Knepp Wildland

Knepp Wildland is a rewilding project on 1,400 hectares of former farmland around Knepp Castle in West Sussex. The estate once grew crops and kept dairy herds, but since 2000 it has been managed to let nature reclaim the land. Free-roaming herds of old English Longhorn cattle, Exmoor ponies, Tamworth pigs and deer now graze without fences, mimicking the animals that once lived here. The project began after Sir Charles Burrell inherited the land in 1987 and struggled to make the farm profitable. In 2001 he removed internal fences and introduced deer, then followed advice from Dutch ecologist Dr Frans Vera to let the landscape evolve naturally. The land now supports rare species once lost to the area. Nightingales nest here in numbers that make up one per cent of the UK total. Purple emperor butterflies breed in the largest colony in the country. White storks raised chicks in England for the first time in 600 years, and beavers returned to Sussex after centuries away. Barbastelle bats, slow-worms, barred grass snakes and turtle doves also live on the estate. The River Adur has been restored to flood meadows, allowing sea trout to return upstream. Experts recorded 441 moth species, 62 bees and 30 wasps, including several of national conservation importance. Visitors walk 16 miles of public and permissive footpaths and use five viewing platforms to watch wildlife. The estate offers camping, safaris and holiday accommodation while still producing organic meat from its free-roaming herds. A 6.5-acre pen once held young storks before release as part of a reintroduction programme. The Knepp Wildland Advisory Board includes ecologists like Dr Frans Vera and Prof Sir John Lawton. The project’s story is told in Isabella Tree’s book Wilding and the 2023 film of the same name. Dawn chorus recordings from the estate have been turned into a classical piece broadcast on BBC Radio 4 and Classic FM.