In this rain-drenched, fireside edition of The Forest School Podcast, Lewis and Gemma park the screen-time guilt and dive head-first into Feral: Rewilding the Land, Sea and Human Life by George Monbiot. They unravel how Monbiot’s radical call for “self-willed land” pushes far beyond the now-familiar story of Wilding, tackling everything from Welsh hill sheep and EU subsidies to megafauna, shifting baselines and the personal thrill of going properly feral. Along the way they weigh up tree-planting fashion versus long-term ecosystem thinking, the ethics of re-introductions, and whether modern practitioners (and their children) can still taste that primal edge in everyday life. Expect big ideas, brutal statistics, and plenty of muddy, first-hand reflection on what all this means for Forest School practice.

⏱ Chapter Timings (max 10):
00:00 – Rainy afternoon, screen-time confessions & context
01:45 – First impressions of Feral and why the audiobook felt “new”
03:14 – Wilding v Feral: self-willed land, rewilding “levels” and public appetite
06:40 – Sheep, subsidies and the Welsh farming challenge to rewilding
09:52 – Woodland extinctions, deadwood species and tidy-land myths
16:24 – Elephants, wolves and the lost European megafauna legend
20:52 – Tree-planting fashion versus 250-year thinking
30:48 – Personal “feral moments”: kayaks, storms and solo explorations
44:30 – Shifting-baseline syndrome & our obsession with keeping nature “tidy”
56:46 – Take-aways: making space for wild experiences and true biodiversity

🌲 Keywords: rewilding, George Monbiot, Feral book, Wilding comparison, self-willed land, sheep grazing, farming subsidies, megafauna reintroductions, elephants & wolves, beavers, tree-planting critique, shifting baseline syndrome, ancient woodland, 30 Days Wild, feral play, Forest School reflection

🔖 Hashtags:
#Rewilding #FeralBook #GeorgeMonbiot #Wilding #ForestSchoolPodcast #OutdoorLearning #Megafauna #ShiftingBaseline #AncientWoodland #NatureConnection

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