Nature & Ecology

A Radio 4 Book Club Selection.

A Short History of Nearly Everything is Bill Bryson's fascinating and humorous quest to understand everything that has happened from the Big Bang to the rise of civilization....

The Treeline is a spellbinding blend of nature, travel and science writing, deeply researched and beautifully written, underpinned by an urgent environmental message....

Now settled into the sleepy Yorkshire village of Darrowby, and married to Helen the farmer’s daughter, James Herriot thinks he’s finally got himself sorted. But life as a vet in the 1930s was never going to be easy....

Neither plant nor animal, it is found throughout the earth, the air and our bodies....

Molecular biologist Nicklas Brendborg takes us on a journey from farthest reaches of the globe to the most cutting-edge research to explore what nature has to teach us about longevity....

Even if we've never had direct contact with one, we will have seen one, or at the very least, heard one. For those of us who live in the Western world, it is more than likely that one sleeps in our house, possibly even on our bed. I'm talking, of course, of the dog....

Follow global best-selling author Raynor Winn's journey across Great Britain exploring our relationship to the land and to each other....

As a botanist and professor of plant ecology, Robin Wall Kimmerer has spent a career learning how to ask questions of nature using the tools of science....

An Immense World will take us on an insider's tour of the natural world by describing the biology, physics and chemistry animals use to perceive it....

How do trees live? Do they feel pain or have awareness of their surroundings? Research is now suggesting trees are capable of much more than we have ever known....

From the Sunday Times-bestselling author of Who Owns England? comes a mesmerising chronicle of our forgotten rainforests—and an inspiring intervention to help restore them to the places they once were....

Fresh out of Glasgow Veterinary College, to the young James Herriot 1930s Yorkshire seems to offer an idyllic pocket of rural life in a rapidly changing world....

In this volume of memoirs David tells stories of the people and animals he has met and the places that he has visited....

In 2019, Sarah and her family upped sticks and moved to the West Country to embark upon a new way of life....

Paul Whitehouse and fishing expert John Bailey celebrate the timeless joy of fishing....

Presenter Brett Westwood joins forces with BAFTA award-winning producer and naturalist Stephen Moss for six delightful and informative series, introducing us to some of Britain's most popular and best-loved birds....

Nobody sees and understands woodland better than Ray Mears. With deep natural history knowledge and practical woodcraft skills, gained over a lifetime of learning from the world's last remaining indigenous peoples, Ray offers a different way to experience our wooded landscapes....

In Wilding, Isabella Tree tells the story of the ‘Knepp experiment’, a pioneering rewilding project in West Sussex, using free-roaming grazing animals to create new habitats for wildlife....

Deep Blue is a book a lifetime in the making: a remarkable blend of memoir, travel, and marine and environmental science that takes us on an unforgettable tour of the many worlds of aquatic life....

Finally home from London after his wartime service in the RAF, James Herriot is settling back into life as a country vet....

In a book that will recalibrate our view of this defining feature of our planet, physicist Helen Czerski dives deep to illuminate the murky depths of the ocean engine, examining the messengers, passengers and voyagers that live in it, travel over it, and survive because of it....

One of the inspirations for the major motion picture Everest, starring Jake Gyllenhaal and Keira Knightley....

In this mesmerizing debut, award-winning palaeontologist Thomas Halliday gives us a breath-taking up close encounter with worlds that are normally unimaginably distant....

Evocative, funny and poignant, this is the third volume of memoirs from James Herriot who inspired the television series All Creatures Great and Small....

Isabella Tree and Charlie Burrell know firsthand how spectacularly nature can bounce back if you give it the chance. The Book of Wilding is a handbook for how we can all help restore nature....

From miniature donkeys to enormous draft horses, from regal Arabian stallions to sassy Shetland ponies, horses and other equines bring us delight and comfort whenever we encounter them. Even more so, perhaps, when humans and horses are brought together through a rescue. Whether someone has started a rescue ranch on purpose or circumstances align to match up the right horse with the right person, stories of second chances warm our hearts and restore our hope.

Sand is the hidden foundation of our society. In Sand Stories, Kiran Pereira maps out why it is the most consumed commodity on the planet after water. The book examines the impacts of our seemingly insatiable demand for sand on people, wildlife, and our ecosystems.

