The Conservation Prison - Feral: Rewilding the Land, the Sea, and Human Life - page 227

and much of the rest of the world - the United Kingdom has a pecu-
liar fear of nature, and its conservationists a peculiar fear of letting
go. Germany, France and Slovakia are permitting part or all of their
national parks to rewild. Most countries in Europe now have large
areas of self-willed land. 44 Even the tidy, busy Netherlands is allowing
nature to reassert itself. But we remain, as a Francophone woman
I know once rudely remarked about British men, ' constipé et
embarrassé '.
It need not be like this. I am convinced that before long it will cease
to be like this. Conservationists will begin to ease their grip on the
natural world. Some of them, I have discovered, are almost ready to
do so. A change is on the way, which could start to transform places
that now seem bleak and almost dead into a rich and complex fer-
ment of life.