ECOS 36-1-66 Book Reviews

ECOS 36(1) 2015 ECOS 36(1) 2015 and detailed knowledge of their area, and no attempt to suggest ways forward, and also would have liked the disastrous refined the management techniques used and indeed I suspect there may be years from 2000 to 2014 to be included. Book to exploit them for food and resources. little possibility of major improvement. The rest of the book is an interesting and The habitats they created sustained a Ian notes in the last chapter that the provocative read, but isn’t a definitive great number of species, including the pessimistic tone reflects top-downaccount. Some comments, such as the Reviews many stress-tolerant specialists that are changes in the last 10 years in Britain that Little Ice Age being perhaps related to lost in a more homogeneous landscape. have effectively emasculated conservation human population decrease should be With changes in land tenure, population agencies, environmental planning laws, balanced by new knowledge of the growth, division of society into rural and and broken the ethos of conservation for Maunder Minimum and the role of urban communities, and more recently future generations in favour of short term sunspot inactivity.1 coal and petroleum based economies, economic gain. Had he written the book this close relation to nature has been 10 years ago, at the end of the “golden That this book is a bit polemical is actually lost. Overwhelmingly, we are now city age of British Conservation”, the tone a point in its favour. While some phrases and suburb dwellers. We might join the would have been different. like “A cursory look at history shows RSPB and Wildlife Trusts, but we know recent centuries humankind has been little about our local ecology, and are The book’s 17 chapters provide brief, rushing headlong towards urbanisation disenfranchised from any say in land but sometimes jumbled and repetitive and industrialisation” and “water management. We are culturally severed summaries of a number of important courses spewed their load [of silt] across from nature. aspects of conservation ecology. Why the vast open floodplains” made me does the important (but throw-away) wince, others like “The body odour of This is bad enough, but Ian contends line on alien species’ spread being urbanisation” and the “Disneyfication that this simple fact is ignored or favoured by ecological disruption and of ecology and landscape” [tending to a misunderstood by government gross eutrophication appear in the uniform lowest common denominator] ECO-HISTORY: agencies and theme-based NGOs, middle of a chapter on Democracy, were enlivening. It’s a good read. An Introduction to Biodiversity and with potentially dangerous results. Accountability and Environmentalism, Conservation Instead there is central focus on climate and not where it belongs in the chapter Finally, I would suggest two topics that Ian D. Rotherham change issues, and the new concept on Alien and Invasive Species? These should have had more airing, if only The White Horse Press, 2014, 268 pages of “re-wilding”. Unfortunately the chapters also rely very heavily on Ian’s because they are positive. The British Pbk, £25, ISBN 978-1-874267-81-2 latter tends to be taken to mean the own work, and have little input of National Parks were set up precisely to withdrawal of management from an ideas from outside Britain, except of foster the cultural landscapes whose Ian Rotherham is one of Britain’s most area of land, so “letting nature take course Frans Vera’s work on post-glacial loss Ian regrets, and despite massive productive and distinguished ecological its course”. The problem is the prefix environments. In fact the book should recent cuts they still focus on supporting and environmental geographers, and “re-”. Abandonment of management really have had the words “in Britain” traditional management methods and this very personal book contains a great does not take a site back to where it appended to the title. It is arguably of the communities needed to maintain deal to interest and dismay a thoughtful was before human meddling. It doesn’t little relevance, other than a pointer to them. Then there is the exploding British conservationist. even take it back to the medieval potential disaster, outside this country. evidence of the wildlife significance of human-adapted landscape. It merely gardens and urban greenspace, not just Ian’s central tenet is that of “cultural initiates a succession process which For British conservationists its best for the benefit of people’s health and severance”. Until essentially the end of the after a transient biodiversity gain may feature is the 40 page 1000AD to happiness, but for biodiversity support.2 middle ages, people managed the land and lead to a lower biodiversity outcome. 