Heather Ashworth

Dr. Heather Ashworth has been documenting the Glenfeshie rewilding project for four years—the return of native trees, the recolonization by species that had been absent for centuries, the slow transformation of a landscape that had been managed into something that could manage itself. The project is working. The forest is returning. The wolves that were reintroduced three years ago have established two packs. The beavers are building dams. The landscape is becoming what it was before human management made it something else. But something else is returning too. Something that was here before the sheep, before the people, before the forest itself. *Wilding* is ecological horror about rewilding, return, and the question of what happens when you restore a landscape to what it was before people managed it—and discover that some things were managed out for reasons that had nothing to do with sheep. The novel unfolds across four seasons—Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter—following Heather as she documents the rewilding project and slowly realizes that the ecosystem is returning more completely than anyone intended. The wolves are behaving strangely. The trees are growing in patterns that don't match the soil surveys. And in the deepest part of the regenerating forest, something is waiting that the historical record doesn't mention because the historical record was written by people who didn't want to remember what they'd managed out. Heather approaches the anomalies the way she approaches everything: with careful documentation, systematic analysis, and a determination to fit the evidence into frameworks that weren't designed for it. She is a scientist. She believes in observation, in measurement, in the principle that what can be documented can be understood. But what she's documenting doesn't fit ecological frameworks. The forest is returning to something that predates ecology—something that was here before the science of ecosystems existed, before the concept of "native spec