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. The book charts a history of the British landscape, starting with what it was like before humans arrived – a very natural Britain. Ben’s take on the time since then – the Anthropocene – is subtitled ‘The killing of the countryside’. Decade by decade he works through the changes we have wrought: the loss of strip-farming and margins during the 1760s; the growth of hedges in the 1790s; the draining of the fens during the 1800s; the loss of scrubland controlled by large herbivores; the hunting of big birds across open landscapes as people and sheep took over; and the demise of seabird abundance, portrayed by the extinction of the Great Auk. Its amazing how much is simply taken as being the norm - uplands decimated by sheep farming, moorlands razed for the grouse industry, and suburbs sanitized into blandness. Landowners across the UK are leaving a lasting legacy for future generations by investing in the restoration of our degraded countryside.

It’s called Rebirding and it is written by wildlife television field director, conservation writer and lifelong birder Ben MacDonald. 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.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. Rebirding is an absolutely fascinating book, and one that I think anyone who is interested in British nature and wildlife should read. It took a bit of perseverance for me to get into, as the first few chapters are a bit depressing - but this simply highlights the dire situation that british wildlife is in.

Rebirthing sessions can take several forms, depending on your age and your treatment goals. Sessions are usually led by trained instructors. They work with you one-on-one or two-on-one, coaching your breathwork and leading you through the technique. Here Ben tells us how documenting nature around the world has shaped his views on conservation in the UK, how we might reclaim the value of ​ ‘scruffiness’ — and what role pelicans might play in arevitalised future for our wetlands. Can you remember what first sparked your fascination with nature? When I’ve travelled to the Volga Delta in Russia, you can see these eagles nesting beside villages; they are useful scavengers of fish waste, and it’s not uncommon to see them in their dozens. They are also northern Europe’s vulture-equivalent. As nature takes centre stage at Cop15, so too will market-based solutions to the ecological collapse of life on Earth. Biodiversity offsets have become law in the UK, while conservation NGOs are teaming up with investment banks, asset managers and private equity firms to make nature an investable asset. But do these solutions actually work? Can green capitalism help avert the dual climate and nature crises? Macdonald’s plans to reintroduce the Dalmatian Pelican to the UK, which were covered widely by the media, are less advanced – although he certainly hopes that the species will become part of the UK’s birdlife sooner rather than later.Should the swifts and their migratory cousins the swallows and house martins one year simply not return to Britain from their epic 6,000 mile sub-Saharan migration, the Prince admitted, his “world would come to an end”. So important, so interesting, and visionary: he paints a beautiful, exciting picture of what Britain can be like in the long term, with medium-term plan to get there. Did you know that Snowdonia (/Eryri) is larger than the Masai Mara? That our mono-cropped grouse moors amount to more than double the size of Yellowstone? Yet, they are so bereft of wildlife. Indeed, Britain's "idyllic" hillside vistas are almost deserts for wildlife, and starved for jobs. This is a cultural choice, as the author convincingly explains with reference to other parts of Europe. Here, our natural landscapes are uniquely bad for nature. The targets are already there – imagine 100,000 hectares of new wetlands when you think what Ham Wall and Lakenheath have achieved, 140,000 hectares of peatland restored, 250,000 hectares of woodland and other habitat around our towns and cities. They’re already on the table – the recommendations of the Natural Capital Committee, rarely mentioned by conservationists. We have basically driven birds to extinction via starvation, by removing their food from their environment. We have measured the drastic decline in insect biomass since the 50s. These are birds which are seriously declining, but in a way they are still here and not yet at the desperate fragmentary population stage,” explains Ben Stammers, people and wildlife officer at the North Wales Wildlife Trust. “They are still present in most towns, villages and cities. It is the perfect time to try and help them and they are a species we can help.”

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.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? So getting this book to key landowners, particularly estate owners, the Forestry Commission and decision-makers, is going to bekey. 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. To aim for one self-sustaining colony of Dalmatian pelicans by 2050 would be enormously ambitious — but also achievable. Macdonald is not a professional conservationist; rather, he is a lifelong birder who specialises in making nature documentaries. The vision he sets out in Rebirding was forged through years of travel and research, including the 500 academic papers he read while writing the book, and his personal observations of wildlife declining around him.

I do hope so, as the future he describes is infinitely more interesting and exciting than the prospect of our current direction. This is the story of how Britain became a factory,’ Benedict Macdonald writes in this remarkable work of horror and hope. The poet Ted Hughes famously wrote that the return of swifts to Britain in May is a sure sign that ‘the globe’s still working’. So their increasing absence, is evidence of something seriously amiss.Lest there be any doubt, MacDonald is a fan of rewilding. He makes a very good case for a future which could be better for wildlife if only we adopted it.