Reviews

Such a fascinating and important book. It discusses climate change in a way that leaves the reader hopeful and feeling like we can truly make a difference

I find myself somewhat conflicted with Wilding. I found a lot of it hopeful, inspiring and beautiful. The concept of and subsequent movement towards rewilding is one I am fully behind, I mourn the loss of nature and its diverse aspects from the UK. However, there can be no denying that Isabella Tree has a vested interest in fostering support for these efforts.

As someone who co-owns one of the more notorious examples of rewilding in the nation, her livelihood lives and dies on continuing subsidies for ecological movements. While I do believe these subsidies are a good thing, I don't think it's her place to evaluate their effectiveness as someone so biased towards their existence. There is also dismissive attitude towards actual, trained conservation experts throughout the book. This combined with the near total absence of expert opinions does make the case presented here shaky at best.

None of this bothered me too much though, Tree may be biased but who isn't? The information was still concise and well presented with a big focus on nature first and foremost. This changes towards the end of the book, with the last few chapters switching focus towards human benefits rather than environmental. Certain sections felt like adverts for their various businesses (not mentioned till latter chapters) such as their meat production and guided tours. All of this is merely a prelude before the final chapter becomes a mess of evolutionary biology (which is almost always speculative nonsense with limited evidence) then an argument for massive commercialisation of nature conservation.

The argument that Tree presents is that conservation tactics for the last 50 years have failed. While this is at least to an extent true, there is no effort made to examine why this has happened. Rather, Isabella broadly dismisses efforts being made out of pure altruism or from scientific advice and instead posits that the process must be profitable or no-one will change. In presenting this conclusion, she forgets her own reason for adapting and moving to rewilding: government intervention. It's true that it would be unfair to expect the sacrifices needed to come from farmers, there are answers that aren't so capitalistically minded. This is all ignoring the very stereotypically baby boomer attitudes of "kids these days don't know enough about nature/spend too much time on their phones/all have ADHD now" that was consistent through the final pages.

So not the best note to end on, however I don't wish to give the impression that I hated the book. It was still on the whole broadly informative and well written, and with some greater imagination and cooperation with outside experts, as well as an admittal of her own biases, Isabella Tree could have produced the definitive work on the matter. As it stands, with the flaws present, Wilding is only recommended, not essential.