Tower and Town, August 2019

  (view the full edition)

A Good Read

'The time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land' Except, of course, it isn't - hands up if you’ve heard that voice lately? Thought not....the turtle dove has been on the endangered list in the UK for more than twenty years, along with numerous other species, victims of intensive farming and habitat destruction.

But in one corner of Sussex, turtle doves and other birds, beasts and insects are staging a comeback. In her award-winning book Wilding Isabella Tree describes what happened on the Knepp Estate, when the author and her husband Charlie Burrell accepted that farming the heavy clay soil on their land was becoming ever less sustainable. They took the decision to allow the land to revert to its natural state. Simple enough? The policy presented quite as many challenges as conventional farming  - tree guards, yes or no? Should they intervene when free-ranging stock was endangering, or being endangered by, walkers on the estate? What would be the effect of simply giving up trying to drain the land and allowing the river to revert to its floodplain? They sought guidance from  a range of experts, and endured headache-inducing discussions with assorted Government and non-Governmental agencies over grants and subsidies. The book charts the gradual alteration from farmland to a habitat teeming with a variety of wildlife - bats, butterflies, dung beetles, skylarks, deer, semi-wild pigs and cattle, fungi, owls, and dragonflies - balancing just enough scientific data with describing the practicalities of the project.

Wilding is this year’s winner of the Richard Jefferies Society/White Horse Bookshop Prize for Nature Writing.  Chapters are prefaced with literary quotes reminding us of the social and cultural aspects of natural history and the importance of experiencing the natural world to promote well-being. The people of the Yukon in Canada and Alaska understand that importance, and live it.

One of the runners up for the RJ/WHB prize was Adam Weymouth, with Kings of the Yukon, an elegiac account of a 2,000 mile journey by canoe, observing a natural wilderness, and the symbiotic relationship between the indigenous people of the region and the salmon – the ‘kings’ of the title. It’s a relationship under threat, climate change and industrialisation having fundamentally affected the habitat and ecosystems. Adam Weymouth is appearing at the Literature Festival in September to talk about this joyous and despairing book.

Debby Guest