Land fit for a king
Just outside London, a ‘re-wilded’ estate rebuilds the English countryside as it once was
I’m in a six-wheeled vehicle, bumping across rough terrain, watching for wild animals. This is open low scrubland, interspersed by big messy thorn bushes. Ten of us sit silent, binoculars ready, scanning for longhorn cattle, red and fallow deer, wild horses and wild pigs. When we set out, a convoy of white storks, with blackbanded, long-fingered wings, wheeled slowly overhead.
We’re not in Africa, though. We’re in suburban Sussex, an hour from London. But this is ancient England, a landscape left to its own devices and roamed by large native herbivores.
Knepp Castle is a 3,500-acre estate that has been owned by the Burrell family for more than 220 years. They’ve always farmed it, despite the poor clay soil. But in 2000, the current owners, conservationist Charlie Burrell and his wife, the writer Isabella Tree, decided to make a radical change. They “re-wilded” Knepp, returning it to a state of minimal human intervention.
The landscape is now mostly under the stewardship of the animals; with their rooting, grazing and browsing habits, they determine what grows here. The plants –– grasses, wildflowers, shrubs and trees –– have erupted, spreading and rooting and seeding into their own wild systems, creating a complex habitat for scores of species. The results have been unplanned, disorderly and miraculous.
Rescuing a legacy
I’m here for a “Re-Wilding Safari,” which will teach me how to do this. It’s not because I plan to repurpose my own modest acres, but because I couldn’t get into a regular safari: Knepp is hot, and all the tours are booked solid.
We bump to a stop in a field. On the far side stand three gigantic animals — a cow and calf and, a bit further, a bull — Old English Longhorns. The cow and calf are smudgy gray and white, and her great pale horns curve backward, as though blown by the wind. The bull is chocolate, clouded with white, as though someone spilled flour on him. His horns are shorter and curve down.
They watch us. The cow stands sideways, shielding her calf, but the bull faces us, head raised, challenging, on guard. They keep what Burrell calls a decent “flight distance,” which makes them feel safe. When I look back later the cow and her calf have melted into the woods, but the bull is still on duty. When I look again, he has vanished.
These cattle have their own lives. There are no barns, no mangers, no food tubs or milking parlors. No shots or growth hormones. They don’t need us. This makes them more interesting.
That morning, we gathered in an old half-timbered barn. (Knepp dates to the 12th century: King John hunted deer here, and so did Henry VIII.) We settled in with coffee and pastries to hear Charlie Burrell tell his story.
He is in his early 50s, sturdy, rumpled and cheerful, with brown eyes and curly hair. He and his wife took over Knepp in 1987, farming it according to the most modern techniques, with the best machinery and the strongest chemical fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides. Every year, they lost money. Knepp was headed for the brink.
They noticed something else, too. Knepp was famous for its ancient oaks, which seemed to be faltering. An oak expert was called in, who explained that plowing was destroying the essential network of fungus that connected the trees underground. Chemical fertilizers were killing off other organisms essential to the oaks, as well. It seemed that, besides pointing them toward bankruptcy, farming was destroying the very symbol of Knepp. Burrell and Tree decided on a big change. Their oaks led the way.
Learning from the trees
The conventional theory held that England was a “closed-canopy” forest before humans arrived and cut down the trees. But the theory was contradicted by ancient oaks such as the ones at Knepp; they aren’t a forest species, but an open grassland species. How had an open landscape existed before humans arrived? Dutch naturalist Frans Vera theorized that big grazing animals would disrupt a forest system and create an open woodscape. Burrell and Tree embraced Vera’s idea.
They established a scientific advisory board for the property, put up high perimeter fences and began letting the land go feral. Thorn, scrub and sallow (a kind of willow) began spreading, and big animals were brought in to compete with the plants. Knepp doesn’t have all of Britain’s original breeds, but it has some of their descendants and proxies.
The mighty aurochs (prehistoric oxen) are extinct, but they’re represented by old English Longhorn cattle. The Exmoor pony is an ancient indigenous breed, and red, roe and fallow deer have long histories in England. Instead of wild boar, Knepp has an old English pig, the tall and rustcolored Tamworth.
All these animals do different things: grazing, browsing, trampling, rooting, fertilizing and seeding. They keep the forest from springing up. And the plants fight back. Oaks, for example, have their own avian allies, the jays. The birds bury acorns under thornbushes, where the seeds produce oak saplings. The spiky thornbush, nature’s barbed wire, provides protection until the sapling has stretched higher than the browse line. So each big messy thornbush is a live