‘Everyone needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul.’ These words by John Muir, the Scottish-American environmentalist, seem even more poignant today than a hundred years ago, when he wrote them. Not only was Muir a great proponent of the interconnectedness of all life, he was also the famed Father of National Parks, having played a pivotal role in the designation of Yosemite in 1890. It is fitting then, in these pandemic days as we struggle to manage our relationship with wildlife, that authors Nigel Dudley and Sue Stolton salute him in their new book Leaving Space for Nature: The Critical Role of Area-Based Conservation.

Stalwarts of the protected area movement for more than 2 decades, the authors have penned an unassuming gem that seeks to provide a ‘contemporary assessment of area-based conservation and its implications for nature and society’ (back cover). More prosaically perhaps, they have produced an eloquently written and thorough review of the history, issues and arguments surrounding site-based conservation and especially protected areas. In this social media generation of quick soundbites and binary opinions, this book resolutely covers almost everything one needs to know about site-based conservation, warts—and nuances—and all. For that alone it is to be highly recommended.

Whatever one's political leanings or professional agenda, a glance at Google Earth shows that protected areas do work, at least in some way. They have helped shape and protect nature for almost a thousand years. My own surname can be traced back to William the Conqueror's forest manager, charged with protecting northern England's hunting estate in the late 11th century. As Dudley and Stolton admit, there are aspects of their book that may upset some people. However, this lends their arguments credence. Conservation in its real sense is a practice that almost everyone believes they understand, correctly or otherwise. Vehement opinion is often hurled at its practitioners with equal weight by experts and amateurs alike. The authors’ treatment demonstrates just how much they do understand conservation, in all its glorious shades of grey.

The book begins with three chapters of scene setting. The second part tackles the fundamental issues of definition, priority setting and targets, and part three faces the realities of threat, value, effect and cost. Pleasingly, the final section looks in more detail at what is next, and sets out the authors’ own vision for the success of area-based conservation. Without wishing to set off the spoiler alert, their proposals, broadly covering six key facets of conservation, are all practical and feasible.

The biggest weakness of the book comes through no fault of the authors, who presumably wrote the text before the world changed in 2020. Dudley and Stolton have gone to great lengths to cover as many of the threats, challenges and funding mechanisms associated with protected area management as possible. However, they could not have predicted that the biggest existential threat in over 100 years was around the corner. The impacts of COVID-19 are now being felt, and will be for many years to come. The loss in revenue to protected area authorities from a collapse in tourism, and to conservation organizations through economic decline, is having a huge effect. Regrettably, albeit understandably, therefore, there is a large COVID-shaped hole in this book that I hope can and will be filled in a second edition.

As a grizzled conservationist of 30 years, I had in my mind a list of issues that I felt sure would not be covered. Yet each time I turned the page my list got pleasingly shorter. Open discussions about authenticity and trophy hunting, and the debates around Indigenous sensitivities, are handled with care. Perhaps there remains room for discussions around human health and population, human–wildlife conflict, and the complementary discipline of species conservation. There are also a few minor details that disappoint. The examples did not always fit into the relevant argument, and seemed at times a function of personal experience rather than specific relevance. The relationship between Key Biodiversity Areas (KBAs) and Important Bird and Biodiversity Areas (IBAs) is a practical one, with IBAs only default KBAs until countries redefine them. Geographically, Bwindi does not abut Congo Brazzaville but rather the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Kilimanjaro does not rise majestically from the Serengeti plain (as the band Toto also erroneously claimed in 1982!), but is at least 350 km to the east. And the misspelling of iconic sites like Ngorongoro is a shame. But my pedantry should serve only to emphasize the general excellence of the book and my failure to find anything else wrong.

There are key areas where Dudley and Stolton demonstrate their appreciation of complexities. The observation that what really matters is not the type of management but rather who makes the decisions, is spot on. Ultimately, conservation is a political business, and anyone who states that ‘too many decisions about conservation are made on the basis of ingrained prejudices, peer pressure, lazy thinking or on simply doing what people have done before’ (p. 4) understands this well. Leaving Space for Nature is an excellent treatise on the current state of site-based conservation. It is a realistic, reasoned and readable book. It should be read by everyone who has an interest in—or an opinion about—conservation.