Book of Hope

Lade - mild, cloudy, ne 2 - A muggy, overcast sort of a morning with hazy visibility and occasional drizzle following on from yesterday evenings welcome rain. The moth trap was a little better last night with 11 species of macros and the first Uncertains of the season, but still low on numbers.
  There wasn't much change on the local patch either apart from many more fledglings out and about including Green Woodpeckers from a nesting hole in the willow swamp. Reed Bunting, Whitethroat, Reed and Sedge Warbler youngsters were all noted around the ponds.
  A couple of visits this week to Dengemarsh resulted in protracted flight views of a Bittern returning to the Hookers reedbed and a `booming` male. Several each of Marsh Harriers, Buzzards and Hobbies noted, plus Reed and Sedge Warblers, Whitethroat, Yellow Wagtail, Corn Bunting, Bearded Tit, Raven, Redshank, Lapwing and Oystercatcher all showing evidence of having bred successfully.

                                Moorhen, Lade

Wilding by Isabella Tree (Picador, 2018) - I read Wilding in two sittings; and then a week later, read it again! It was simply wonderful, and so inspiring (thanks for the loan DB). Back in 2000 Isabella Tree and her husband Charlie Burrell were fed up with fighting a losing battle trying to make a profit from farming 3,500 acres of heavy Wealden clay on the Knepp Estate in West Sussex, so they decided on a radical change of direction and set about restoring their farmland to nature.
  Now, if that sounds simple, it isn't, as testified by the trials and tribulations told by Isabella in her highly readable book packed with fascinating facts and figures, some of which were completely new to me. For example, the concept that much of lowland Europe, including Britain, may once have been open wood pasture created by vast herds of wild, grazing animals such as bison, aurochs, tarpans and deer, was quite mind-blowing, and it was only when Homo sapiens came on the scene and pretty much wiped them out that closed canopy woodland dominated the landscape.
  As a result of this theory modern day grazing animals (Exmoor ponies, Old English Longhorn cattle  and Tamworth pigs) replicate the pre-Neolithic animals and are key to the re-wilding project and resulting terrain, where rare and declining beasts such as Nightingales and Purple Emperors have quickly colonised in considerable numbers, often in atypical habitat. There are many other surprises from the Knepp re-wilding experiment which must have given traditional conservation organisations pause for thought and, maybe, rethink some of their strategies.
  But above all this is a book of hope for the future of our much depleted planet, and an example of what can be achieved on marginal land elsewhere, if only other like-minded landowners would take up the batten from the Knepp Estate.