Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of wood engraving illustrations
- Foreword
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- 1 Living with change
- 2 A short dose of Earth history
- 3 Climate change
- 4 Down on the farm and into the woods
- 5 Plant and animal introductions (and some recent arrivals)
- 6 Our overcrowded isles: human population and aspiration
- 7 Fresh water: quality and availability
- 8 Hunting, shooting and fishing: the enigma of field sports and wildlife
- 9 Wildlife conservation at home and overseas
- So how is our wildlife faring? The details
- Glossary and abbreviations
- Notes
- Index
- Plate section
Introduction
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 April 2015
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of wood engraving illustrations
- Foreword
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- 1 Living with change
- 2 A short dose of Earth history
- 3 Climate change
- 4 Down on the farm and into the woods
- 5 Plant and animal introductions (and some recent arrivals)
- 6 Our overcrowded isles: human population and aspiration
- 7 Fresh water: quality and availability
- 8 Hunting, shooting and fishing: the enigma of field sports and wildlife
- 9 Wildlife conservation at home and overseas
- So how is our wildlife faring? The details
- Glossary and abbreviations
- Notes
- Index
- Plate section
Summary
In 2010 I edited a multi-author book entitled Silent Summer, which set out to provide an in-depth audit of wildlife in Britain and Ireland over the last 50 years, with predictions of what the future may hold. That previous book was well received, but was a somewhat weighty reference volume with 36 chapters and over 60 authors. This present book aims to carry the same message but to present the information more concisely and in a more accessible format.
How Silent Summer came to be written
At the outset I should like to explain how the original book came to be written. Over the last 60 years, I have lived to see dramatic reductions in the numbers of many common insects and birds within the UK. As a schoolboy in Edinburgh in the 1940s I roamed the countryside on the outskirts of the city, and remember fields and waste ground with a huge abundance of butterflies such as small tortoiseshell and meadow brown, innumerable bumblebees and large populations of now scarce birds such as corn buntings and grey partridge. When I acquired a car in the 1950s, it was fitted, as were almost all other cars, with a must-have accessory, a small plastic device attached to the front of the bonnet to help deflect insects from splattering the windscreen. When one stopped at a petrol station to refuel, staff regularly provided a windscreen washing service to remove the dead insects that had clouded the glass, despite the efficacy of the deflector. These gadgets have disappeared because the need for them has gone, a stark indicator of the dramatic decline of so many common insects.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- A Less Green and Pleasant LandOur Threatened Wildlife, pp. 1 - 8Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2015