From golden eagles, to the submerging of villages for the construction of the reservoir, to the Corpse Road, this serves as a monument to the history of the area, though its raison d'etre is the story of Schofield and his team at the RSPB as they attempt to recover the area to its former glory. A passionate, haunting yet optimistic account of the battle to heal a damaged landscape and restore nature to a corner of the Lake District." One aspect of the book that particularly moved me was Schofield's account of how personally distressing his job can be sometimes, as farmers and others in the Lake District resist what he and the RSPB are trying to achieve. This kind of admission is something I rarely seem to read in books by male nature writers. Wild Fell is a call to recognise that the solutions for a richer world lie at our feet; by focusing on flowers, we can rebuild landscapes fit to welcome the majestic golden eagle again. Where eagles dared. Second article in Shadow Species series focuses on golden and white talked eagles. Cumbria Life/July 2020. Version also available as a WildHaweswater post

Rewilding a Lake District hill farm with Lee Schofield. Interviewed for the Rewilding The World Podcast with Ben Goldsmith. Podcast/November 2023 Saving nature is a tough job. In Wild Fell we get to understand why people do it: real soul-deep passion." Of tooth and claw. Seventh article in Shadow Species series focuses on wild cats. Cumbria Life/Dec 2020. Version also available as a WildHaweswater post It is the same rugged Lake District, beautiful and still accessible. The shape of the mountains is the same but it's got more trees and wildlife in it. We're seeing red kites returning and the critical thing is having sheep on enclosed land rather than wandering all over the place," Lee says.

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Saving nature is a tough job. In Wild Fell we get to understand why people do it: real soul-deep passion.” If he could chart his success by one thing it would be the widespread return of the globeflower. "I love it," he says. "It's part of the buttercup family and its lemon-yellow orbs appear sealed. Only one group of flies has worked out how to reach the nectar within. But in the contested landscape of the Lake District, change is not always welcomed, and success relies on finding a balance between rewilding and respecting cherished farming traditions. This is not only a story of nature in recovery, it is also the story of Lee's personal connection to place and the highs and lows of working for nature amid fierce opposition.

Exmoor rewilding. Guest blog for Mark Avery about the controversy around a vision for nature recovery in Exmoor National Park. markavery.info/16 Nov 2020 Nature Room 101 with Dr Amy Jane Beer & Lee Schofield. A light-hearted chat about nature for the Into The Wild Podcast with Ryan Dalton and Nadia Shaikh. Podcast/August 2023 Climate breakdown, pollution, invasive non-native species and disease all played a part but the single most important factor was intensive agriculture. It may come as a surprise to that room of angry farmers but Lee's now one of their staunchest defenders.Beautiful, broken or both? Article for Love & Soil, a slow conversation between farmers and conservationists, published March 2021. leeschofield.co.uk/beautiful-broken-or-both Authentic, honest and clear-sighted – Lee Schofield offers a practical and hopeful example of how to return nature to all our landscapes using imagination, compromise, humility and sheer hard work. This is an important book and fully deserves its place alongside James Rebanks and other contemporary Lakeland classics.” Much of the appeal of Wild Fell stems from the fluency with which Lee Schofield conveys the intimate knowledge and deep feeling he has developed for the Haweswater landscape, his own personal commitment to enriching and developing it, and the unabashed delight he takes from each sign of progressive change. It is a highly personal story as well as a thoroughly documented account of a complex and ongoing conservation project, a combination which should earn it the wide readership it deserves.” Professor Barry Sloan, Chair of the panel of judges for the Richard Jefferies Award For inspiration, Schofield makes sojourns to Scotland, Norway and Italy, and even other parts of Cumbria like so-called Wild Ennerdale. This provides a pleasant interlude for the reader and is quite eye-opening. I had no idea either that there were these other landscapes so closely matching the Lakes, or that they were so significantly better managed. The Lakes, and the English landscape more generally, really is in bad shape - yikes.

The project took a leap of faith – to reduce sheep numbers and replace them with cattle and ponies, thus diversifying the grazing regime. At first, these changes were intensely unpopular among the wider community, but there is a slowly dawning realisation that undertaking landscape restoration for public goods such as water quality, flood amelioration and carbon sequestration, as well as the wildlife benefits, is also farming, and deserving of widespread public support at a time when, post-Brexit, agricultural subsidies are under growing scrutiny. Saving nature is a tough job. In Wild Fell we get to understand why people do it: real soul-deep passion. -- Simon Barnes Warm, personal, political and detailed, Wild Fell invites people into the evolving conversation about the future of our natural world. * Cumbria Life *As the competing needs of agriculture and conservation jostle for ascendency, land management in Britain has reached a tipping point. Candid, raw and searingly honest, Lee Schofield offers a naturalist's perspective of the challenges unfolding in the ancient yet ever-changing landscape of Haweswater and shares with us his gloriously vibrant vision for the future. -- Katharine Norbury No one person and no one organisation can bring about the necessary change, but Schofield is doing more than most, and the vision he paints, of a fecund, collaborative, ecologically and economically sustainable future, is worth swallowing some pride for on both sides. The ranks of farmers willing to embrace or at least consider change swell year on year, and Lee is supported by a thriving local conservation community. Saving nature is a tough job. In Wild Fell we get to understand why people do it: real soul-deep passion. Simon Barnes Wild Fell is a beautiful, powerful book that subtly navigates great and complex challenges. George Monbiot Across the Lake District there are groups of people trying to change things, experimenting with different paths. People trying to see if there are different healthier ways, ones that provide a long-term future for people and wildlife, together. One such group is the RSPB in Haweswater, Lee Schofield is one of the rangers there and this is the story of their journey.

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Wild Fellleaves you in no doubt thatif we don’t protect our wild blooms, there won’t be any bugs and there won’t be any birds and, ultimately, any people” The names of fields can help us understand how the rural landscape has evolved over the centuries. In this illustrated talk, Angus , Professor Emeritus at Lancaster University, considers how names were originally coined to record a field's use, what it looked like or who owned it. Recorded on vintage maps and sometimes preserved in the memory of older residents, field-names are a goldmine of information for local historians and a critical part of rural heritage. This book is everything we need to hear right now in what are quite frankly worrying times for nature in Great Britain. This book really is hope, it's hope because it tells a story not just of what could be, but of what is actually coming to be at the wonderful place that is Wild Haweswater. CSI Lake District. Article focusing on the theft of one of England’s rarest mountain flowers. BBC Wildlife Magazine/Feb 2020 A visionary, practical and lyrical book on restoring land, from one of the best in the game, on the front line of nature restoration. Benedict Macdonald