EDITOR’S NOTE: Call to Earth is a NCS editorial sequence dedicated to reporting on the environmental challenges going through our planet, along with the options. Rolex’s Perpetual Planet Initiative has partnered with NCS to drive consciousness and schooling round key sustainability points and to encourage optimistic motion.
A stroll via the Knepp Estate, in southern England, could lead on you previous beaver wetlands, breeding herons and free-roaming Exmoor ponies — all accompanied by the distinctive cooing of a turtle dove.
“It’s a sound that used to be part of our culture. Every person’s summer in England would have been characterized by that sound,” says Isabella Tree, who owns the three,500-acre property in West Sussex together with her husband Charlie Burrell.
Turtle doves have been as soon as ample within the UK, however since 1994, numbers have declined by 98%, and the fowl has been on the UK Red List – that means it’s thought of a threatened species – for 20 years.
At Knepp, nevertheless, the fowl appears to be bouncing again. A just lately revealed, two-decade review of wildlife on the property discovered that the variety of singing males rose from simply two in 2008, to 22 in 2024.
The enhance is a part of a broader surge in biodiversity at Knepp since Tree and Burrell started a rewilding venture in 2001 on the previous farm.
“We never thought that in 20 years we could have gone from being this depleted, polluted, dysfunctional post-industrial farmland, to being one of the most significant biodiversity hotspots in Britain,” says Tree.
Successes embody an 870% rise within the variety of dragonflies and damselflies on the property between 2005 and 2025, and 110% development in butterfly species richness — together with the elusive purple emperor butterfly, which Knepp now homes one the UK’s largest populations of — with 283 individuals counted in a single day in 2025.
Breeding fowl numbers have elevated ninefold since 2007, with nightingales — one other fowl as soon as frequent throughout the UK however now under threat — making a comeback: Sixty-two singing males have been noticed final yr, up from simply 9 in 1999.
The property, which incorporates a Nineteenth-century citadel, has belonged to the Burrell household for over 200 years. Charlie Burrell inherited it in 1985 and, after attending agricultural faculty, he deliberate to proceed farming in the identical intensive method his grandparents had since World War II.
But by the late Nineties, with the farm producing low yields and prices rising, the property was £1.5 million ($2 million) in debt. Tree says, “it was finally realizing that no amount of intensification was going to make farming work on this land” that impressed them to set about rewilding.
They started by sowing native wildflowers, grasses and seeds within the 350-acre parkland space across the property home. They then launched Tamworth pigs, Exmoor ponies, longhorn cattle, and crimson, roe and fallow deer to the broader property.
Internal gates have been eliminated to permit the animals to roam freely, spreading seeds and vitamins via their dung and fur.
Beavers, which grew to become extinct within the wild within the UK within the sixteenth century, have been additionally launched to Knepp, constructing dams in waterways to create ponds, which Tree says have attracted breeding birds.
But after these re-introductions, Tree says “the whole idea of rewilding is about letting go and letting nature evolve.”
Allowing Knepp’s as soon as orderly arable fields to develop wild with thorny scrub has offered a habitat which is “rocket fuel” for turtle doves and nightingales, says Tree.
“It provides fantastic thorny protection for nests, but it also provides all the food resources that many songbirds need, including seeds and buds and nuts and berries,” she explains.
But regardless of flourishing at Knepp, Tree thinks turtle doves have a “slim chance” of survival within the UK given broader habitat loss.
“If we (the UK) were really serious about reversing the trends of biodiversity loss, we would be rolling out rewilding on every spare inch of land that we possibly can,” she says.
Almost 70% of UK land is farmed, which Rob Stoneman, director of panorama restoration on the Wildlife Trusts, a group of UK wildlife charities, says is without doubt one of the main drivers of species decline within the nation.
“We’ve gradually pushed wildlife out,” he says. “That’s bad news for everybody. It’s bad news for flooding. It’s bad news for drought. It’s bad news for the climate.”
While the federal government has pledged to revive or create greater than 500,000 hectares (1.24 million acres) of wildlife-rich habitat by 2042 in England, Stoneman says rewilding initiatives nonetheless face obstacles.
“All of our education through agricultural colleges, the way that we deliver land subsidies, the advice that we give farmers … all of those systems encourage farmers to be intensive,” he says.
Stoneman provides that regulatory limitations are a further problem. The Dangerous Wild Animals Act 1976 outlaws the holding of bison and wild boar with out a licence that’s tough to acquire — two species Tree want to see launched onto the Knepp Estate.
“Large, free-roaming herbivores are the drivers of ecosystems,” says Tree.
Stoneman hopes that Knepp’s success will pave the way in which for extra rewilding applications throughout the nation, notably in upland areas — usually 600 to 700 meters above sea degree (1,969 to 2,297 toes) — the place damaged peatland emits massive portions of carbon and low-fertility soil makes for unproductive farming.
“Knepp is a light showing the way,” he says, including that alongside its biodiversity enhancements, the property is “an economic success story.”
Where Knepp had simply 23 full-time employees when the land was farmed, it now has 168 workers, and 200 individuals work in previous farm buildings on the property which are leased to different corporations.
Knepp now has a glamping enterprise, providing lodging in cozy shepherd’s huts, yurts and treehouses, and presents safaris, guided strolling excursions and rewilding workshops.
The massive, free-roaming animals — that are managed to stop overgrazing — present a constant provide of natural meat, offered within the property’s store and seasonal restaurant, which has just lately been awarded a Michelin Green Star for its sustainable and eco-friendly gastronomy.
However, rewilding has confronted criticism from some farmers who concern it may jeopardize their livelihoods and home meals manufacturing.
The UK’s National Farmers’ Union has beforehand argued that British farms present very important wildflowers and hedgerow habitats, and that the federal government “must focus on land sharing to deliver food security and environmental delivery, not a singular approach that risks undermining the social fabric of rural communities.”
Both Tree and Stoneman insist that rewilding to enhance biodiversity isn’t a menace to farmers, however somewhat a vital help to meals programs, that are more and more weak to the results of local weather change.
“Farming depends on having nature as a buffer to produce everything from the dung beetles, the pollinating insects, the natural pest control, the buffers for extreme weather events … all these things that food production relies on,” says Tree.
The property is now working with farmers and native communities in Sussex as a part of the Weald to Waves venture, to create a 100-mile “wildlife corridor,” from the Ashdown Forest within the east of the county to its south coast.
Tree is assured that the biodiversity successes of Knepp, will be repeated elsewhere. “If it can happen here, it can happen anywhere,” she says. “It has been an extraordinary story of hope.”