Why Nature Conservation Isn’t Working: Understanding Wildlife in the Modern World

Why Nature Conservation Isn’t Working attempts to put species into the context of our perception. Animals are more than their physical form. They exist within their historical setting, within their habitats, within their past and their evolutionary future, both outside and beyond man, and within man and his circle. This work discusses the movement of species since the last ice age, what is native and non-native, migration, adaptation, the role of man and species in the industrial landscape. The concept of species lies at the heart of nature conservation, but our perception is changing and losing connection with the real world. We see wildlife as adjuncts to people, such as a cure for depression and isolation. With this view, we will never save wildlife from extinction.

This book investigates the authenticity of species, compared with what are termed McDonald’s species – species without natural connection with their habitats, super-imposed by Man, eroding the umbilical cord link with history. We have lost sight of what wildlife is about and instead are just managing decline. Concentration on large iconic species achieves brilliant publicity but looks after the icing whilst the cake crumbles beneath.

Why Nature Conservation Isn’t Working highlights the need for authenticity in wildlife. We need to accept where wildlife goes, minimising our interference, re-directing money towards where wildlife wants to be – in new as well as old habitats, by natural colonisation, in post-industrial landscapes, brown-field sites, railway corridors, metal-contaminated landscapes. It takes rewilding and makes it species led – where ugly animals thrive to the same extent as beautiful ones, where the minute are as important as the huge.