2000AD timeline, which summarises its resources in a consistent and relatively major changes in the factors relating References low-impact manner, creating a mosaic of This is a deeply pessimistic book that to UK biodiversity. This is a genuinely 1. M. Lockwood, R. G. Harrison, T. Woollings and different high biodiversity habitats which, catalogues the decline and collapse of useful summary, and I personally would S. K. Solanki. 2010. Are cold winters in Europe associated with low solar activity? Environ. Res. while not being “natural”, were related biodiversity and habitats in Britain, while have considered structuring the book Lett. 5 024001 pp 1-7 to the early post-glacial “natural habitats” pointing out the inadequacy of even around it. I would also have started 2. http://www.wlgf.org/wlgf_website_019.htm they replaced. To do so, successive the most ambitious restoration projects the timeline at the Younger Dryas, so generations of people built an affinity currently taking place. There really is summarising the whole post-glacial, Steve Head 66 67 ECOS 36(1) 2015 ECOS 36(1) 2015 as much as lexicography and, also, to both the monograph’s purpose to inform true wildness to the human psyche; be honest, old fashioned guesswork. and superb evocations of experience and but he does not live in some imaginary The Sea Eagle was, by this reckoning, place, in his books on The Greenshank ‘shortbread tin lid’ world of fantasy far and away the greater in numbers, (1951) and The Snow Bunting (1966).4 Highlands. The hard bits – forestry, surprisingly. However, in visits stretching Gradually more scientific demands tourism, increasing public exposure – back over 30 years I can attest to the were placed on such writing and the are there together with the poetics. The massive expansion of the Sea Eagle anecdotal lost its place. However, the Eagle’s Way is a good read and not just in a stretch of coastline of Finnmark, desire for writing that connected readers for the Eagles he describes so well, but Norway. In barely 10 years numbers have (who might just also be scientists) with the reason why they are there and why increased to make these huge ‘flying the expression of reflections and feelings that matters. The book is more than carpets’ a regular sight along that bleak never went away. just text, with renowned photographer shore in the High Arctic; the population Laurie Campbell providing superb was obviously constrained merely by In recent years a new generation of colour photographic studies. human persecution, now ended. It flops authors have written for this receptive about heedless of uninvited visitors – audience, including the prolific Jim References and notes “this upheaval of a bird” as Crumley Crumley. He writes like someone you 1. In other parts of the Sea Eagle’s range it is a bird of describes its take off. have met; maybe, luckily, sat opposite forests and lakes. Today re-introductions at inland sites across northern Europe are in progress. you at a bothy fire and swapped stories 2. Sea Eagle, for horn solo, J. 183. Sea Eagle dates The Sea Eagle, unlike the Golden, composed with a poetic gift for imagery from 1982. (www.maxopus.com) shrugs at human presence; that was long into the night. 3. Seebohm (1832-95) travelled to the Yeniesy its undoing. One that Sir Peter Maxwell tundra in Siberia together with the great Scottish Davies flushed from his garden in Orkney, In The Eagle’s Way he begins with a sort ornithologist John Alexander Harvie-Brown inspired a piece from the composer.2 of extended preface, that ruminates on (1844-1916) in 1875; an epic journey. THE EAGLE’S WAY I cannot imagine a Golden Eagle on ‘the eagle’ as a metaphor for wildness 4. Both highly collectable should you find one in an attic or charity shop. Jim Crumley Orkney and certainly not one perched and spiritual identity, touched upon in Colour plates by Laurie Campbell on a garden fence. In the 20th century his earlier books. This leads to the central Barry Larking Saraband, 2014, 216 pages British and Irish writers excelled at travel and longest section of The Eagles Way, Pbk £12.99, ISBN 9781908643476 writing by surpassing accounts given a kind of diary of his quest to plot the by the gentry of advice on tickets and birds’ transits across Scotland east to THE MOOR This book lends credence to an idea I transport, hotels and ‘facilities’ when west; following the re-introduced Sea Lives, Landscape, Literature once heard as conjecture 30 years ago; in ‘foreign parts’, to something much Eagles and watching how these cope William Atkins that the Sea Eagle was ‘the’ eagle of deeper, richer and rewarding. Literature, with the Scotland into which they have Faber and Faber, 2014, 400 pages Scotland, out numbering the Golden in other words. This ‘genius’ has now been transplanted from Norway. He Hbk £18.99, ISBN: 9780571290048 Eagle by a large factor.

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