Managing Biodiversity in Agricultural Landscapes: Conservation, Restoration and Rewilding NickReid and RhiannonSmith (editors) (2024) Burleigh Dodds, Philadelphia, USA. xxix‐543. £150 ISBN: 978‐1‐80146‐454‐3

This book forms part of the Burleigh Dodds Series in Agricultural Sciences, a series that addresses a wide range of topics and aims to provide researchers, practitioners, and policymakers with up-to-date research and insights into emerging trends. The Series is explicitly oriented towards both academic and practitioner audiences. The volume makes a valuable contribution to the literature by engaging with the ongoing threats that agricultural production poses to biodiversity, including impacts on ecosystem service provision, while also addressing links with climate change. Rather than reiterating well-established diagnoses of the problem, the book focuses on a range of regenerative approaches that can support farmers in transitioning towards more sustainable farming and food production practices. Central to this discussion is an emphasis on ecological restoration and the protection of ecosystem services. The book offers detailed analysis of how restoration actions can be planned, implemented, and monitored over time. Importantly, it moves beyond an exclusive focus on individual-level change, which risks privatizing responsibility, by examining the role of the state, including through the use of agri-environmental schemes. In doing so, it explores a spectrum of conservation and restoration practices, from field margins and hedgerow maintenance to more ambitious interventions, such as farmland rewilding. The opening section sets the scene by detailing the threats posed to nature by prevailing agricultural practices, while also outlining the sector's potential to make a more positive contribution. It provides a comprehensive overview of key terms, approaches, and concepts that helps to equip readers with a solid conceptual foundation for engaging with the subsequent chapters. The volume is substantial in scope, comprising 16 chapters of well-presented material, with accessibility enhanced through the extensive use of images, figures, and tables. Many chapters adopt a consistent structure, including reflections on future directions, resources for further study, and extensive bibliographies, which further increases the book's usefulness as a reference work. The book, however, has some imbalances. The title suggests that greater attention would be paid to rewilding, particularly given its contested and often controversial nature within agricultural policy debates and beyond. The geographical spread of case studies is also uneven, with most attention devoted to the Australian and English contexts and case studies. The chapter addressing agricultural support schemes in England (Chapter 8) could do more to improve accessibility for an international audience, including by providing additional background on the policy context and recent post-Brexit policy developments in the agricultural sector. It would also benefit from clarifying that, in the context of devolution, the discussion relates specifically to England rather than Britain as a whole, given the distinct agricultural policy regimes in Wales and Scotland. Such nuances may be lost on international readers. It is easy to criticize a book for what it does not cover; nevertheless, the absence of discussion on some key issues remains puzzling. Notably, there is little engagement with the role of local and traditional knowledge, despite widespread recognition of the importance of diverse knowledge systems in biodiversity conservation. Chapter 3, which explores engaging local voices in ecological restoration projects, had the opportunity to examine this issue. Similarly, the limited treatment of climate change is surprising, particularly given the growing pressures on agricultural landscapes to deliver multiple benefits alongside food production and supporting the achievement of biodiversity goals. This includes growing expectations that the agricultural sector can contribute to net-zero ambitions through measures such as tree planting. A discussion specifically on agroforestry would have been helpful here, and this could have been provided in Chapter 13, which looks at lessons from reforestation efforts. Effective biodiversity management in agricultural landscapes necessarily requires consideration of how climate change reshapes both ecosystems and farming practices. This coverage, however, is largely absent from the book. Part V is also somewhat disappointing: while its title invites the reader to reflections on future research needs, practice shortfalls, and emerging nascent trends, it focuses narrowly on restoration efforts in southern Australia, primarily revisiting the well-documented case of the Murray–Darling Basin. Nevertheless, the review should end on a positive note. Taken as a whole, the book offers an impressive and optimistic account of the possibilities for reconciling agricultural production with biodiversity conservation. Its coverage of a diverse range of habitat types, such as peatlands, rangelands, and grasslands, alongside varying soils, climatic conditions, and practices, including species reintroduction, makes it an invaluable guide to the current scientific state of the art and of practice. The book's interdisciplinary reach further enhances its appeal, and it will be of clear interest to scholars and practitioners working in ecological restoration, agricultural science, land-use planning, and environmental management.