Scientists worldwide are warning of the looming extinction of thousands of species, from tigers and polar bears to rare flowers, birds, and insects. If the destruction continues, a third of all plants and animals could disappear by 2050 - and with them earth's life-support ecosystems that provide our food, water, medicine, and natural defenses against climate change. Now Caroline Fraser offers the first definitive account of a visionary campaign to confront this crisis: rewilding.
Breathtaking in scope and ambition, Rewilding aims to save species by restoring habitats, reviving migration corridors, and brokering peace between people and predators. Traveling with wildlife biologists and conservationists, Fraser reports on the vast projects that are turning Europe's former Iron Curtain into a greenbelt, creating trans-frontier Peace Parks to renew elephant routes throughout Africa, and linking protected areas from the Yukon to Mexico and beyond.
"With this book, Fraser does for rewilding what David Quammen did for island biogeography in his seminal The Song of the Dodo. [...] Fraser uses lucid prose, engaging stories and personal experience to make the ideas accessible and vital to a wide audience. This is no dreary rehearsal of past eco-errors and present concerns. Fraser takes us far beyond San Diego, straight into the lives of African elephants, Australian lizards and a Russian bear that intruded upon the Olympic Games, sitting on the sidewalk while languidly consuming a young girl's pet rabbit. 'We are so close, ' Fraser says, and we require just a strong nudge in imagination and social engagement to make the rewilding dream real. With this lovely, necessary book, we step closer to that ideal."
– The Los Angeles Times
"Clear-eyed [...] Fraser pursues [her themes] with sensitivity and realism."
– The New York Review of Books
"A thoughtful examination of rewilding and its discontents [...] an important book."
– The New York Times