Liberating nature: False hopes from the lockdown?

Is nature really gaining ground from the lockdown, or just being noticed more and getting temporary breathing space? In times of trial people tend to look for two things: the light at the end of the tunnel, and the silver lining. With normal life suspended some have suggested that for [...]

Admitting defeat: why I am quitting nature conservation

Disclaimer: while this piece refers to various conservation organisations and structures, I apologise in advance to my many friends and colleagues over the years who have worked hard within impossible structures to do their best. This rant is not aimed at you and especially not to those who are hanging [...]

Book Review: Irreplaceable

IRREPLACEABLE: The Fight to Save Our Wild Places Julian Hoffman Hamish Hamilton & Penguin, 2019, 416 pages Paperback  £9.99 ISBN: 9780241979495 Review by Janet Mackinnon At a time of much stress on the natural world and on us humans, it is a welcome relief to read this exceptionally well-written book [...]

Book Review: The Imagination of Plants

THE IMAGINATION OF PLANTS: A Book of Botanical Mythology Mathew Hall State University of New York Books, 2019, 298 pages Hbk  £79.11  ISBN: 978 1-4384-74 Review by Simon Leadbeater Matthew Hall’s book starts, as will I, with the Jason and the Argonauts (1963) scene in which the skeleton troop emerges [...]

Book Review: The Missing Lynx

THE MISSING LYNX: The Past and Future of Britain’s Lost Mammals Ross Barnett Bloomsbury, 2019, 352 pages Hbk  £16.99  ISBN:  9781472957344 Review by Peter Taylor This book is hard to like, but in the end, I do. It is short of illustrations and the attempts of a scholarly palaeontologist to [...]

Horses for Nature: Equids and extensive grazing in Britain Main Header
Horses for Nature: Equids and extensive grazing in Britain

Equids and extensive grazing in Britain: This article discusses the various issues associated with the use of horses in extensive grazing for nature conservation in Britain. [...]

Crisis talks: old wisdom meets new energy

Two eye-witness accounts of November’s ECOS/UCL mini-conference To mark our 40th anniversary, ECOS joined forces with University College London’s Conservation Society, for a mini-conference in November 2019 at the birthplace of ECOS.  The conference posed the very wide question ‘How do we address the environmental crisis?’, and brought together six [...]

Alison Parfitt – a brief tribute

Alison Parfitt sadly passed away on 17th December 2019. Those of us who were lucky enough to know her and call her friend will appreciate just how huge a loss this is.  Alison was a keen and active supporter of ECOS over the years and worked closely with the BANC team, as a [...]

ECOS 40(6): Editorial: Rewilding – connections and perceptions

Rewilding has been in the news a lot recently, from further releases of beaver (albeit mainly in enclosed pens) through to politicians vying for theirs to be the party promising the greatest number of trees planted to tackle climate change. Rewilding has even featured on The Archers, indicating that it [...]

ECOS 40(6): Living with the wild: cores, connectivity and co-existence

As a geographer I am fascinated by issues of spatial scale and what that means for the patterns we see in our landscapes. What we see depends very much on the lens and filters through which we look at the world – whether that’s through a microscope or from a [...]

ECOS 40(6): Movement ecology and rewilding

The level of hyperbole in the promotion of a Dutch concept of nature conservation, and its confusion with rewilding, risks reducing the meaning of rewilding to a thoughtless, simplistic equation. Rewilding is a global issue and must not be put into confusion by those who seek to shift its meaning. [...]

ECOS 40(6): Principles of rewilding – from the heart

This article discusses the challenge of maintaining a social movement for rewilding in the face of the preoccupation with academic definitions, conservation’s corporate interest, and the fomentation of conflict by the media. In the last few years, rewilding has entered new and rather tricky territory. New players have moved into [...]