Her husband inherited a brown.
Yes, Knepp Castle, a 1,400-hectare estate dedicated to intensive agriculture and dairy farming. Sounds wonderful, but it was a depleted pile of dirt with 1.7 million debts.
And what did they do?
My husband, Charles Burrell, is an agronomist, and since the land was not enough for more, we sold the cows, the machinery, settled the debts and decided to rewild.
What does it consist of?
It is a mode of ecological restoration in which one must stand aside, let nature take the reins.
They must have done something in Knepp, now a paradise.
We stopped plowing and using agricultural chemicals, restored natural water systems, and then introduced animals.
What kind of animals?
Wild herds that grazed on European fields before the human impact, such as horses, bison, beavers…, key animals to recover those fertile habitats.
What’s up?
In barely two years grass and wild flowers began to grow, insects returned and with them the birds, the land filled with butterflies and crickets and we introduced a herd of deer and another of ponies.
Now they boast of biodiversity.
Rewilding Knepp has been a constant surprise: unexpected effects that change everything we thought we knew about the behavior of our native species.
Is Knepp a propitious place?
Not at all: we are in the south-east of England, under the skyways of Gatwick airport and surrounded by highways in a chemical-soaked land.
And the animals have returned?
When you stop intervening in the field, and encourage it by leaving horses and other species free, the rest return on their own, like the nettle butterfly, which had disappeared from Great Britain, or the nightingales, in decline for 70 years, or the storks.
It must rain a lot.
In the cracks of the dry earth you could stick your arm up to the shoulder. Wild herbivores are key, the bacteria and microorganisms from their droppings start the recovery of the soil, which once recovered retains moisture and nutrients.
Counted by you it seems easy.
Species are much more plastic than we thought: at home we find nightingales living in thorny scrub that is not their place, or peregrine falcons nesting in trees instead of cliffs.
A model to copy?
In Europe there is a problem of land abandonment that leads us to dense forests, very harmful to wildlife. If the natural aquifers are recovered they will fill with life immediately.
And life calls life.
Yes, you have to start those natural processes again and then you step aside. At first we received very angry letters from our neighbors because they saw a chaotic landscape, full of weeds, an affront to their aesthetic sensibilities.
Pesticides make everything very aseptic.
But as the nightingales, the turtledoves, the peregrine falcons reappeared… the criticisms dissipated.
What have you learned in these 20 years?
That nature has all the answers, it recovers very quickly if we let it, and that is a very hopeful message.
And now you want to create a corridor of 10,000 hectares to the coast?
We have to connect with other sources of nature so that the animals can move. The campaign was launched a few weeks ago and landowners committed to removing pesticides from their land, individuals making their gardens available, and landowners have already registered.
Can something similar be done on a small piece of land?
Yes, the smaller the area to rewild, the more intervention will have to be done to create a mosaic of habitats that maximizes diversity. Your home garden can be key if you know how.
Hoy en Knepp organizan safaris.
People are amazed by the abundance of life and the rarity of the species. At dawn the trill of the birds is so loud that it vibrates inside your chest.
How nice.
People realize how empty the rest of the landscape is and that inspires them to do something about it, and I think that’s the most exciting thing that’s ever happened at Knepp.
See how life is born from the wasteland.
We have butterfly safaris, the largest population in the UK, nightingales at dusk, bats, hundreds of small predators… Life is everywhere.
