In places like the Lake District, where there are thousands of small farms, he believes that wilder farming methods, rather than wholesale rewilding, will be key to restoring biodiversity. We are part of the natural world have taken it upon ourselves to make sure that we live in the most unsustainable and destructive way possible. Silent Spring sparked the dawn of a new environmental movement, the banning of DDT and the establishment of the US Environmental Protection Agency. MacDonald's thesis is that rather than concentrating on the birds themselves, we should concentrate on allowing the landscapes they need to survive to develop and thrive. Their constant energy supply means they even sleep while airborne, propelled by boomerang-shaped wings which make them the fastest bird in powered flight ever recorded.

Despite the horrendous destruction we have unleashed on our wildlife over our history, Benedict Macdonald keeps Rebirding hopeful by explaining what our National Parks could become if we demanded more and conservation charities and NGOs dreamed bigger. Up to 80% of their diet consists of beetles, in numbers we have all forgotten today, and beetles have in fact declined across Britain not just since the 1970s, but at least since the 1850s.

The fact is, this eagle should actually be the ​ ‘standard’ large bird of prey drifting over many of our coasts and villages, as it was even three centuries ago. If you feel dizzy or experience any other negative effects as a result of this type of breathwork, stop doing it immediately.

Everythingfrom landscapes to individual endangered species are being managed and monitored according to human-set targets. Elsewhere community groups such as the Totley Swift Group in Sheffield have erected nearly 100 nesting boxes in recent years, nearly a quarter of which have been used by the birds to nest. If we know a certain percentage of birds will not make it back from Africa every year, then we had best do all in our power to ensure the absolute numbers leaving these shores after the breeding season are as strong as possible and that includes increasing food sources around the country through a more wild or ecosystem based approach if you will.

So it’s very much a compliment to rather than a diversion from the other ways to reduce our agricultural input, they compliment each other all part of the rational use of natural resources. Ihope that in its small way, Rebirding will do for the UK what Netflix’s Our Planet (whose Jungles and Grasslands programmes Iworked on for three years) is beginning to do for worldwide conservation – to make people realise that nature is essential, profitable and saveable. The decline in the birds has been mirrored by a similar catastrophic collapse in insect populations in Britain, depriving them of a vital food source.

This is the best book on nature, conservation and rewilding I read in 2019 – perhaps one of the best I’ve ever read. Ben Macdonald’s thesis, on the contrary, is not straightforward at all, and challenges much of the received wisdom about how to bring back Britain’s birds. It’s apractical wildland – and that’s something we should all aspire too; one shared between people and animals, with ecotourism as apractical, verifiable driver of people’s livelihoods andjobs. It presents the best argument yet for rewilding before it’s too late, and shows us exactly how to do it. Let’s be the first generation since we colonised Britain to leave our children better off for wildlife,” Macdonald exhorts.People always assume that I've got a little breeding colony in my backyard and we're ready,” he says, stressing that this is not yet the case; work is currently limited to scoping out the public’s enthusiasm for the bird and assessing the availability of suitable habitat in the UK. In a recent interview with the Poet Laureate Simon Armitage, the Prince of Wales confessed his love for a certain bird. Leave things on the margins, don’t cut verges back until later in the summer and wildlife will find the way.

And it isn’t just about the uplands – the level of political capture primary producers have achieved is scary – even conservationists, without thinking, refer to food and timber as ‘production’ with the strong connotation that that is the dominant value and that any loss is an overriding concern. Creating bog gardens with species like marsh bedstraw and purple loosestrife is valuable for providing muddy nesting material for swallows and house martins, but also encouraging the insects upon which the birds feed.The great Dalmatian pelican, the world’s largest freshwater bird, flourished in Cambridgeshire and Somerset until Roman times, and for long after Britain was a land of white-tailed eagles, cranes and bustards. Rebirding is an attempt to unite these themes through an ambitious – and achievable – vision for British nature.