From the award-winning conservationist and author of Wilding comes another beautiful story of conservation.

In the spring of 2020, when the world was on lockdown because of the Covid-19 pandemic, author Isabella Tree watched a breeding pair of white storks atop an oak tree nestled within her rewilding project at Knepp estate in West Sussex. It was the first nesting pair of white storks in Britain on record for more than 600 years. The last pair on record had been in 1416, a pair that nested atop St. Giles cathedral in Edinburgh.  

This breeding pair at Knepp was the result of a conservation project undertaken by Isabella and other partners, to try and restore the white stork to Britain. It is not known why this famous bird, harbinger of new life, disappeared, though it used to be a popular item on medieval feast menus and may simply have been hunted so extensively that it vanished from British shores.   

In Return of the White Stork, Isabella tells the story of trying to restore white storks to Britain; the heartwarming stories of their personalities and courtships, their GPS-tracked journeys across the British channel to Europe, and even a trip across the Strait of Gibraltar to Northern Africa. She writes of the importance of human involvement in conservation, noting that “the greatest hope nature has is that, as human beings, we may recognise our interdependence with other species and become a keystone species ourselves – active agents in restoring ecosystems, a force for the good.” 

Ultimately, this book is the hopeful story of the stork’s protection and restoration.

About The Author

Isabella Tree writes for publications such as National Geographic, Granta and The Guardian. Her bestselling book Wilding: The Return of Nature to a British Farm, charts the story of the pioneering rewilding project in West Sussex where she lives with her husband Charlie Burrell. It has sold over 300,000 copies worldwide, was one of the Smithsonian’s top ten science books for 2018, and has been translated into 8 languages.  

In 2020 Isabella was awarded a CIEEM Medal for her contribution to ecology and environmental management, and in 2021 received the Royal Geographical Society’s Ness Award ‘for the popularisation of geography through her writing on biodiversity and the relation between humans and the environment’.  In 2023 Isabella and Charlie received the Zoological Society of London’s Silver Medal for outstanding contributions to the understanding and appreciation of zoology.