Description
This book with 17 chapters primarily aims to describe Lady Park Wood in the UK and what has happened there since 1944, however, the book also places Lady Park Wood in context and uses the observations as a point of departure from which several topics of general interest are discussed, such as the individuality of tree species, open spaces within natural woodland and the changing nature of remoteness. The book also considers what Lady Park Wood and other minimum-intervention, or rewilded, woods can tell about the character of unfettered woodland, the nature of prehistoric natural woodland and the whole idea of natural woodland; what is likely to be achieved by rewilding woodland and whether, and where, rewilding is likely to be appropriate. Further, the book also reflects on the limits of the study on long-term ecological processes; considers whether natural reserves indicate how near-to-nature forestry can be conducted; and reviews the wider significance of remoteness and rewilding for people.