When he coined the word ‘ecology’ in 1866, Ernst Haeckel failed to foresee what it would come to mean. Haeckel defined ecology as the study of an organism in relation to its environment. For Hugh Warwick and Guy Shrubsole, it is at once more meaningful and more tragic. To be an ecologist is to see the gashes in our landscape, to be deafened by the absence of birdsong, to be haunted by ghosts of long-vanished animals.

Warwick’s book, a journey of discovery, tells of his exploration of culling in the name of protection. He declares at the beginning that he will neither shy away from difficulties nor close his mind to the need to talk to different people, even those who kill for sport. ‘One of the penalties of an ecological education is that one lives alone in a world of wounds,’ he quotes an expert as saying. ‘Much of the damage inflicted on land is quite invisible to laymen.’

For Warwick, caring for the environment involves compromise. We protect one species at the cost of another: kites instead of lapwings, red squirrels instead of grey ones, ruddy ducks instead of white-headed ducks. Too often we skate over the facts that wildlife management involves killing and that no matter how