Delighted to see that Cal Flyn’s The Savage Landscape (William Collins), a book in which she makes us question long-held ideas of what constitutes a wilderness, is among seven titles short-listed today for the 2026 Wainwright Prize for Conservation Writing. Also short-listed are: Every Last Fish: What Fish Do for Us and What We Do to Them by Rose George (Granta); Eat the Planet Well: How to Fix Our Toxic Food System — One Meal at a Time by Dave Goulson (Jonathan Cape, Vintage, PRH); Neurodivergent, by Nature by Joe Harkness (Bloomsbury Publishing/Bloomsbury Wildlife); Green Crime: Inside the Minds of the People Destroying the Planet, and How to Stop Them by Dr Julia Shaw (Canongate Books); When the Forest Breathes by Suzanne Simard (Allen Lane, Penguin Press); and The Return of the Oystercatcher: Saving Birds to Save the Planet by Scott Weidensaul (Picador).

The seven books short-listed for the Wainwright Prize for Nature Writing are: Ancient: Reviving the Woods That Made Britain by Luke Barley (Profile Books); Ghosts of the Farm: Two Women’s Journeys Through Time, Land and Community by Nicola Chester (Chelsea Green Publishing); Craftland by James Fox (The Bodley Head, Vintage); Love Is A Toad by Lucy Lapwing (Blink); The Genius of Trees by Harriet Rix (The Bodley Head, Vintage); Stone Lands by Fiona Robertson, illustrated by Philip Harris (Little, Brown Book Group/Robinson); and The Cuckoo’s Lea by Michael J Warren (Bloomsbury Publishing/Bloomsbury Wildlife).

Winners will be announced at a ceremony on September 17 at the Elmley Nature Reserve in Kent. For the short lists for all the awards, see the Wainwright Prizes site.