The role of resident vet in the British Overseas Territories of the Falklands, St Helena, Tristan da Cunha, and Ascension encompasses the complexities of caring for the world’s oldest land animal—a 200-year-old giant tortoise—and MoD mascots at the Falklands airbase; pursuing mystery creatures and invasive microorganisms; relocating herds of reindeer; and rescuing animals in extraordinarily rugged landscapes, from subtropical cloud forests to volcanic cliff faces.

Have you been dabbling with the idea of emergency preparedness, but you aren’t sure where to start? If so, Emergency Preparedness Beginner's Guide: Learn Best Practices, Create a Plan, and Take Action Today to Prepare for Uncertain Times is the right book for you. This easy-to-understand guide is packed full of practical ideas to help you jumpstart your personal preparedness journey.

Whether you're a seasoned professional, or a beginner, this guide is all you need to successfully build a hive and harvest some delicious honey! Let's embark on this journey, fellow apiarists, because your job and role in this world cannot be understated! We'll begin with a little background about the history of beekeeping, dating back about 10,000 years! From food production to the production of goods, bees have always been invaluable to society. Even today, they play a huge role in crop pollination, and their efforts can help to offset the negative impacts of climate change.

In ten short and accessible essays, science and nature writer Carolyn Fry takes us on an awe-inspiring journey of the Earth's lungs. From what makes a plant a tree and the incredible impact of forests, to how trees are under attack and what we can do to save them, this book will enthral and inform on the monumental power of the humble tree. Trees: 10 Things You Should Know is an essential introduction to why trees are so important, and why our lives depend on them!

The Mesozoic Era, which lasted from about 252 to 66 million years ago, is divided into three periods, the Triassic, Jurassic, and Cretaceous. During this era, one type of life came to dominate the planet more completely and for a longer period than had been seen before or since; this was the Age of Reptiles. Beginning in the Triassic but especially in the Jurassic period, reptiles came to dominate the oceans, the land and even the skies.

The stories we usually tell ourselves about climate change tend to focus on the damage inflicted on human societies by big storms, severe droughts, and rising sea levels. But the most powerful impacts are being and will be felt by the natural world and its myriad species, which are already in the midst of the sixth great extinction. Rising temperatures are fracturing ecosystems that took millions of years to evolve, disrupting the life forms they sustain--and in many cases driving them towards extinction. The natural Eden that humanity inherited is quickly slipping away.

Discover the secrets of safe and fun mushroom foraging - and rekindle your love for nature in a few easy steps. Do you wish to experience the thrill of searching and picking your own food in breathtaking locations in your city or around the world? Are all those mushroom-poisoning stories keeping you from pursuing these amazing treasures? Foraging is a rewarding way to restore inner peace and reconnect with nature, as well as an empowering way to become self-sufficient.

How did our relationship with nature become broken, why does it matter, and how can we fix it? From a past in which we were embedded in the natural world, revolutions in farming, science, and industry have seen the human bond with nature eroded, with the promise of prosperity offering happiness and meaning in life.

A "normal" Caribbean hurricane travels from east to west, but Lenny was anything but normal. Spawned south of Cuba in 1999, this late-season storm defied all predictions by moving steadily east toward the Leeward Islands. Eventually building almost to Category 5 strength, Lenny squatted for two days between the Virgin Islands and St. Martin, whipping the ocean with 155 mile-per-hour winds and sixty-foot seas.

Jennifer Jewell brings listeners on an insightful year-long journey exploring the outsize impact one of nature's smallest manifestations—the simple seed. She examines our skewed notions where "organic" seeds are grown and sourced, reveals how giant multinational agribusiness has refined and patented the genomes of seeds we rely on for staples like corn and soy, and highlights the efforts of activists working to regain legal access to heirloom seeds that were stolen from Indigenous peoples and people of color.

It is rare for life to change Earth, yet three organisms have profoundly transformed our planet over the long course of its history. Elemental reveals how microbes, plants, and people used the fundamental building blocks of life to alter the climate, and with it, the trajectory of life on Earth in the past, present, and future. Taking listeners from the deep geologic past to our current era of human dominance, Stephen Porder focuses on five of life’s essential elements—hydrogen, oxygen, carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus.

The Poacher's Nightmare: Stories of an Undercover Game Warden contains dozens of hair-raising accounts of covert wildlife operations, often spanning years, requiring ingenious planning, complicated secrecy, and deft coordination.

Filmmaker Tom Opre dedicated over three years to documenting the lives of a remote community in Zambia led by a woman chief who dared to break the bonds of poverty by waging war on wildlife poaching.