Natural Selection

I went to the Wainwright Awards for Nature Writing last year where this book was shortlisted, and Fiona and Tim talked about the reasons for writing it. I haven’t read as much about Britain’s mammals as I should have and made a note to read it at some point.

At the outset I would stress that this is an excellent book and worth reading if you have even the remotest interest in our native mammals. By focusing on a number of key species (Beaver, Wild Boar, Pine Marten, Water Vole, Greater Horseshoe Bat, Hedgehog, Red Squirrel and Grey Seal) it manages to both get into detail and still cover all the main issues in terms of habitat loss, invasive species, government inaction and so on.

The writers are knowledgeable and I learned a lot I had never previously known. Derek Got has said in his review that Fiona Mathews is one of the ablest mammologists of our age, and it shows in the experiences she has been through and the quality of the writing.

You may have guessed there’s a bit of a but coming. I enjoyed the book a lot but I found the uneven tone a bit jarring at times. It’s billed partly as a pun filled adventure, and the title and the cover suggest something light. But the underlying message is a serious one and at times this is a bit disconcerting. In the Afterword the authors say they considered a jaunt north of the border for Scottish Wildcat, but they didn’t bother because the species is extinct or functionally extinct. You can’t really dress that up frivolously.

Here’s a brief sample of some of the more polemical writing that counterpoints this to show what I mean:

That all said if you want a lucid account ranging from bats to beavers and badgers in Britain expect it to be bittersweet rather than a barrel of laughs it’s an excellent discussion of conservation and controversy in relation to the mammals of Britain.