So, the UK paperback of IRREPLACEABLE is out today, with Mark Hearld's beautiful artwork on the cover.

As public events and browsing bookshops are postponed for the time being, I'll put together a short thread about some of the people, places and wildlife in the book. 1/

A Balkan lynx graces the back cover, one of the rarest wild cats in the world. Its story is one of many told in the book about our wider relationship with the natural world and what's at stake with its continued diminishing. 2/

Irreplaceable is a book about threatened places throughout the world: vast marshes and urban meadows, tallgrass prairie and coral reefs, allotments and ancient woodland, remote mountains and tropical jungles. 3/

Irreplaceable is about wondrous yet imperilled wildlife: redwoods, hornbills, water voles, Egyptian vultures, mangroves, nightingales, prairie chickens, elephant seals and bison. 4/

Irreplaceable is about extinction in its widest possible sense; not only of wildlife and places, but what the writer Robert Michael Pyle calls the "extinction of experience": "What is the extinction of the condor to a child who has never known a wren?" 5/

Above all, though, Irreplaceable is about resistance to loss. It's about the ways in which individuals & communities not only strengthen their essential connections with the natural world but seek to preserve what matters for future generations. It's about radical hopefulness. 6/

In case of interest, here's an interview I did with the musician John Robb about a number of these themes in the book. 7/

While writing the book, communities throughout the world showed me how transformative change becomes possible. As with a starling murmuration, it can begin with single voices, made potent through union. 8/

In case of interest in the book, independent bookstores struggling right now are still posting through online or telephone orders.

It's also on sale for Kindle & can be found online at Waterstones & the terrific NHBS in Devon.

Stay safe, everyone. 9/9
https://www.nhbs.com/irreplaceable-book