COUNTRYSIDE HISTORY
The Life and Legacy of Oliver Rackham Editors Ian D Rotherham and Jennifer A Moody Pelagic Publishing, 2024, 438 pages Hardback £50 | ISBN: 9781784273163 Review by Janet Mackinnon I regard Countryside History as a pinnacle in my ECOS reviewing experience, but it is also a challenging book to review. [...]
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REWILDING THE SEA and BLUE MACHINE
REWILDING THE SEA: How to Save Our Oceans Charles Clover Witness Books/Penguin, 2023, 288 pages Paperback £12.99 | ISBN: 9781529144055 BLUE MACHINE – How the Ocean Shapes Our World Helen Czerski Penguin, 2023, 464 pages, Paperback £10.99 | ISBN: 9781804991961 Review by Janet Mackinnon I’ll begin this 2-book [...]
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WILD SERVICE
Why Nature Needs You Nick Hayes and Jon Moses Bloomsbury Publishing, 2024, 286 Pages Hardback: £20.00 | ISBN: 978-1-5266-7331-2 Review by Simon Leadbeater First page Compare and contrast. Wild Service: An open church freely available to everyone contrasted with a private country estate excluding all; In actuality: Public access to 1,700 acres; [...]
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ECOS Interviews: SARA OLDFIELD
Thoughts from influential nature conservationists… Sara Oldfield Career Highlights I am a plant enthusiast, hesitate to call myself a botanist, who loves growing plants and looking at species in their natural habitats. Professionally I have enjoyed a long career in nature conservation working both on a freelance basis and for [...]
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ECOS Interviews: SIMON FAIRLIE
Thoughts from influential nature conservationists… Simon Fairlie Career Highlights I worked variously for 20 years as an agricultural labourer, vine worker, shepherd, fisherman, builder, stonemason and general dogsbody before being ensnared by the computer in 1990. I was a coeditor of The Ecologist magazine in the early 1990s until I [...]
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GROUNDBREAKERS
The return of Britain’s wild boar Chantal Lyons Bloomsbury Wildlife, 2024, 288 pages Hardback: £20 | ISBN 978-1-3994 Review by Peter Taylor This engaging book mostly follows the author’s encounters with characters from the rewilding and forestry fraternity, the Forest of Dean human inhabitants, and the wild boar themselves. Boar [...]
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HEDGELANDS
A wild wander around Britain’s greatest habitat Christopher Hart Chelsea Green Publishing, 2024, 208 pages Hardback: £20 | ISBN 10 1915294193 Review by Jo Cartmell Thriving hedgerows are a habitat that I deeply care about. This new book from Christopher Hart has been one of constant revelations, not least that [...]
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ECOS 45 (6) – The spirit of rewilding
Releasing our grip on nature & rediscovering our own wildness PETER TAYLOR Rewilding has caught the public imagination in ways that conservation never quite managed, and recently, moving from an original position of indifference, even opposition, traditional conservationists have sought to learn from and incorporate the practice. I have watched [...]
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ECOS Interviews: CLIVE CHATTERS
Thoughts from influential nature conservationists… Clive Chatters Career Highlights I started my working life in the era of mass unemployment – the early 1980s – so my lasting highlight has been a continuity of employment, particularly by employers who have been flexible in supporting me. That aside, the highlights have [...]
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TIME AND TIDE
The Long Long Life of Landscape Fiona Stafford John Murray, 2024, 285 pages Hardback: £20 | ISBN 9781473683628 Review by Barry Larking A simple way to review this book would be to quote from almost any page. The writing is fluent, engaging and intriguing, response and information deftly infused. Stafford’s [...]
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ECOS 45 (5) – Voices of the wild
A review of rewilding podcasts EDWARD GRIERSON Podcasts are an unlikely media success story. At a time when there are more screens than ever, nobody would have expected a purely audio medium to find a niche. But since the launch of Open Source two decades ago, podcasts have become not [...]
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ECOS Interviews: KARA MOSES
Thoughts from influential nature conservationists… Kara Moses Career Highlights My ‘career’, if you can call it that, has been incredibly diverse, from academic research as a primatologist, publishing books and articles as an environment journalist, developing curricula and pedagogical/educational approaches as an educator, shutting down fracking sites as an activist, [...]
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