Hello—I’m hanging up my boots here on BlueSky for the summer. Come find/follow me on Instagram instead, perhaps, where I’m @robgmacfarlane. 👇👇👇

Is a river alive? Nobel prize contender and celebrated author Robert Macfarlane explores this question with @racheldonald.bsky.social on the latest @mongabay.com podcast here:

Written by Saleh, a 17-year-old poet from Gaza, ‘When the Sea became a Wall’ is the first in a series of letterpress prints facilitated by writers Alice Oswald, Zaffar Kunial, Max Porter & @robgmacfarlane.bsky.social‬ www.caughtbytheriver.net/2025/06/when...

The plunder of our seas by industrial fishing is a monstrosity in which almost everyone unwittingly collaborates. For decades this truth has been deliberately hidden from us. Now at last the consensus is cracking. This week's column. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

It is 100% carrying water for the opposition to participate in this collective delusion that Dems for some reason need to answer for every teen who throws a rock rather than hold the Trump admin accountable for intentionally creating chaos and breaking the law to stoke violence. They are in charge.

"Perhaps I will write—not to immortalize the pain, but to say that we were here… loving, dreaming, planting, drawing, singing, reading, writing… before our lives were reduced to a passing news bulletin or a cold political statement."

The USGS ecosystems research program doesn't just study wildlife. Its researchers work on rangelands and forests, fisheries and aquaculture, and critically, wildfire. Trump's proposed budget eliminates this program entirely, allocating $0 for 2026. www.nytimes.com/2025/05/31/c...

G, by Zaffar Kunial

Over the moon to finally be reading @robgmacfarlane.bsky.social's "Is a River Alive?" Feel like I've just sat down and already a hundred pages have disappeared. Temporarily tearing myself away so I can visit my own local river.

Victory for wild camping at the Supreme Court! The verdict is a relief– but Dartmoor remains the *only* place in England & Wales where the public has a right to wild camp Labour must now pass a new right to roam act to defend & extend the public’s access rights www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025...

Hello—Is A River Alive? is published today in the US by @wwnorton.com. The beautiful jacket of living, writhing rivers is based on art by the great @stanleydonwood.bsky.social. I feel deeply committed to the rivers, people & ideas in this book—& can’t wait to come to North America with it next week.

Massive anti-genocide protest in London today, hundreds of thousands demand justice and an end to Israel’s ongoing genocide of Gaza. #3E #EndImpunity #freepalestine

I spoke with the brilliant @jonathan-watts.bsky.social about the experience of writing "with" rivers; about freshwater and life and power—and about hope as a discipline. www.theguardian.com/environment/...

So, for those killed and those whose voices are silenced: what more evidence do you need? Will you act now – decisively – to prevent genocide in Gaza and to ensure respect for international humanitarian law? This Council must prevail. Demand this ends.

There is not a single congressional district in the U.S. where more than 15% of voters support cuts to Medicaid.

Hello––Is A River Alive? is published in the US & Canada on 20 May. I am coming on tour––dates & locations below––& would love to speak of the book’s ideas, people & rivers to as many folk as possible while I'm out there. Please let anyone know who you think might want to come to an event. Cheers!

This is a searing editorial in the Financial Times. The West’s Shameful Silence on Gaza. If this had been written by students, and not the Editorial Board of the FT, they would be getting snatched off the streets by ICE.

This winter I finished writing a full-length choral requiem for the Sycamore Gap tree, called The World Tree. The Finnish composer Matthew Whittall is setting it to music now. Premieres in Helsinki in November—sung by Helsinki Chamber Choir—then 🤞 travel to UK. www.thetimes.com/uk/arts/arti...

Some conclusions from this dismal episode: * heritage trees need listing & strong legal protection * a sense of nature/the living world as disposable, even laughable, runs deep * “Far from being the big men they thought they were…they were rather pathetic.” www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025...

