Rebirding: Winner of the Wainwright Prize for Writing on Global Conservation: Restoring Britain's Wildlife

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Even though the decline has been happening for a long time, it is only in the past few decades that the dramatic drop in numbers of all species has become very evident. The act of strimming, weed killing and obliterating anything that looks slightly scruffy form our urban and rural landscapes has been the final death knell. The memory of the way that the landscape and natural world used to be, has almost faded from our collective memories.

Rebirthing sessions can take several forms, depending on your age and your treatment goals. Sessions are usually led by trained instructors. They work with you one-on-one or two-on-one, coaching your breathwork and leading you through the technique. Powerful book that not only discusses the decline of the UK's bird population, but also wildlife in general. Gives some proactive ideas on how this could be solved, but also some ideas that don't quite sit right with me. In Dumfries and Galloway, a group of friends are attempting to recreate the ancient Scottish wildwood across 1,600 acres. In Norfolk, the Ken Hill Estate is turning a thousand acres of the lowlands over to nature. A mathematician, an internet entrepreneur and an environmental campaigner have all recently snapped up small parcels of land with the intention of restoring some vestige of wildness to the English landscape. Consider that this therapy isn’t something most licensed psychologists, psychiatrists, and counselors would recommend. At this stage, a lot of these people are making big leaps, by coming out of what you might call conventional positions into more radical ones,” he says. “We want to make sure that we've got a proper coherent platform, before rushing out and going public. These things take time. But you'd be amazed at the extraordinary level of interest there is out there, not just among the public, but among landowners.”The more physically involved simulation of birth carries a risk of oxygen deprivation, which can lead to brain damage and even death. Elsewhere community groups such as the Totley Swift Group in Sheffield have erected nearly 100 nesting boxes in recent years, nearly a quarter of which have been used by the birds to nest. Ideally any nesting spot for swifts needs to be north-facing, sheltered, and at least five metres off the ground (the higher the better for the fledglings’ first vertiginous flight).

The plan to include farmers within RESTORE is significant, given that rural communities have tended to view rewilders with caution and even hostility. This reaction has typically been rooted in a fear that they will be forced from their land and left without jobs – an objection that Macdonald strives to overcome in Rebirding. I didn't realize the impact of historical large herbivores on the landscape and that birds evolved with these herbivores and their predators. Plants respond to the presence of herbivores by changing their growth habits and thus providing birds with the infrastructure they need to thrive. What we think of as farmland birds were grassland birds before farming. Birds, animals, insects, fungi and plants all need to be allowed to grow naturally with each other. He also talks about the Welsh countryside being able to be used for eco-tourism, not taking into account the decades of under investment in the road networks, public transport infrastructure and hospitals that can bearly deal with locals let alone tens of thousands of tourists a year. Brilliant read. The book takes us through a brief natural history of Britain since glaciation all the way through to the rather dismal state of affairs we find ourselves in now. The decimation of our wildlife - which the author rightly points out is a national treasure which has all but slipped away into our unconscious - began not with the agricultural revolution many thousands of years ago, but with the intense, enclosed and insecticide fueled systems which developed through the 20th century. British birds had adapted to live alongside us in artificially grazed extensive farmland habitat and were generally doing well - like in parts of Eastern Europe to this day - until we began to squeeze every last cm of land for agricultural use and saw, or did not see, our house martins, swifts and flycatchers drop from thousands, to hundreds to just a few here and there. Those well read in this field have heard this story but where this book diverges is in its vision for the future.Macdonald’s plans to reintroduce the Dalmatian Pelican to the UK, which were covered widely by the media, are less advanced – although he certainly hopes that the species will become part of the UK’s birdlife sooner rather than later. Whilst I’ve been awed by the teeming grasslands in Kenya’s Maasai Mara and the jungles of Borneo and Sumatra, Imust admit that eastern Europe remains my favourite place. They’re just improbably glossy. It’s the first bird for which Ihave awritten record: 2 nd April 1996, St David’s Head, Pembrokeshire. It finally landed right beside us — and my father threw it asandwich. This has always seemed an ecologically equivocal thing to do, but it kept the curious bird’s interest.

Any digging into the comparative economies of, say, grouse shooting as opposed to nature watching, in similar areas, then yielded the expected result that nature fuels asection in the economy worth billions each year – and that’s even before we’ve reinstated true national parks and many of our lost charismatic animals. You write: “[T]he inability for many nature reserves to embrace scruffiness is why many of our counties already have more avocets than they do willows tits or spotted flycatchers.” What do you think we need to do to make ​ ‘scruffy’ agood thing? Even now, we have all the resources and skill to effect aremarkable resurgence in nature. Most of all, we have the space: 94% of Britain isn’t built upon, and huge areas are running on ​ ‘negative’ economies rightnow. A lot of this comes down to the human conservation ego. Take on areserve, carefully segregate its habitats and ​ ‘manage’ it, and you prove you are doing something and justifying your salary and grants. The classic argument in response is that ​ ‘scrub will take hold’. Good! Scrub accounts for more specialist and declining species than any other British habitat except aged wood-pasture. By far the most powerful and convincing ecological argument I've read. I got through this one with a whole gamut of emotions, from rage to frustration to optimism, and then all over the place again. Chapters three and four were particularly hard hitting, creating a sensation of vertigo.

For anyone who still needs winning around to our planet’s beauty – and wants to know how we can save it – this is the book they should read. Silent Spring by Rachel Carson When considering this technique for yourself or your child, be sure to weigh the evidence against the risk. While a few hours of supervised shallow breathing will probably not hurt you, there is little to no evidence that it will lead to a definitive, cathartic experience. Just as Isabella Tree laid out a comprehensive and clear case for rewilding at the Knepp estate, Benedict MacDonald continues the call to rewild the UK and restore the great natural diversity that has been decreasing drastically for years, robbing us of natural wonders, especially a rich variety of birds. MacDonald charts the massive impact that people have had on the UK’s environment from the moment the very first people first came ashore in prehistoric times up until now, and despite moments where nature and people were able to coëxist, the recurring theme is that we have had a deleterious impact on the natural world, especially its birds. I love the idea of biodiversity as a hidden universe. An estimated 8.7 million species live on land and sea, and this number is probably an underestimate. When you include bacteria and archaea, it could be more like a trillion. But an estimated 99.99% of species which have ever lived have already gone. It makes the 100-400bn stars in the Milky Way look like a pretty paltry number. Julia comments: “ The Diary of a Young Naturalist is a significant nature book – made all the more so because it is Dara McAnulty’s first, completed before his 16th birthday. Our Wainwright Prize winner this year is nuanced, passionate and caring. It’s a wonderful diary that fits around Dara’s personal endeavours and family experiences, but ultimately, shaped by the nature that surrounds us all. The judges were almost breathless from reading it and would like to call for it to be immediately listed on the national curriculum. Such is the book’s power to move and the urgency of the situation we face.”