Fans of the children’s literature classic, Watership Down, will be glad that animals have a voice again.

Extinction, habitat destruction, deforestation… How would you feel if your home was flattened to make space for others?

Countless wild animals, great and small, experience this every day.

This is their story.

Dakota the Deer, Flint the Fox, Bentley the Bat and other animals live in a forest, co-existing in an uneasy truce with some nearby humans. Then a strange animal, Whanganui the Weasel, arrives, having fled something too frightening to speak of. Just as he fears, the humans come and their actions threaten to destroy the animals’ lives.

When one of the animals goes missing, it’s the final straw. The animals decide to do something they’ve never attempted before. As they’re swept up in a terrible chain of events they can’t control, will they have what it takes to defeat forces they have no name for?

More than an eco story: The animal characters honour young environmental activists, nature conservation campaigns and indigenous tribes across the globe, including the Dakota Access Pipe Line water protectors in the USA and the Moxateteu uncontacted tribe in the Amazon. These and related green issues, with website links, are included at the end of the book, so readers come away armed with knowledge.

Can a story save the Earth? Read it to find out.