Opinion from the FT's Editorial Board: 'The US and European countries that tout Israel as an ally that shares their values have issued barely a word of condemnation. They should be ashamed of their silence, and stop enabling Netanyahu to act with impunity.' www.ft.com/content/f5fd...

Hello—Is A River Alive? has been adapted as Radio 4’s Book of the Week next week. Five episodes, read by me—& we’ve folded in field recordings & some beautiful Max Richter music. First episode, Anima, broadcasts tomorrow at 11.45am. You can listen here: www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m...

The blockade on Gaza has left two million at risk of starvation, Palestinian representatives said at the opening of a case at the International Court of Justice

Is A River Alive? is published today, 1 May. It’s about the lives, deaths & rights of rivers—& how our fate flows with that of water & always has. To the people, places & rivers whose ideas run through its pages, thank you so much. I think it’s the book I’ve been learning to write all these years.

1/12 Tony Blair Institute have released a report which is getting a lot of coverage in UK today It says the drive for net zero emissions is flawed and some media outlets have gone to town However it’s a bit odd By odd, I mean there’s a lot of bollocks in it and shouldn't be taken seriously 🧵🧵

This beauty arrived today. SIGNED Indie Bookshop Editions of "Is A River Alive?" by the superb @robgmacfarlane.bsky.social . I've also got limited edition pin badges to go out with all signed copies. Al sorts of extra content too! Order one HERE, if you'd like to. tinyurl.com/4mb8y27y

Hello—on Wed evening I’ll be at Ely Cathedral for the first event in a reading/speaking tour for Is A River Alive? Then around & about through May. Dates & places below in case you might make it. On the lives, loves, deaths & rights of rivers… Ely tickets here! www.toppingbooks.co.uk/events/ely/r...

Calling river-lovers: your river needs you! The Big River Watch runs until 1 May. Spend 15 mins by your local river, record what you see in the free BRW app––& help create a clearer picture of UK river health. I'm taking part. More here. @theriverstrust.bsky.social theriverstrust.org/take-action/...

What follows if we imagine rivers as having lives, deaths––& even rights? I wrote this essay about water & hope; imagining rivers “otherwise”; nature’s rights; grammars of animacy; & how our fate flows with that of rivers—& always has. It’s from Is A River Alive? www.theguardian.com/books/2025/a...

Hello—Is A River Alive? is out a week today, on 1 May. I went to Clays the printer to see how my books are made (many marvellous machines!) & to sign 3000 special editions. Here’s what happened in 40 seconds. Here are the indie bookshops who have the specials for pre-order: linktr.ee/Is_A_River_A...

“The government’s planning and infrastructure bill is the worst assault on England’s ecosystems in living memory. It erases decades of environmental protections, including inherited EU legislation which even the Tories promised to uphold.” Please read & share. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Brilliant breaking news: this year’s Goldman Prize—the Nobel of environmentalism—is won by activist Mari Luz Canaquiri Murayari for her work defending the rights & life of Peru’s Marañon River. “For us, the river isn’t just a body of water. It’s fundamental.” insideclimatenews.org/news/2104202...

A brilliant Grist essay on the immense de-damming of the Klamath River in Oregon/California: a project that has resulted in the restoration of one of the largest salmon runs on the West Coast, and has also “set a profound new precedent for how the U.S. manages its water.” grist.org/project/indi...

“If I die, I want a loud death. I don’t want to be just breaking news, or a number in a group, I want a death that the world will hear.” She was about to get married; a film about her life in Gaza had just been finished. 10 of her family were killed with her. www.theguardian.com/world/2025/a...

Eye-opening graph. The biggest wildfire incidents in the UK don't occur when it's hottest, in high summer: they take place in April - *when landowners set fire to their grouse moors & lose control of burns.* Time to ban moorland burning. Source: www.iucn-uk-peatlandprogramme.org/sites/defaul...

'Amira was never formally charged. His crime, as he understood it, was “incitement”: he had posted a few lines by the Syrian poet Nizar Qabbani on Facebook. (“O mad people of Gaza / The age of political reason / Has long departed / So teach us madness.”)' harpers.org/archive/2025...

