Feral

Did you know that elephants, lions, rhinoceroses and hippopotamuses (phew, what a lot of vowels to get right) once thronged these lands, not to mention bears, wolves, wild boar and beavers? Our present natural environment is an infinitesimal fraction of what it once was – and what it could, perhaps, be again.

    Most conservation efforts (in this country at least) go into maintaining artificial habitats. For example our much-prized moorland is in fact man-made semi-desert. That land should – and could – be covered in trees. Preserving it in its current state is like preserving the ranchlands created out of the Amazon rainforest. We tend to think that nature should be returned to the state we remember from our childhood. But it could be so much more.

    So says George Monbiot in his book Feral which I mentioned a couple of weeks ago.

    And not just for the sake of the planet. For the sake of our purse (surprisingly) and, most importantly of all, for the sake of our souls.

    And I agree.

    Here are some extracts from the book.

   

I want to see wolves reintroduced because wolves are fascinating, and because they help to reintroduce the complexity and trophic diversity in which our ecosystems are lacking. I want to see wolves reintroduced because . . . they are necessary monsters of the mind, inhabitants of the more passionate world against which we have locked our doors.

Ecological restoration is a work of hope.

. . . the large-scale restoration of living systems and natural processes . . . will, I believe, enhance our civilization, enrich and rewild our own lives, introduce us to wonders which, in these bleak lands, now seem scarcely imaginable.

So much environmentalism is negative. We must stop driving cars, buying clothes, eating food from other countries. It’s another guilt-trip, another straitjacket. George Monbiot’s book, while devastating in its account of how much we have lost in just the last few decades, nevertheless to me offers a positive way forward. It’s a vision of the future, and one that fills me with excitement.

And that’s all a pretty poor summary of a complex powerful book. You’d do much better reading it for yourself.

By the way, he calls the book Feral because the word means ‘in a wild state, especially after escape from captivity or domestication’. That’s us – as we could be.