscape of flowers is a landscape of hope.

Saving nature is a tough job. In Wild Fell we get to understand why people do it: real soul-deep passion. -- Simon Barnes Pine martens to the rescue? Sixth article in Shadow Species series focuses on pine martens. Cumbria Life/Nov 2020. Version also available as a WildHaweswater post

Retailers:

It's one of many successful projects Lee has overseen. Using drone technology and ancient maps, straightened rivers have been returned to their natural meandering course and salmon numbers have swelled because they are now able to lay eggs in sheltered bends. Lee Schofield's Wild Fell is a soaring elegy to nature, a book infused with a deep love of place, and a stirring call to restore wildlife to our landscapes. Written with wit, verve and humility, Wild Fell is above all a story of hope, weaving together deep insights about botany and the history of the land with a wisdom won through years of practical experience. Guy Shrubsole Schofield talks about a desire to see wildlife, flora and fauna, return to a corner of the National Park that gets a moderate number of tourists, but is off the standard tourist routes. Situated on the eastern edges Haweswater is a man-made reservoir that supplies water to Manchester via a 96 mile long gravity-fed aqueduct. About 25% of the water for the North West of England comes from here, which makes it nationally important. In many ways Haweswater is industrial, yet it is also remote and peaceful. When I’ve walked there, I’ve always enjoyed a sense that I am somewhere where others aren’t, but I’ve not been looking with the eyes of Lee Schofield.

There's plenty of enjoyable reads out there. And I enjoyed this. But far more than that, I learnt a great deal about why our national parks are a natural disaster in the making, and what can be done to not only restore hope but to also take real action for nature's recovery. Much of the appeal of Wild Fell stems from the fluency with which Lee Schofield conveys the intimate knowledge and deep feeling he has developed for the Haweswater landscape, his own personal commitment to enriching and developing it, and the unabashed delight he takes from each sign of progressive change. It is a highly personal story as well as a thoroughly documented account of a complex and ongoing conservation project, a combination which should earn it the wide readership it deserves.” Professor Barry Sloan, Chair of the panel of judges for the Richard Jefferies Award As the competing needs of agriculture and conservation jostle for ascendency, land management in Britain has reached a tipping point. Candid, raw and searingly honest, Lee Schofield offers a naturalist's perspective of the challenges unfolding in the ancient yet ever-changing landscape of Haweswater and shares with us his gloriously vibrant vision for the future." National Parks, Beauty & Riches. Guest blog for Mark Avery following the launch of UK National Parks in 100 Seconds film. markavery.info/12 Feb 2022 As well as I hope this book does, and it has made the Wainwright Longlist, purely selfishly, I hope it doesn't result in a huge influx of visitors to the area. It is an extremely beautiful area, and most readers will want to visit having read this, let's hope they just don't all come at once..One aspect of the book that particularly moved me was Schofield's account of how personally distressing his job can be sometimes, as farmers and others in the Lake District resist what he and the RSPB are trying to achieve. This kind of admission is something I rarely seem to read in books by male nature writers. A visionary, practical and lyrical book on restoring land, from one of the best in the game, on the front line of nature restoration. -- Benedict Macdonald