Feral

From Feral:
“This is the most bewitching topic I have ever explored. It has taken me to wild places, brought me into contact with wild life and wild people. It has exposed me to some of the most riveting findings – in the fields of biology, archaeology, history and geography – I have yet encountered. It has wrought deep changes in my own life. At times investigating these issues has felt like stepping through the back of the wardrobe. This story begins slowly, with my efforts to engage more fully with the ecosystems on my doorstep, to discover in them something of the untamed spirit I would like to resurrect. If you would care to push past the coats, you can join me there.”

Since he studied zoology at Oxford, then lived in West Papua and the Amazon basin, George Monbiot has been intimately involved in the protection of the natural world, especially through his widely-read journalism. But gradually he became overwhelmed by a sense of despair - and by an unfulfilled desire for adventure and enchantment.

The result is Feral, the most remarkable and personal book he has yet written – a lyrical and gripping tale of his efforts to re-engage with nature and to find ways of rewilding the land, the sea and his own existence: to bring back missing species and missing habitats and to create a richer, rawer life than we live at the moment.

From the seas of north Wales, where he kayaks among feeding frenzies of dolphins and seabirds, to the forests of Eastern Europe, where lynx stalk and packs of wolves roam, Monbiot begins to develop a sense of what might be possible. Astonishing new discoveries in the science of ecology show that the natural world is even more fascinating and complex than we had imagined. They make a powerful case for the reintroduction of large predators and large herbivores, such as lynx, wolves, wolverines, moose, bison, beavers and boar.

Reading this book will transform the way you see the nature and landscapes of Britain and Europe. Among the many fascinating discoveries in Feral are that our ecosystems are elephant-adapted; that the vast flocks of sheep have done more environmental damage than all the building that has ever taken place here; that farm subsidies are a major cause of flooding; and that wildly mistaken conservation policies are stifling our biodiversity.

Feral is a work of hope and of revelation. It develops a new, positive environmentalism, which aims to replace our Silent Spring with a Raucous Summer. Already, it discovers, large wild animals are beginning to spread back across Europe, and fin whales, humpback whales and bluefin tuna are returning to the seas around Britain. And this is just the start…

Praise for George Monbiot:
“A dazzling command of science and a relentless faith in people.” – Naomi Klein

George Monbiot is a columnist for the Guardian and the author of the bestselling books Captive State, The Age of Consent, Bring on the Apocalypse and Heat, as well as the investigative travel books Poisoned Arrows, Amazon Watershed and No Man's Land. Among the many prizes he has won is the UN Global 500 award for outstanding environmental achievement, presented to him by Nelson Mandela.

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