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The Knepp Wilding Podcast

<p>Join Knepp co-owner Isabella Tree and experience some of the wildlife wonders encountered, the secrets uncovered and the remarkable people who are part of the Knepp Wilding project.</p>

Knepp.co.uk

Derek Gow is one of the UK’s most ardent and proactive reintroduction specialists. The Guardian calls him ‘the guerrilla rewilder’. Join his impassioned conversation with Isabella Tree as they discuss the possibilities of restoring bison to Britain, and how these ‘creators of disturbance’ might impact landscapes, people and their dogs. Knepp is still hoping to have bison one day – but what will it take to get them here?Isabella Tree is co-owner of Knepp and the award-winning author of ‘Wilding’, which was made into a major film in 2024. The award-winning film ‘Derek vs Derek’, featuring Derek Gow locking antlers with his farming neighbour Derek Banbury, is released in UK cinemas this month. Send us a message or leave a commentFind out more about Knepp on our website and why not follow us on Instagram?

Bringing Back the Bison

Join Isabella Tree and butterfly man Neil Hulme as they anticipate the exciting reintroduction of the black-veined white – a butterfly that went extinct in Britain a hundred years ago. Standing in front of the cages at Knepp where butterflies recently imported from Spain have laid their eggs, Neil is like an anxious midwife. Will the caterpillars survive the winter and the various predators insinuating themselves through the netting? How many butterflies will emerge in spring for their release on the South Downs next year? Isabella Tree is co-founder of Knepp rewilding project and award-winning author of ‘Wilding’, which was made into a film in 2024. Send us a message or leave a commentFind out more about Knepp on our website and why not follow us on Instagram?

The Return of the Black-veined White

Isabella Tree catches up with Carl Sayer, Professor of Limnology & Freshwater Ecology at University College London - aka the Eel Man - as he prepares for this year’s survey of Knepp’s eels. Once bountiful in the UK, eels have all but disappeared from most water systems, impacted by overfishing and obstructive dams and weirs that prevent their migration. Carl has loved eels since he discovered them as a boy and relishes the mystery that still surrounds their adventurous lifecycle. Happily, his surveying at Knepp provides grounds for optimism and giggles all round for his students attempting to measure and weigh the slippery customers.Isabella Tree co-founded the Knepp rewilding project with her husband, Charlie Burrell. She is the award-winning author of ‘Wilding’, which was made into a major motion picture in 2024.  Send us a message or leave a commentFind out more about Knepp on our website and why not follow us on Instagram?

Slippery Slope: The Secret Life of Eels

Meet Reuben Martin, a seventeen-year-old herpetologist who has been monitoring Knepp’s snakes and lizards with his father Tim. Reuben’s ability to read a landscape and know where snakes and lizards lurk is extraordinary. He is passionate about communicating the wonders of these secretive creatures to those of us who may be a little less certain of their charms. Learn about the habitat that keeps snakes and lizards safe, and how we can improve conditions for them in our landscapes and gardens.Isabella Tree co-founded the Knepp rewilding project with her husband, Charlie Burrell. She is the award-winning author of 'Wilding', which was made into a major motion picture in 2024.Send us a message or leave a commentFind out more about Knepp on our website and why not follow us on Instagram?

Snakes and lizards

Compared to other insects, bees are pretty hopeless pollinators. Flies, on the other hand, can pollinate plants and kill your aphids. Join Isabella Tree as she finds out what gets Erica McAlister, Principal Curator at the Natural History Museum and bug-crazy fly afficionada, really excited about the hidden life in wilder gardens. And pick up some simple tips to encourage the best pollinators, predators, soil fertilisers and decomposers in your garden.Isabella Tree co-founded the Knepp rewilding project with her husband, Charlie Burrell. She is an award-winning author, including of the best-selling book, Wilding: the return of nature to a British farm, which was made into a major motion picture in 2024.Send us a message or leave a commentFind out more about Knepp on our website and why not follow us on Instagram?

Bug Life Garden

For many people, rewilding is a one-trick pony – it’s great for restoring nature and wildlife, but does it do anything for climate change?In this episode, Isabella asks her daughter Nancy Burrell about her doctorate research at Knepp and the astonishing findings that are changing how rewilding is valued as a mechanism for storing carbon.Join them as they wander through the scrubland at Knepp, visiting the sites where Nancy and her team excavated 270 trees, roots and all, to measure how much carbon they contained – a massive undertaking, producing the biggest dataset ever used for this kind of research. The browsing of our animals on hawthorn, blackthorn, dogrose, sallow and oak saplings, Nancy found, stimulates the growth of roots underground, as well as regrowth aboveground – storing 4x more carbon than was previously thought.This has huge implications for how projects that aim to capture carbon are funded in the future. Should we planting trees – the default mechanism currently used to fight climate change which, however, does not produce good results for wildlife and is often environmentally destructive? Or should we be encouraging the natural regeneration of trees and shrubs, with animals to browse them – rewilding projects, essentially – which captures huge amounts of carbon and provides wonderful habitat for wildlife at the same time?Isabella Tree co-founded the Knepp rewilding project with her husband, Charlie Burrell. She is an award-winning author, including of the best-selling book, Wilding: the return of nature to a British farm, which was made into a major motion picture in 2024.Send us a message or leave a commentFind out more about Knepp on our website and why not follow us on Instagram?

