The white stork, often associated with delivering babies to new parents, has always been symbolic of new life.
Once a native bird to the UK, they were a mainstay of folklore, festivals, and even banquet tables. But no free-born chicks had hatched in the UK for six hundred years – at least not until the White Stork Project was founded in 2016, with the aim of restoring the sights and sounds of these distinctive birds, missing since the Middle Ages.
In The Return of the White Stork, award-winning author Isabella Tree recounts the story of one of the most exciting species reintroduction projects in recent memory: from the nuances of rewilding and biodiversity, to finding funding and cutting through the red tape. This is a personal, passionate tribute to the white stork itself: the legends surrounding the bird, its history and persistence. But above all, it is the story of how nature’s greatest challenges can be overcome when we, as human beings, recognise our agency in the world around us – we're accustomed to stories of humans destroying ecosystems, but we can restore them too.
Charming, impassioned and hopeful, The Return of the White Stork sparks the imagination and restores a belief in our power to achieve wonderful things.
White Stork: Restoring an Iconic Bird to Britain
By Isabella Tree
From the bestselling, award-winning author of Wilding comes the inspiring story of reintroducing white storks to UK wildlife through the White Stork Project
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Book Details
Imprint: Bloomsbury Publishing | Pub date: March 2027 | Format: 234 x 153mm | Extent: 336 pages
About the Author
Isabella Tree is an award-winning journalist and author, and lives with her husband, the conservationist Charlie Burrell, in the middle of a pioneering rewilding project in West Sussex. She is author of five non-fiction books. Her book Wilding, the story of the ambitious journey she and her husband Charlie Burrell undertook to rewild their farm, has sold quarter of a million copies worldwide, been translated into 8 languages and won the Richard Jefferies prize for nature writing, been shortlisted for the Wainwright prize and was one of the Smithsonian’s top ten science books for 2018. In 2022, Isabella served on the Mayor of London’s Rewilding London Task Force.
Charlie Burrell is chair of Foundation Conservation Carpathia, the biggest rewilding project in Europe, and the White Stork Project. He is a co-founder of Rewilding Britain, and sits on the board of the Arcadia Fund and the oversight committee for the Endangered Landscapes Programme. He also chairs rePlanet Wildlife and Nattergal Ltd, sister companies involved in nature restoration
