This next stage of Knepp’s evolution involves talking with landowners and farmers about what they can do to connect areas of biodiversity: perhaps allowing hedgerows to grow out as buffers, reducing their pesticides or even considering regenerative farming. The aim is to connect Knepp with different Nature-rich environments and habitats – from heathland to heavy clay to chalk to salt marsh – thus creating a significant ecosystem with natural processes flowing through the landscape on a large scale. One such project focuses on linking Knepp to the sea, while another looks northward to areas such as St Leonard’s Forest and Ashdown Forest. Their focus now is on collaborating with neighbours on the vision to connect Knepp. “It was a beautiful place to be for lockdown, but whenever we leave this bubble, we’re hit by the desertification of the land around us.” “We now have this incredible biodiversity hotspot, but we’re living in a bubble,” Tree admits. The density and variety of species within Knepp cannot spill out and colonise, because there is a dearth of high-value habitat surrounding the estate. Successful though their rewilding project has been, Tree says, she’s aware that Knepp on its own is an island. But I’m curious to learn what Tree has been focusing on at Knepp since the book was published three years ago. “That was beyond any of our imaginings, and even the scientists on our advisory board couldn’t believe the pace of change and uplift of biodiversity.” Wilding ends on this note of hope for the sheer power of Nature to revitalise and recover when given the space. “The book was really about the astonishing resurgence of Nature,” Tree explains. It tells how the couple handed their 1,400 hectares of farmland back to Nature: ripping out fences, abandoning the use of pesticides, and introducing free-roaming herds of animals. The story of Knepp Estate and its rapid evolution from unprofitable agricultural land to a rewilded landscape teeming with endangered species is chronicled in Tree’s prize-winning best-seller, Wilding. “We had hit the buffers with farming, and we wanted to work with the land rather than battling against it. “I don’t think we can really take much credit for it,” she says. Though they have been dubbed ‘the King and Queen of Rewilding’, Tree remains exceptionally humble as she describes the dramatic transformation they witnessed on their West Sussex farmland. When Isabella Tree and her husband Charlie Burrell embarked on what would become the UK’s shining example of rewilding, they had no idea what the future held.
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