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Ireland's political and cultural magazine
June 2015 65
I
N this charming and inspiring book George Mon-
biot, environmental polymath and Guardian
proselytiser, shows how, by restoring and rewilding
our damaged ecosystems on land and at sea, we can
bring wonder – “enchantment” – back into our lives.
This book is an unusual combination of bedside read-
ing; George goes feral, with disaster warnings and
many reference sources. It thus effectively sucks in the
neophyte as much as the activists who read his brilliant
Guardian columns, many of which are reprinted by
Village, often centring on climate change.
In the first five chapters he outlines his experience
with wild life in Brazil, Wales, east Africa, England and
elsewhere, on land and sea, then in
chapter six he homes in on the need to
encourage the replacement of moun-
tain pasture by forestry with native
species, managing it without clear-
felling. This ideally should reproduce
the original post-ice-age ecology,
which supported a rich species-mix,
before its replacement by pasture
mono-culture, which tends if aban-
doned to revert to heather.
It does not appear that many others
in this country (apart from articles in
Village and by Michael Viney in the
Irish Times) have picked up on this.
Perhaps the reduction in pressure
from sheep grazing over the last
twenty years has reduced the
imperative.
Hill forestry it seems has been culturally forgotten in
both Ireland and Britain, though some understanding
remains in continental Europe and ecologists increas-
ingly emphasise its value. It is being re-created in
Wales and Scotland by a handful of pioneers, and Mon-
biot explores their experience, and looks at the positive
influence of wildlife such as the wolf, boar, beaver, linx
in sustaining diversity of life. As usual Mon-
biot writes both effectively and lyrically.
Monbiot wants wolves reintroduced, for
example, because “wolves are fascinating …
because they feel to me like the shadow that
flits between systole and diastole, because
they are the necessary monsters of the
mind”.
He celebrates a process known as trophic
cascades: predators at the top keep an eco-
system healthy via such means as reducing
the number of herbivores, thus providing carrion for
animals further down the food chain. Eliminating a top
predator does not mean more food for humans. For
example, fishermen once believed they could enlarge
Wolves are fascinating
… because they feel to
me like the shadow that
flits between systole
and diastole, because
they are the necessary
monsters of the mind
(Monbiot)
“
Dr Roy H W Johnston is
a scientific consultant
with an interest in
techno-economic
analysis. He wrote a
weekly science column
in the
Irish Times
in the
1970s.
Bring back wonder
Plant trees. Then add wolves. Review by Roy Johnston
ENVIRONMENT
BOOK REVIEW
Feral
George Monbiot
Allen Lane, 2013
114.99
their catches by reducing the numbers of animals such
as whales and seals, leaving more fish for human con-
sumption. In fact, the opposite occurred, because you
cannot remove one piece of an ecosystem without cre-
ating catastrophic knock-on effects.
Almost everywhere, except Britain and Ireland, large
charismatic species are returning. Wolves have spread
across most of Europe. Between and , the
wolf was extinct in France. Now, helped only by the
restraint of people who might otherwise have killed
them, there are over wolves there, in at least
twenty packs, he notes. His key message is the need to
conserve the complex wild ecologies associated with
native forestry, especially in the
mountains. He also exposes the need
to reconstruct the current complex
agricultural subsidy regime in the
EU, if re-foresting is to be achieved
politically. Monbiot doesn’t just want
to return nature to its state of a hun-
dred years ago. He believes we can
reintroduce extinct species of ani-
mals and flowers, and then allow
nature to run its course to bring back
diversity.
The implication for Ireland is that
re-foresting the mountain pastures
enables the heavy mountain rainfall
to be retained, so that it does not
immediately rush down the moun-
tain streams to cause floods in the
main rivers. This aspect of global
warming, generated by the rising seas has already hit
us severely. Dredging the rivers is not the right
response; we must re-forest the mountains.
Those who depend on mountain sheep for their live-
lihood need not worry, provided the State supports
them in helping with the transition to becoming
instead managers of energy supply in the form of wood
chips and firewood from restored mountain
forest. Indeed one of the differences
between Ireland and Britain is that because
the sheep industry was never as intensive in
Ireland it was reduced in the s follow-
ing EU rulings on over-grazing and related
changes to headage payments. The Rural
Environment Protection Scheme provided
generous cash payments to farmers who
agreed to reduce sheep numbers on the
hills.
Sheep numbers more than doubled from . million
in to . million in but had reduced to .m
by . In the UK there are over million. Over-
grazing of Irish uplands peaked twenty years ago. •
