Book Review – Back to Nature, By Chris Packham and Megan McCubbin

This book was written by Chris Packham and Megan McCubbin during lockdown. It is a book describing how Chris and Meghan feel about nature through some personal stories and it is interspersed with scientific information about wildlife.

It contains lots of interesting facts about Roundup and pesticides which I think, as a group, we can use for reference. He also discusses how Monsanto (the company that owns Roundup, now Bayer) lobby politicians and other officials to make sure they approve its use. How annoying!

Chris discusses National Parks and how they are not national and governed by local landowners so often work to benefit themselves and their estates – not particularly working for the good of the environment and nature. He relays information about shooting regulations on some big estates in the parks and how inadequate they are in our country – not being as regulated as in other countries which of course leads to a bit of a ‘free for all’ and a lot of abuse by landowners. The other annoying bit of information I learnt here was how we subsidise the medicals for gun licences as the people applying for the licences don’t need to pay!  Goodness knows why not when most of these people applying are from the richer portion of our society.

In the book Chris explains how he became an environmentalist – the route that led him to where he is today. He rants a lot in the novel at the establishment but he does say he feels that people are waking up to climate change and becoming more aware of its problems.

Finally, Chris explains in the book how during lockdown he couldn’t travel. He said how in the past he had ‘travelled to the plains of Africa and the jungles of South America or the frozen north or south of the planet.’ He continues how lockdown made him realise that to access the ‘purest exultation that the natural world had to offer’ he just needed to sit in his garden ‘for an hour with a handful of dirt and a dandelion.’

I think there is a lesson here for all of us on how we need to get ‘Back to Nature’ to save the planet and in effect save ourselves.

A very thought-provoking read.