Chantal Lyons’ Groundbreakers: The Return of Britain’s Wild Boar (Bloomsbury Wildlife) has won The British Ecological Society’s (BES) £1,000 Marsh Ecology Book of the Year award.
The award celebrates the book that has had the greatest influence on the science of ecology in any two-year period. It is funded by the Marsh Christian Trust and celebrates books published anywhere in the world.
Groundbreakers follows the author as she moves to the Forest of Dean to explore the wild boars living there. “Boar are ‘troublesome’ and ‘in your face’ in a way that the animals we are used to in Britain are not, ” she said. “A place with wild boar is one that is less beholden to traditional beliefs about how nature should behave. The boar challenge us to move away from a relationship with nature that depends on its subservience and to instead embrace a different kind of nature, one that has teeth and tusks and may not do what you expect it to.”
Hefin Jones, a BES Marsh Ecology Book of the Year judge, described the book as “thrilling in many ways” and said that it is “rich with scientific and social understanding”.
The winner will be presented with the award during a ceremony held in December at the BES Annual Meeting in Liverpool, where 1,500 ecologists will gather to discuss the latest advances in ecological research.
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