Graze Expectations – how Knepp’s animals capture carbon

Isabella Tree catches up with two of the White Stork Project volunteers, Tim Morgan and Rosemary Dewan, as they prepare food for the non-flying storks in the pen at Knepp. It’s a freezing day with slashing rain, typical of the weather the unflinching volunteers have had to face almost every day this winter. The project relies on around 25 stork-feeding and 30 stork-monitoring volunteers – out in the wildlands of Knepp come rain or shine. Their purpose – to help establish and observe the first breeding white stork colony in Britain for over 600 years.Begun in 2016 and with 25 nests at Knepp to date, the stork reintroduction is proving an astonishing success. With Tim in charge of data crunching, the project - partnered by Cotswold Wildlife Park, Wadhurst Estate and the Roy Dennis Wildlife Foundation - is uncovering new insights into stork behaviour. This year is already throwing up surprises, with the unfolding drama of the pair of storks who have reliably brought up chicks under the eye of the live webcam for the past three years. The male, Bartek, has forsaken his partner Ania and hooked up with a new mate, busting the myth that storks make faithful, lifelong pairs. With the webcam now live on the White Stork Project website, tens of thousands of viewers around the world will be able to watch the mating, egg-laying, chick-rearing and fledging of this year’s storks.Isabella Tree co-founded the Knepp rewilding project with her husband, Charlie Burrell. She is an award-winning author, including of the best-selling book, Wilding: the return of nature to a British farm, which was made into a major motion picture in 2024.Send us a message or leave a commentFind out more about Knepp on our website and why not follow us on Instagram?

Look Who’s Storking Too!

Isabella’s guest is Harriet Rix, the Indiana Jones of tree science. She’s chased down rare trees in some of the remotest, wildest places in the world, and in the UK she’s worked for DEFRA, researching tree diseases and strategies for trees in cities. Her latest book The Genius of Trees explains how trees have influenced, even controlled, life on our planet.Wandering through the ancient oaks and young saplings of Knepp’s scrubland, Harriet opens up a perspective of millions of years of tree evolution. Far from being static and vulnerable, as we tend to think of them, trees are resilient survivors, agents of their own destiny – and quite possibly ours. Harriet explains the secrets of genetic diversity and how, by encouraging natural regeneration as we do at Knepp, we can help trees adapt to climate change and resist disease. She shares extraordinary insights, including that the English oak, our country’s pride and joy, is originally American.Isabella Tree co-founded the Knepp rewilding project with her husband, Charlie Burrell. She is an award-winning author, including of the best-selling book, Wilding: the return of nature to a British farm, which was made into a major motion picture in 2024.Send us a message or leave a commentFind out more about Knepp on our website and why not follow us on Instagram?

Talking Trees

Not according to Mark Elliot, beaver expert and Isabella Tree’s latest podcast guest. Licensed beaver pens – designed by Government as the first stage to wider release over three years ago – are beginning to fail. Beavers, including those installed in a six-acre pen at Knepp, have begun burrowing out of their watery prisons. As Isabella leads Mark through the incredible new wetlands created by Knepp’s AWOL beavers, he describes the importance of beavers in flood defence, neutralising water pollution, storing carbon and restoring biodiversity.But with the Government reluctant to come up with a workable Beaver Management Plan, some farmers and land managers are nervous about the prospect of these furry water engineers turning up on their land. Meanwhile, frustrated by government inaction, ‘beaver bombers’ have been illegally releasing beavers into rivers up and down the country. The beavers are already colonising England after an absence of over 400 years – but can we learn to live with them again? Where will the funding for troubleshooting beaver-human conflicts come from? Mark shares his experience leading the landmark River Otter trial and gives some fascinating insights into how communities – including farmers – can find solutions and enjoy a world where these incredible creatures once again live free.Isabella Tree co-founded the Knepp rewilding project with her husband, Charlie Burrell. She is an award-winning author, including of the best-selling book, Wilding: the return of nature to a British farm, which was made into a major motion picture in 2024.This podcast is produced by The Podcast Coach.Send us a message or leave a commentFind out more about Knepp on our website and why not follow us on Instagram?

Is England Beaver Ready?

This time we are absolutely delighted to welcome Tony Juniper to the Knepp Wilding Podcast. Tony is well-known to us here at Knepp. A massive supporter of rewilding and an important figure in the conservation world, Tony is currently serving as the Chair of Natural England. In this stimulating conversation, Tony tackles the deepest issues behind our inability to act with the pace and scale needed to address the emergencies of climate change and nature decline. He confronts the idea that economic growth and nature recovery are opposing forces - stressing that ￼if we want a resilient economy into the future, we must restore nature.We also discuss his profound new book, Just Earth, which argues that environmental recovery is inextricably linked with achieving human happiness, economic fairness and social cohesion. Tony says that to achieve this long-term change, we need to heal the massive disconnection between people and the natural world. He sees Knepp as a ￼"real beacon of hope" and a practical demonstration of what can be done.Isabella Tree co-founded the Knepp rewilding project with her husband, Charlie Burrell. She is an award-winning author, including of the best-selling book, Wilding: the return of nature to a British farm, which was made into a major motion picture in 2024.This podcast is produced by The Podcast Coach.Send us a message or leave a commentFind out more about Knepp on our website and why not follow us on Instagram?

