“It is increasingly widely recognised that nature is good for us. Most of us instinctively know this to be true and the science is gradually getting to grips with how this works; the biochemistry of a visit to the local woods and its impacts on our health and well-being. Science is slowly unravelling the mechanisms by which stress hormone levels drop, beneficial neurotransmitter levels rise and our immune system gets a nudge in the right direction.”
“Local people know a lot about managing tropical forests, and they are much better at it than we are.” So writes Charles M. Peters in his new book “Managing the Wild; Stories of People and Plants and Tropical Forests.”
As publisher of The Well-read Naturalist, I take great pride in my ability to locate and secure interesting books for review. However I doff my well-worn fedora to Mark Avery in his uncanny ability to find books that are well off my proverbial radar.
In this week’s review, for example, Mark takes up the privately published “A Wild Life” by the late Sir Anthony Milbank and David Williams. A coffee-table sized collection of photographs and commentary about the decades-long work that Sir Anthony undertook to make his Barningham Estate on the North Yorkshire – Durham border a haven for wildlife.
What with all the recent discussions of, disputes over, and governmental decisions regarding, American wild areas being on the front pages of newspapers across the nation, the scholars who produce the BackStory podcast recently aired a rebroadcast of their deeply thought-provoking episode “Untrammeled; Americans and the Wilderness.”