20. The River People by Philip Wayre

I picked this beautiful paperback up in a thrift shop in Halifax on aesthetic reasons alone.  It's a non-fiction book about otters and specifically, the author's work in researching rehabilitating them that led to the creation of The Otter Trust which still exists and appears to be doing good work to protect wetlands and revive endangered species in England.  I am theoretically a radical environmentalist but pretty fixed in my views that we humans are destructive parasites hellbent on consumption until nothing is left and need to reform radically or be wiped out.  So there is not much use or pleasure for me in reading about the environment or endangered species as I already know the drill.  However, I just could not resist this lovely 1971 Fontana with a beautifully illustrated wrap-around cover (by Stephen Adams).  Unfortunately, the colour on the spine is weirdly all green so the effect is somewhat spoiled when you open the book all the way.  Still, a keeper.

I am guessing that Philip Wayre was better known when this book came out.  He produced a documentary about otters that was well-received at the time.  He kept otters and other animals on his property and let children visit.  The first half of the book is about the various otters he rescued in England and brought back to his land to raise and try to breed.  It's actually a pretty fun read.  Otters do not make good housepets.  They are mischievous and destructive and leave a very strong-smelling "spraight" to mark their territory.  They can be tamed, but have strong jaws with really sharp teeth and even the super tamed ones will sometimes bite hard when excited.  The author and his wife were incredibly patient but I guess that was their passion.  

The second half of the book is about their journey to Malaysia to try and study some other species of otters.  This was a pretty classic British post-WWII travelogue with some light dusting of colonialism.  They visit some pretty beautiful-sounding places and spend more time looking at otter tracks and spoor than seeing actual otters, though sadly they do bring a few back home that had been captured by locals.

The final chapter is an explanation of the creation of The Otter Trust, including frustrating story of how he purchased a big plot of land only to have it blocked by the local council who would not approve of making it an otter trust.  Very weird business. I hear England is like that, powerful NIMBYs and laws that let them block everything.  He is very vague about who is behind it and dismisses the idea that it was graft but also laments that it most likely would end up being developed, which I am sure it is today (and thus sounds like it would be some shitbag developers behind blocking any land being put in trust).  It seems like they did succeed in finding some land based on the projects on their website. 

 

19. The Second Wave - Book 2 of the Woodstock Saga by Michael Tod

I wish I'd read this right after the first one, but these books are quite hard to find (still looking for the third one).  Reading suffered once again as well due to endwinter travel and visits as well as my tabletop gaming addiction flaring up again.  So I read this in fits and starts and often in small snippets which did not make for an engrossing reading experience and the story suffered.  It is partly that the writing and narrative are somewhat at a simpler level, so that while I appreciated it, it didn't suck me in.  This is a book for pastoral animal adventure lovers of all ages, but I would say probably most appreciated by younger readers.

I really love the concept, Tod takes the region where he grew up and makes it a world for the squirrels.  There are 3 maps,which is awesome and they are all pretty close to the geography of the real world (I checked on Google Maps).  The battle between the reds and the invasive American greys in the first book is over with the reds winning.  Despite me saying it is somewhat simple, the actual hook to create the conflict in the second book is quite clever.  The last of the red squirrels who grew up on a stone quarry peninsula with no trees are forced to leave and head inland to find a home and mate.  They are a family of three and the father, Crag, is a religious fanatic.  The hardscrabble life on a quarry developed a puritan way of life with no affection or comfort and he imposes this on his poor wife and child.  Even more extreme, his whole deal is that squirrels must collect and hoard pieces of metal to show their respect to the sun and make sure they go to their instead of a squirrel hell equivalent.  So he makes his family spend all day dragging bits of metal around.  He sucks.

He meets the happier, mellower red squirrels who live in comfortable trees and immediately sees them as heretics.  Meanwhile, the defeated greys who remain decide a new tactic.  Since they can't stop the power of the Woodstock (some kind of human item that the reds figured out to use that burns off squirrels whiskers and worse), they decide to join them, though their intentions still seem nefarious.  The leader of the greys sends a team to integrate and learn from the reds in the hopes of figuring out how to beat them.  The mellow reds are still too suspicious and send them out to a neutral place in the woods where unfortunately the greys meet the puritan squirrel who quickly converts them with his high charisma and terrifying words.  An interesting wrinkle is that the greys have a female squirrel Ivy who chafes at the sexism of their society.  At first, she sees an example of the more egalitarian reds and is intrigued, but meeting Crag she realizes that she can exploit his religion for her own power gains.  The greys and Crag have the same goal for different reasons, wipe out the reds.

There is another parallel storyline taking place on Brownsea Island.  I can't remember what happened in the first book so the connection to the mainland squirrels was not clear and made it seem like two independent storylines.  A pine-marten swims ashore and becomes a genocidal, existential menace to the reds on the island and they send off a squirrel back to the mainland to find her old allies and the Woodstock.

It's a gentle, fun read with some cool ideas (Crags end involves lightning and all the metal he's convinced the others to store) and a highly didactic meeting with helpful dolphins (whose environmental message I am for 100% but some might find it a bit clunky).  I am still looking for the third, but I would suggest that these books benefit from being read consistently and in order.