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  • Birds, Beasts, and Bedlam

  • Turning My Farm into an Ark for Lost Species
  • By: Derek Gow
  • Narrated by: Calum Beaton
  • Length: 4 hrs and 33 mins
  • 4.8 out of 5 stars (37 ratings)

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Birds, Beasts, and Bedlam

By: Derek Gow
Narrated by: Calum Beaton
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Summary

Birds, Beasts and Bedlam recounts the adventures of farmer-turned-rewilder Derek Gow, who is saving Britain’s much-loved but dangerously threatened species, from the water vole to beaver, wildcat to white stork, and tree frog to glow worm.

Derek tells us all about the realities of rewilding: how he reared delicate roe deer and a sofa-loving wild boar piglet, moved a raging bison bull across the country, got bitten by a Scottish wildcat, returned honking skeins of graylag geese to the land and water that was once theirs, and restored the white stork to the Knepp Estate with Charlie Burrell and Isabella Tree.

Derek’s first book, Bringing Back the Beaver, was a riotously funny and subversive account of his single-handed reintroduction of the beaver in Britain. Birds, Beasts and Bedlam, a natural successor to Gerald Durrell’s A Zoo in My Luggage, tells the story of Derek’s rewilding journey and his work to save many more species by transforming his Devon farm into a wildlife breeding center. He now houses beavers, white storks, water voles, lynx, wildcats, and harvest mice, with the aim of releasing them into the wild one day.

Tearing down fences literally and metaphorically, Derek Gow is the one person with the character and strength of will to defy authority, bend the rules, and save our wildlife.

©2022 Derek Gow (P)2022 Chelsea Green
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What listeners say about Birds, Beasts, and Bedlam

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interesting, moving and funny

a new and interesting view of nature restoration, vitally needed, told with a lot of humour

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A must read overview

Facinating, enjoyable and genuine, life at its best in a real way for all to enjoy

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This book offers Hope

The world needs more people like Derek and all the amazing people who support him, and who he supports. This is a book of hope and is a must read for everyone!

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Simply excellent

We need a lot more individuals with the passion, drive, determination and vision to protect the destiny of our nature’s threatened species.
Without the likes of Derek Gow this wouldn’t be happening at the speed it needs to.
We are facing an environmental precipice of disaster and he is doing all he can. Others need to follow. His narrative is engaging, informative and enlightening, a great read.

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another great book by Derek

if you've not read his other book, Bringing Back the Beaver then you should.

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Utterly brilliant, anarch approach to rewilding

Brilliant story from Derek Gow of his approach to rewilding. So paralysed by our country’s ridiculously tedious, paper driven approach to nature conservation, seeing someone do his best just to crack on and get it done is so so important today. The only way we’re going to reverse this biodiversity crisis is with more people like Derek getting things done. There’s also some bloody hilarious escapades in this book!!

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Beating the bureaucracy

A thoroughly enjoyable listen. Highly informative, truthful and to the point with some very funny tales. It both saddened me listening to how the nature conservation authorities tie the country up with bureaucracy and gave me hope that Derek is striding on to keep pushing back and pushing nature restoration / conservation forward. Truly inspirational!

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Tales of true pioneering adventure and inspiring to give things a go, learning from mistakes is how we go forward.

I liked the honest tales of how things a re really done and not how often large organisations paint pictures of success.

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Inspiring

Excellent, I’d strongly recommend this. Entertaining, informative and most of all, engendering hope. Well read and well written .
We can all help towards positive outcomes

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Birds, Beasts and Beautifully well put

Gow illustrates well the UK's frustratingly poor relationship with nature and the stranglehold outdated farming-biased groups such as DEFRA have on it. I highly recommend!

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