As larger rewilding projects get underway, and free-roaming animals return to our countryside at alandscape-level, Iam sure that in my lifetime we’ll see the triumphant return of the Butcher Bird aswell. And which of the current reintroductions or recolonisations gets you most excited? Well articulated look at the British landscape and its failure to support functioning ecosystems. This book focuses on birds, but large herbivores and beavers and the like are needed as the ecosystem architects that will allow Britains bird life to flourish.

Given achance, they remain eminently capable of managing for awhole range of species that do not, in fact, require tortuous and expensive action plans to survive. Of the species lost to Britain, which do you most regret not being able to seehere? I never remember the moment of fascination itself, but Ido remember that by the time Iwas five, Iwould make weekend visits to Berkeley Castle Butterfly Farm. Iwas entranced by watching the butterflies drinking salts from my fingertips, and Ibegan acollection of ones passed to me by the lady running it — after they had died of course. The result is astonishing. Some of Britain’s rarest birds and butterflies now thrive at Knepp, and habitats lost for generations are returning. Tiny Knepp is now outshining many much larger, supposedly natural areas, in terms of its biodiversity. Yet many of the people living around Knepp have objected to the changes. Some see the new emerging landscapes as untidy and the resort of weeds (which is by and large untrue), while others feel that the messiness is profoundly unBritish. Such attitudes remind us of how difficult the job of rebirding Britain will be.

The Chair of Judges for the new Global Conservation Prize was BBC Countryfile presenter, Charlotte Smith. She was joined by Adrian Phillips, conservationist; Rachel Woolliscroft, sustainability expert; and Craig Bennett, CEO UK Wildlife Trusts. This is the story of how Britain became a factory,’ Benedict Macdonald writes in this remarkable work of horror and hope. There is no substitute, with such species, for afull restoration of our vanished invertebrate abundance, something, again, that is being seen at Knepp with its small herds of free-roaming animals. Dung beetles, in particular, benefit from the presence of free-roaming cattle herds, but most farms are now deserts for them. Avermectins, the standard worming drug, sterilise modern cow dung and wreak immense damage on insect communities in thesoil.

He then goes on to speak about the potential for rewilding the scottish highlands and how nature starved and manufactured even our national parks have become. Really makes a strong and convincing case for letting weeds grow and nature literally rewild itself. How much money the hunting industry currently makes and how much more it could make if it rewilded, culled deer on a large scale, let the forest regenerate and brought a host of supporting species. I didn't realize the impact of historical large herbivores on the landscape and that birds evolved with these herbivores and their predators. Plants respond to the presence of herbivores by changing their growth habits and thus providing birds with the infrastructure they need to thrive. What we think of as farmland birds were grassland birds before farming. Birds, animals, insects, fungi and plants all need to be allowed to grow naturally with each other. This year’s prize has been extended to include a second category for books about global conservation and climate change, and Rebirding by Benedict Macdonald is its inaugural winner. Praised as ‘visionary’ by conservationists and landowners alike, Rebirding sets out a compelling manifesto for restoring Britain’s wildlife, rewilding its species and restoring rural jobs – to the benefit of all. Irreplaceable by Julian Hoffman was awarded highly commended in the category. It would literally be built into our future homes and could be a big game changer,” Stammers says. “I would like to see it as part of a wider and more generous vision about how we cohabit with the natural world.”

To aim for one self-sustaining colony of Dalmatian pelicans by 2050 would be enormously ambitious — but also achievable. In Dumfries and Galloway, a group of friends are attempting to recreate the ancient Scottish wildwood across 1,600 acres. In Norfolk, the Ken Hill Estate is turning a thousand acres of the lowlands over to nature. A mathematician, an internet entrepreneur and an environmental campaigner have all recently snapped up small parcels of land with the intention of restoring some vestige of wildness to the English landscape. A lot of what we are seeing in the Dean is what scientists would term extinction-debt. Even as you watch certain populations, they are already doomed to extinction by default of aseries of events that have happened in thepast.

It’s avery ​ ‘impersonal’ book in that it simply points out how and why the economics, and the wildlife, aren’t working – it doesn’t have abad word to say about any one person and Icarefully wrote it thatway. Last December, a few months after he had given that interview, came news which would have alarmed not just Prince Charles, but anyone invested in the fate of the birds, which are a symbol of the British summer. Both swifts and house martins were being added to the red list of Britain’s most endangered birds following a catastrophic decline in their numbers. Swift numbers have declined by 58 per cent since 1995, while house martin populations have similarly suffered. Any digging into the comparative economies of, say, grouse shooting as opposed to nature watching, in similar areas, then yielded the expected result that nature fuels asection in the economy worth billions each year – and that’s even before we’ve reinstated true national parks and many of our lost charismatic animals. You write: “[T]he inability for many nature reserves to embrace scruffiness is why many of our counties already have more avocets than they do willows tits or spotted flycatchers.” What do you think we need to do to make ​ ‘scruffy’ agood thing?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.

Redbirding is a fantastic book. Extremely informative while holding a great story through from the dewilding of the past through to rewilding solutions of the future. Another Cambridge-based swift enthusiast, retired salesman John Stimpson, celebrated his 80th birthday in January by completing his goal of building 30,000 swift boxes in the garage attached to his bungalow in Ely which he sells to people wanting to assist.By far the most powerful and convincing ecological argument I've read. I got through this one with a whole gamut of emotions, from rage to frustration to optimism, and then all over the place again. Chapters three and four were particularly hard hitting, creating a sensation of vertigo. This is the best book on nature, conservation and rewilding I read in 2019 – perhaps one of the best I’ve ever read. I finished reading it with a real sense of hope for the future. It presents the best argument yet for rewilding before it’s too late, and shows us exactly how to do it. ‘The richer the world around us – the scruffier, messier, the more full of life – the more that life will reward us in return.’