It is one of the most intensively farmed parts of England, and England is one of the most densely populated countries in Europe. Ploughs and combine-harvesters trundle where brown bears once snuffled through primeval forests and wild cattle wallowed in peaty swamps.

Fields of wheat, barley and oilseed rape disappear towards its flat horizons. Billowing clouds emerge as condensation from the cooling towers of distant power stations and then rise above the plain. The Vale of York is a landscape of ecological despair. This eye-opening book is a profound reexamination of the relationship between humanity and the natural world.

Ultimately, he suggests that if life on Earth can recover from the asteroid that killed off the dinosaurs, it can survive the onslaughts of the technological age. In so doing, he questions why we resist new forms of life, and why we see ourselves as unnatural. Most remarkably, Thomas shows, humans may well have raised the rate at which new species are formed to the highest level in the history of our planet.ĭrawing on the success stories of diverse species, from the ochre-colored comma butterfly to the New Zealand pukeko, Thomas overturns the accepted story of declining biodiversity on Earth. Human cities and mass agriculture have created new places for enterprising animals and plants to live, and our activities have stimulated evolutionary change in virtually every population of living species. But in Inheritors of the Earth, biologist Chris Thomas shows that this obscures a more hopeful truth - we’re also helping nature grow and change. It’s accepted wisdom today that human beings have permanently damaged the natural world, causing extinction, deforestation, pollution, and of course climate change. Human activity has irreversibly changed the natural environment.

Chris d thomas inheritors of the earth