Over a period of one year, the device will collect data on the water's temperature, PH, salinity and conductivity. There are chapters about ideology, Europe, Brexit, culture wars, conspiracy theory, polarisation, radicalisation, the way those forces are accelerated by digital technology, the ways political journalism fails to meet the challenges of populism. It’s also about the need to keep those things in some historical perspective; everything you need to know about, in fact, plus, neuroscience, some jokes and a dose of cardiology. True, there were always “diligent antisemites” who pointed out Behr’s Jewishness irrespective of its irrelevance to him and his work. Since the late 1990s, the vast majority of protected areas established in Canada have been led or co-led by indigenous peoples, says Courtois, and their ambitions far exceed those of governments and global targets. They are also part of a flourishing movement of 1,000 "Indigenous Guardians" across Canada who are stewarding their traditional lands and waters and redefining what conservation can – and many argue should – look like.

It is difficult not to conclude that we are ruled by a generation of meat-headed (my phrase) politicians who are either unaware of how rhetoric can chime with the darkest reaches of 20th-century history (to which Behr is attached by virtue of his murdered forbears) or just don’t care (Boris Johnson).We have to more than double the national network of these areas to meet our targets by 2030," says Valérie Courtois, a member of the Ilnu Nation and director of the Indigenous Leadership Initiative. "The only way that Canada is going to be able to do that is by enabling, supporting and financing the work of indigenous peoples." Western science tends to say: 'We're fact-based, we should lead in decision-making,'" says Courtois. "There's not always a recognition of equivalency of indigenous science to that. And while some may say that they believe in indigenous science, where Western science and indigenous science clash, guess who wins in this system?"

My only counter to Behr’s account of how awful things have become is the observation that the fall and folly of prime ministers has all happened so openly you could take pride in British democracy’s transparency as much as lament its toxicity. But perhaps that is an overly optimistic view. Theresa May’s post-Brexit speech in which she declared that anyone who was not a citizen of Britain was a “citizen of nowhere” chimes eerily with Stalin’s “rootless cosmopolitan”, a euphemism for Jews. Didn’t she realise that? No, reports Behr. He asked her aides and they said as much. Meness senses a shift in society, observing that indigenous and non-indigenous people alike are trying to work together. In that shift, hope has taken root. Witnessing their ancestor's knowledge in action was, she recalls, a profound moment that deepened her interest in medicinal plant knowledge. "We [once] used all these plants. That's what they were made for, to help us," she says. In turn, Meness now offers medicine walks and workshops, and aims to play an integral role disseminating this knowledge to others in her community.And there would likely be many more – if the money was there. At the last intake, Courtois says demand for guardians programmes far outweighed available funding. In Canada, where there are feelings among many that colonialism is a historical problem but one still rooted in the present, centring conservation with the country's original stewards is allowing indigenous people to reconnect to their land and culture. It is also reshaping relations between indigenous nations and non-indigenous Canada, presenting an opportunity for genuine reconciliation. People are actually listening now," she says. "Being a guardian means to me that [indigenous] people will never go away. We'll always be here. Stop trying to go against us and start working with us." Like elsewhere, this biodiversity is threatened by habitat loss and degradation, over-exploitation, pollution and climate change. The most recent national assessment found 20% of measured species face some level of risk of extinction, with 873 of these species critically endangered mainly due to human activities encroaching their habitat. But it's not just about lines on a map," says Courtois. "What really matters is our relationship with those places."