Book Review: The New Wild

This month I’m offering a book review of an amazing book called “The new wild”. I delved into it and found it a mind stretch because of Fred Pearce’s concepts of how nature works to always find balance. My flatmate Linda became interested to read the book and she was equally enthralled. I asked her if she’d write a book review and she was kind enough to write the following article.

The New Wild book cover

THE NEW WILD. by Fred Pearce 245 pages Published 2015 by Beacon Press USA

“Pragmatic conservation has to begin with undogmatic, realistic ecology, which shows that alien-invasive plants and animals almost always increase biodiversity – and therefore nature’s general health and robustness”.  Fred Pearce’s ‘new wild’ suggests a matching ‘new conservation’ “.  The words of Stewart Brand, author of Whole Earth Discipline.

I couldn’t put a precis of this book, better than Mr Brand.  But my experience reading this book blew a few fuses.  I, like many other PC conservation minded peeps of my generation, donated to Greenpeace and spent weekends on community native planting initiatives.  I’ve signed petitions to save various stands of native trees (and will do so again).  I’ve trapped and poisoned rats and stoats to save native birdlife.

This book is written in investigative journalistic style and a page turner.  A huge amount of evidence for the benefits of ‘invasive species’ is backed by 26 pages of footnotes and references.  This man has done his research!

I was gobsmacked to read how resilient our planet and her flora and fauna are.  Contrary to the messages of our ‘fragile ecosystem/s’ perpetrated by well-meaning conservationists.

Nature includes us, human beings. We are not separate from nature, we are but another interdependent species, though we have been educated to think we are ‘more intelligent’ than Nature. That’s a joke!  We ARE an expression of nature’s intelligence.

I’ve come away from this book, only to promise I will read it again soon. My trust in Life and all expressions of Life, is renewed. Yes, we owe it to ourselves and to Life itself, to live sustainably, that’s still true for me. AND Nature’s patent ability to recover even from nuclear catastrophe, is heartening.

The New Wild is a challenging and inspiring read.

Linda Light. July 2022