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

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This book is a ‘Must read’ and a ‘Good read’ but not necessarily a ‘Must agree with’ type of book. By which I mean that it is well written and has the right mixture of interesting facts and well-explained views mixed in with a few areas where I thought (you might not) ‘Hang on, I don’t agree with that’. And that’s the type of book that grabs and keeps my attention. I recommend it highly – you should read it and I think you may well enjoy it a lot. He paints a beautiful picture, and sets out a way which would allow the UK to restore its natural heritage as well as provide jobs for many. RSPB and others are slowly moving in this direction, and this book helps to push them along. First documenting and diagnosing the decline of our wild birds, Ben then offers an ambitious and alternative vision for how we can create new economies for our towns and countryside with nature at their heart.

Try to avoid bottles for 48 hours before rebirthing. If supplementing is happening, using a bottle alternative or non-traditional bottle for just those proceeding 48 hours helps. The vast majority of our birds are evolved to exploit dynamic mosaic habitats – but it was the wonderful animals we once had that created and ​ ‘gardened’ such habitats in the firstplace. The choice, after all, is ours to make,” she writes. Silent Spring sparked the dawn of a new environmental movement, the banning of DDT and the establishment of the US Environmental Protection Agency. Yet production of hazardous chemicals continues to rise exponentially. Banned pesticides linger. Decades on, I have traces of DDT in my own blood. This alarm bell still rings loud. We must listen to it. The Value of a Whale by Adrienne BullerBison, cattle, wild boar and their predators maintained European diversity over millennia. Photograph: David McNew/Getty Images

Absolutely loved the concept and also how he takes you along the journey with him. This is hugely readable and accessible to people like with me with a relatively limited understanding of wildlife and nature (beyond being a fan). The peoples of this globe have variously assaulted, modified and shaped the lands they live in, but few have manicured their homelands to death. Yet this, so Benedict Macdonald argues in his splendid new book, has been the fate of the British. The changes began long ago, he says. Britain’s mammoths were gone around 12,000BC, helped on their way by ice age hunters. Its last brown bears were vanquished by 2,000 years ago, and its wolves by the 18th century. This is the story of how Britain became a factory,’ Benedict Macdonald writes in this remarkable work of horror and hope. We are setting bold ambition for the amount of land that should be protected or restored for nature – from the current estimate of 5% of UK land well managed for nature to 20% by 2025; living the Lawtonian mantra of more, bigger, better and connected protected areas by focusing on a smaller number of landscapes where we can demonstrate major impact and inspire people to do more on their own land (we have recently settled on 37 priority landscapes as reflected in the image shown: red dots RSPB reserves, blue areas are our priority landscapes); retaining a commitment to double the extent of nature reserve network by 2030 from 2006 levels; and striving to win the argument for fundamental reform of the agricultural subsidy regime currently being debated as a result of the UK vote to leave the European Union. 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.Aim for a baby who is not full, but not actively hungry. About an hour after a feeding is usually a good goal.

When Ifirst started visiting the Forest of Dean, Ialways thought of it as paradise. The dense walls of spruce and larch seemed forbidding but enchanting and the cathedral oak trees, with very little underneath, seemed impressive.It is a work of diagnosis, not prescription, and there has since grown new awareness of what we must do to halt the catastrophic loss of life on Earth. But the space for non-human nature continues to shrink and extinction races on. Quammen’s slim concluding hopes must today be even slimmer. The Unnatural History of the Sea by Callum Roberts Macdonald believes that this model is the way forward; and he thinks that the owners of grouse moors and deer estates, in particular, should abandon their old ways and restore nature to the depleted landscapes in their care. Consider that this therapy isn’t something most licensed psychologists, psychiatrists, and counselors would recommend. Whilst I’ve been awed by the teeming grasslands in Kenya’s Maasai Mara and the jungles of Borneo and Sumatra, Imust admit that eastern Europe remains my favourite place.