This–– @robcowen.bsky.social’s The North Road––is out today. It's magnificent: one of the best books you'll read this year. A polyphonic walking-up of the ghosts & lives of the Great North Road; a bravura act of imagining in which RC seems to slip supernaturally between times & minds. So, so good.

Hello––my book Underland has been adapted into a feature film & the world premiere is at Tribeca in June. It's taken 4.5 years––& the team’s created something astonishing. A documentary that's groundbreaking in form, voice & tone. I hope you might see it one day. Full account on IG (@robgmacfarlane)

Great to see spine-stiffening example of @harvard.edu; refusal to bow to Trump's demands for staggering federal interference. Others following suit. Assault on universities = * assault on public purpose of education * on freedom of thought * on life-saving research www.thecrimson.com/article/2025...

A 450-yo oak is felled without permission by a Toby Carvery (don’t eat there), who falsely claimed it was "dead". A tree alive when The Gunpowder Plot was hatched, which supports a web of 2000+ species, is in pieces. Legal protection for heritage trees needed. enfielddispatch.co.uk/toby-carvery...

I cannot convey enough how grateful I am to the millions of you all supporting us with your time, resources, and energy. Your support has allowed us to rally people together at record scale to organize their communities. All with an average donation of $21. THANK YOU & Pa’lante 🙏🏽♥️

“Water is also being used as a weapon of war. In early March, a week after stopping any food…from getting into Gaza, Israel cut off the electricity supply to Gaza’s main operational desalination plant. The situation now could not be more desperate. ‘Gaza is a killing field’.”

It's making me very happy to see American readers & reviewers taking Nan Shepherd's slender, glittering classic of mountain literature, The Living Mountain, to their hearts. The first US ever edition is out this month, some 80 years after Nan wrote it. www.nytimes.com/2025/04/06/b...

Hello—I’m trying to help heal a river: the wild, spectacular Mutehekau Shipu in Nitassinan/Quebec. We're raising funds to clean up a junk-heap we found c.100 miles up the system. Stove, fridge, oil drums...gah. Images of river + junk below. Details & fundraiser here: www.gofundme.com/f/mutehekau-...

this is a staggering amount of money to build camps—suggesting that building & running a gulag will be the primary function of the otherwise gutted Trump-state in last fiscal yr: "D.H.S. allocated about $3.4 billion for the entire custody operation overseen by ICE" www.nytimes.com/2025/04/07/u...

An Teallach horseshoe today. Nine glittering hours on 400-million-year-old sandstone. White-tailed eagle riding the thermals; ptarmigan on quartzite; raven gleaming silver. Blue ridgelines receding; next stop Newfoundland for the eye looking westwards. But June conditions in April; where is winter?

ChatGPT ass presidency

“Grief, like an apple tree, grows crooked not straight.” Each year I mark the day when this little apple tree first flowers, & remember my friend the writer Roger Deakin, who brought it back as a pip from Kazakhstan, then died soon after. Full story here: emergencemagazine.org/essay/east-t...

Recently taught this, one of Hopkins’ so-called “Terrible” or “Desolation” sonnets. An astonishing, shattering poem; the self splitting & re-splitting; self-invigilating, self-flagellating. A syntax of contortion & depression; words eliding, consuming—until, oh, that wild (“betweenpie”!) ending…

In the 1960s Switzerland had some of Europe's filthiest waterbodies. Now its cities boast near-pristine rivers & lakes: "We are united by a love of water". Lessons to learn here, about building emotional connection to water as well as infrastructure investment. www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Hello US readers––we've made a special limited edition hardback of my new book Is A River Alive? It’s only available to pre-order from 60 US indie bookstores & comes with a 48-page @fieldnotesbrand.bsky.social "river" notebook. Artwork by the great Stanley Donwood! Orderable here: isariveralive.com