Feral: Rewilding the Land, the Sea, and Human Life
Language: English
Pages: 344
ISBN: 022632527X
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
So what if we stopped hedging? What if we grounded our efforts to solve environmental problems in hope instead, and let nature make our case for us? That’s what George Monbiot does in Feral, a lyrical, unabashedly romantic vision of how, by inviting nature back into our lives, we can simultaneously cure our “ecological boredom” and begin repairing centuries of environmental damage. Monbiot takes readers on an enchanting journey around the world to explore ecosystems that have been “rewilded”: freed from human intervention and allowed—in some cases for the first time in millennia—to resume their natural ecological processes. We share his awe, and wonder, as he kayaks among dolphins and seabirds off the coast of Wales and wanders the forests of Eastern Europe, where lynx and wolf packs are reclaiming their ancient hunting grounds. Through his eyes, we see environmental success—and begin to envision a future world where humans and nature are no longer separate and antagonistic, but are together part of a single, healing world.
Monbiot’s commitment is fierce, his passion infectious, his writing compelling. Readers willing to leave the confines of civilization and join him on his bewitching journey will emerge changed—and ready to change our world for the better.
themselves. On some occasions in the previous season I had caught weevers in greater numbers than mackerel. I had never been stung on the boat, but one day, filleting the fish on the shore while my partner made a fire in the dunes, my hand slipped and I impaled my thumb on a spine. It felt as if I had put my thumb on a workbench, raised a hammer and hit it as hard as I could. I went rigid with pain, then felt a panic-inducing numbness spreading up my arm, across my shoulder and into my chest.
grey-brown and treeless. To the south, the hills graded from yellow to green to blue as they stepped away, deep into Ceredigion and Pembrokeshire. Beyond them I could glimpse a grey blur of sea. Though I could see for many miles, apart from distant plantations of Sitka spruce and an occasional scrubby hawthorn or oak clinging to a steep valley, across that whole, huge view, there were no trees. The land had been flayed. The fur had been peeled off, and every contoured muscle and nub of bone was
great battalions massed at the offing as a front approached across the sea. A young buzzard soared above the horses then began to mob the kestrel. We walked through the pastures around the top of the wood, stumbling across a little waterfall, sudden and surprising in the midst of bracken and gorse. Marsh marigold leaves withered on the banks. ‘This,’ Ritchie said, ‘is the end of life as we know it. From here on up there are no trees, except for that one birch.’ I looked up for a moment at the
millennium began, Alan applied for grants, badgered philanthropists, boosted the membership, sold diaries and calendars and charged tourists and students to plant trees. He managed, by 2006, to raise £1.65 million, enough to buy the 10,000-acre Dundreggan estate in Glenmoriston. The Italian owner had died intestate, and the sale of his property was tortuous. As so many of the absentee landlords of Scotland do, he had channelled his assets through holding companies in a tax haven: 99 Feral in
courage, the aggression which evolved to see us through our quests and crises, and we still feel the need to exercise them. But our sublimated lives oblige us to invent challenges to replace the horrors of which we have been deprived. We find ourselves hedged by the consequences of our nature, living meekly for fear of provoking or damaging others. ‘Thus conscience does make cowards of us all.’2 Much of the social history of the past two centuries consists of the discovery, often grudging, that