GreenSpirit Rewilding Event – Speaker
Sophie Yeo
Photo © Sophie Yeo
What did the landscape look like, before humans took over? Sophie Yeo will talk about the deep history of nature, and the lessons that we can learn from the past when it comes to rewilding, restoring and farming. She will consider what we can learn from our ancestors about our place in the landscape, both ecologically and spiritually, and, what it means to forge a connection to our surroundings at a time when religious and folk beliefs are waning. Sophie will join us by zoom on the Friday evening for a short introduction to her ideas. The main talk on the Saturday morning will be pre-recorded, exclusively given for this event by Sophie, who is unable to be with us in person.
Biography
Sophie Yeo is a writer and journalist based in Durham. She is the author of Nature’s Ghosts: The World We Lost And How To Bring It Back, which won the Richard Jeffries Award for the best nature writing published in 2024. She is also the founder and editor of Inkcap Journal, a publication about conservation in Britain, which won the Press Gazette Newsletter of the Year award in 2022. She has written about nature and climate change for publications including The Washington Post, The Guardian and BBC Future.
Nature’s Ghosts: The World We Lost and How to Bring it Back
by Sophie Yeo
Reviewed by Chris Holmes.
In this beautifully constructed book, Sophie Yeo explores how the actions of humanity have shaped the natural world and looks at what we can do to bring back something of Earth’s past abundance. The book ranges widely, with examples of humanity’s interaction with Nature from many parts of the world including Australia, central France, Finland, Scotland, Transylvania, Wales and the USA. These illustrations of human behaviour make for fascinating and often disturbing reading, but the book also ranges widely over the historical and ‘deep time’ dimensions.
Click here for the full review on the GreenSpirit website.
