Britons go back to nature as writers supply a new call of the wild

With the natural world increasingly described in terms of crisis; of global warming, of habitat destruction, of much-loved species falling upon the sword of extinction, what remains of the wild is often seen as under threat.

However, in response to the distress call, a very British rallying cry has sounded, and a new wave of nature writing has emerged, breathing new life into a genre considered old hat.

"As a nation we've enjoyed a long established tradition of writing about the natural world," says naturalist Richard Mabey, widely cited as the man responsible for the renaissance. "Shakespeare's plays are riddled with animal imagery and symbolism that still carries much of their meaning today. His owls and crows bring bad luck and unlucky husbands are cuckolded – the phrase taken directly from the morally dubious antics of the cuckoo.

"Wordsworth had his daffodils and Ted Hughes' flaring sea trout and gaping crows never fail to stir the imagination."

Mabey's books from Food For Free – extolling the virtues of foraging – to the epic Flora Britannica – charting our relationship to plants and trees – all share a common theme; we cannot escape our ancient connection to the natural world and we should embrace it.

"The first art-works made by human beings were cave paintings of animals, 40,000 years old, now done, as most anthropologists accept, from fascination and spiritual bonding, not out of physical necessity," he explains. "The natural world was our cradle, is our family and life support system. Its members are also, in the most literal sense, our neighbours. We do not have to like them, but we do have to learn to live with them, otherwise the whole interlinked system will fall apart."

Mabey cites finding a "still warm, dead pipistrelle bat impaled on a car radiator" when aged six as the experience that set him on the path to becoming a nature writer and his latest offering A Brush With Nature, brings together some of his favourite pieces from a long career, including accounts of oil-soaked cormorants dying during the first Gulf War and tributes to the writers who influenced him.

At first glance, a vicar may seem an unlikely choice as a hero, but Mabey's admiration for the 18th-century naturalist the Reverend Gilbert White resulted in an award-winning biography.

"One hundred years before Darwin," says Mabey. "White made huge breakthroughs in our understanding of the natural world, realising the role worms play in soil formation, and the significance of territorial bird song.

"White's findings cut a swathe through the then un-enlightened times, in which many people believed some species of geese were born from seashells, and birds, such as swallows and swifts, hibernated in burrows.

"He was the first literary ecologist, the first person to

write with poetic insight and feeling, and scientific curiosity, about the natural world. He set his writing inside a human community emphasising the links between us and the creatures we share the planet with."

Mabey is not alone in the nature renaissance. Cocker's Crow Country won huge accolades on publication, and is seen as one of the major works of the new movement.

The book, by Mark Cocker, explores the fantastical world of crows, specifically rooks and jackdaws, their historical relationship alongside man, and the nitty-gritty of their hugely complex social structure.

Elsewhere, there's Robert MacFarlane. An academic and occasional tree climber, MacFarlane's The Wild Places is a quest to discover if any

truly wild locations still exist in the UK, taking him to, among other places, the unforgiving Rannoch Moor in Highland Scotland to the forgotten corners of the Peak District.

And despite the doom-laden headlines, Mabey still thinks

there is hope for the future of the natural world.

"The resurgence of nature writing forces us to confront our responsibilities to an

environment increasingly under siege and held at arm's length,"

he says.

"Things will change, but I'm sure nature will pull through, in fact it'll get through much better than we will."