City of Westminster
London NW1 4RY
UK
George Monbiot introduces his new book ‘Feral: Searching for enchantment on the frontiers of rewilding’.
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…