Knepp was the first sizeable farm in the U.K. to re-wild itself. It has deliberately pioneered a particular business model to raise income to enable this to be achieved. The intention is that Knepp will be one of U.K. wide webs that allows connectivity between all the areas.
The owners of the estate, have never made a secret of the fact that their motivation initially was primarily financial. However, it is first and foremost a conservationist project and this is born out when you roam it’s footpaths.
It is a little over 3000 acres in a densely populated area of southern England so of course the fencing and gates - are a necessity, but there are no internal fences at all and when you walk along it many footpaths you can see the cattle, hogs, and deer being free to roam.
Go this time of year and you will squelch through mud Go in spring and it is bursting with blossom, bird song and renewed life. In summer the bird song, wild flowers and insects are overwhelming. There are species of insect not seem for decades now flying there.
Visit Knepp and you can see turtle doves, listen to nightingales watch emperor butterflies, see storks. This year I saw and heard all of them.
The intention is to let the land do what it will with no planting etc. Everything growing has done so naturally. It is managed by ecologists and conservationists.
Without large predators of course the animals need to be culled in order to maintain a healthy population. Knepp has no appetite to see animals starve, nor suffer needlessly through birthing problems etc.
So whilst it may be desirable for re-wilding to take place without any management - let nature do it’s thing - in practice it won’t work in the type of lowland farm that we see here. A certain level of management is certainly desirable in the early years and ongoing in some areas. Knepp is not producing a wilderness but a viable and profitable use of land that puts back far, far more than it takes out, by re-wilding.
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