Nature’s Ghosts: The world we lost and how to bring it back

Shortlisted for the 2024 Wainwright Prize for Writing on Conservation A Times Science Book of the Year ‘Sophie writes fantastically, chronicling the most important issues facing nature conservationists today.’ Chris Packham For thousands of years, humans have been the architects of the natural world. Our activities have permanently altered the environment – for good and for bad. In Nature’s Ghosts, award-winning journalist Sophie Yeo examines how the planet would have looked before humans scrubbed away its diversity: from landscapes carved out by megafauna to the primeval forests that emerged following the last Ice Age, and from the eagle-haunted skies of the Dark Ages to the flower-decked farms of more recent centuries. Uncovering the stories of the people who have helped to shape the landscape, she seeks out their footprints even where it seems there are none to be found. And she explores the timeworn knowledge that can help to fix our broken relationship with the earth. Along the way, Sophie encounters the environmental detectives – archaeological, cultural and ecological – reconstructing, in stunning detail, the landscapes we have lost. Today, the natural world is more vulnerable than ever; the footprints of humanity heavier than they have ever been. But, as this urgent book argues, from the ghosts of the past, we may learn how to build a more wild and ancient future. In her best non-fiction work, Nature's Ghosts, Sophie Yeo explores the pre-human ecology, emphasising the importance of habitats and resources protection. She uses science to reconstruct lost ecosystems, providing a blueprint for a more sustainable future. For fans of Kate Bradbury (RHS The Tree in My Garden), Derek Gow (Birds, Beasts and Bedlam), Peter Frankopan (The New Silk Roads), and Tom Heap (39 Ways to Save the Planet). HarperCollins 2024