Wild Service Why Nature Needs You

About this book

In May 2022, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences released a paper that measured fourteen European countries on three factors: biodiversity, wellbeing, and nature connectedness. Britain came last in every single category. The findings are clear. We are suffering, and nature is too.

Enter 'Wild Service' – a visionary concept crafted by the pioneers of the Right to Roam campaign, which argues that humanity's loss and nature's need are two sides of the same story. Blending science, nature writing, indigenous philosophy, and woodcut illustrations by Nick Hayes, this groundbreaking book calls for mass reconnection to the land and a commitment to its restoration.

In Wild Service we meet Britain's new nature defenders: an anarchic cast of guerilla guardians who neither own the places they protect, nor the permission to restore them. Still, they're doing it anyway. This book is a celebration of their spirit and a call for you to join. So, whether you live in the countryside or the city, want to protect your local river or save our native flora, this is your invitation to rediscover the power in participation – the sacred in your service.

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Biography

Nick Hayes is an author, illustrator and printmaker. He has published four graphic novels with Jonathan Cape and has worked for, among others, the Literary Review, Time Out, the British Council, the New Statesman and the Guardian. His first non-fiction book, The Book of Trespass, was a Sunday Times Bestseller. He has exhibited across the country, including at the Hayward Gallery. He lives on a canal boat with no fixed address.