Feral

The author of Captive State, Heat, The Age of Consent and Amazon Watershed, George Monbiot is one of the world's most celebrated radical thinkers. In Feral: Searching for Enchantment on the Frontiers of Rewilding, he follows his own hunger for new environmental experiences, and through a riveting tale of possibility and travel with wildlife and wild people, shows why we need to change our policies in order to properly cherish the wild and our experience of it. This is a book that explodes with wonder and delight. Making use of some remarkable scientific discoveries, which transform our understanding of how natural systems work, George Monbiot explores a new, positive environmentalism, which shows how damaged ecosystems on land and at sea can be restored, and how this restoration can revitalise and enrich our own lives.

Challenging his own ecological boredom, Monbiot weaves together a beautiful and riveting tale of wild places, wildlife and wild people. Roaming the hills of Britain and the forests of Europe, kayaking off the coast of Wales with dolphins and seabirds, he seeks out the places which still possess something of the untamed spirit he would like to resurrect. He meets people trying to restore lost forests and bring back missing species, such as wolves, lynx, wolverines, wild boar and gray whales. This process of rewilding, Monbiot argues, offers an alternative to a silent spring: the chance of a raucous summer, in which ecological processes resume and humans draw closer to the natural world.