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Robert Macfarlane is wrong to cast rivers as life forms in new book

We should protect Earth's rivers and forests with laws. But it is another matter to claim them as living beings, as Robert Macfarlane does in his new book Is a River Alive?

By Rowan Hooper

30 April 2025

H7X53M Los Cedros River, Cotacachi-Cayapas Reserve, Ecuador — Ecuador’s Rio Los Cedros is a source of insight for Robert Macfarlane
Murray Cooper/Minden Pictures/Alamy

Is a River Alive?
Robert Macfarlane (Penguin Books (UK) W. W. Norton (US, 20 May))

Early on in this often beautiful, wild and wildly provocative book, Robert Macfarlane recounts telling his son the title of his project. The boy exclaims that of course a river is alive, so this is going to be a very short book. Macfarlane isn’t so sure, and nor am I. It has been a long time since I have felt so torn over a new piece of writing.

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