Headwinds and hope: Tony Juniper on Why Nature Restoration is a Path to Economic Growth

Geetie and Guy Singh-Watson are powerhouses of the organic and regenerative food and farming movement. They’re the inspiration behind the Knepp Wilding Kitchen and Market Garden. In this month’s podcast with Isabella Tree, Geetie and Guy vent their frustration with supermarkets, industrial farming, restaurant supply chains and lack of accountability. They explain the thinking behind Riverford Organic Farmers and Geetie’s rigorously ethical pub, The Bull Inn in Totnes - where Isabella’s son Ned Burrell, Executive Chef at the Knepp Wilding Kitchen, began his restaurant career. They may not agree with the landownership of Knepp or want to dive into rewilding themselves but they admit a little bit of Knepp’s magic has rubbed off on them.Isabella Tree co-founded the Knepp rewilding project with her husband, Charlie Burrell. She is an award-winning author, including of the best-selling book, Wilding: the return of nature to a British farm, which was made into a major motion picture in 2024.This podcast is produced by The Podcast Coach.Send us a message or leave a commentFind out more about Knepp on our website and why not follow us on Instagram?

Rebelling with Integrity: Geetie & Guy Singh-Watson on Food, Farming, and Fairness

In this very special episode Penny Green officially hands the host’s mic to Isabella Tree.Penny has been behind the Knepp podcast since it launched in 2020 and has been Knepp’s ecologist for a decade. She's moving on for pastures new (in fact, just down the road to the Wiston Estate). In this warm and poignant episode, Isabella asks Penny to take her to the corners of Knepp’s Wildland which meant the most to her over the years. Together they recall the peaks and troughs of her time at Knepp, including capturing fugitive beavers and how nightingale song in lockdown – ringing out without anyone to hear it - inspired the very first episode of the podcast.Isabella Tree co-founded the Knepp rewilding project with her husband, Charlie Burrell. She is an award-winning author, including of the best-selling book, Wilding: the return of nature to a British farm, which was made into a major motion picture in 2024.This podcast is produced by The Podcast Coach.Send us a message or leave a commentFind out more about Knepp on our website and why not follow us on Instagram?

Penny’s farewell - fond memories of runaway beavers and sloe carpets

In Owl Quiet on the Nesting Front, Penny Green interviews Matt Phelps, Knepp’s lead ecologist. They’re out on the Wildland checking 22 owl boxes. In this episode, they discuss barn owls’ silent grace and striking beauty… as well as how much people love to investigate their pellets to discover what the owls have had for breakfast!It’s a quiet year for owl breeding. Last autumn’s poor acorn yield spelled tough times for the small mammals who feed on them. That’s translated into a challenging year for owls. But this resilient species will bounce back.Send us a message or leave a commentFind out more about Knepp on our website and why not follow us on Instagram?

Owl Quiet on the Nesting Front

It’s been a bumper summer for ragwort, the plant folks love to hate. In this month’s Knepp Wilding Podcast, Isabella Tree unearths the truth about this spectacular native wildflower with ragwort specialist, Mick Crawley. Is it a toxic killer or a bountiful source of life? And what happens when you pull it up? Could trying to eradicate it actually be helping the plant to proliferate?The Knepp Wilding Podcast is generously supported by Ecosia – the search engine that plants trees and restores nature. All of us at Knepp are now changing our default search engine to Ecosia – and I do recommend you do too. You can help restore the planet from your desk! Find out more at www.ecosia.orgSend us a message or leave a commentFind out more about Knepp on our website and why not follow us on Instagram?

The Plant People Love to Hate

Join Knepp’s Isabella Tree and an over-excited Matthew Oates, the purple emperor’s No 1 devotee, to celebrate a bonanza year for this rare, beautiful and thuggish butterfly. Numbers at Knepp have broken all records and Matthew takes us to three of the emperor’s favourite haunts in the hope of catching a last glimpse of His Imperial Highness as the flight season draws to a close.Matthew explains why this has been the butterfly year of his life and his hopes for the future as habitat for the purple emperor and others begins to improve in Britain.Send us a message or leave a commentFind out more about Knepp on our website and why not follow us on Instagram?

A Bonanza Year for Purple Emperors

It’s an early morning start for episode 38, as we meet with wonderful grower Rosanna before the heat of the day kicks in, and before she and the rest of the team get to work on the day’s harvest. We talk about the incredible transformation of a three-acre pony paddock to a bountiful market garden, producing delicious seasonal veg for the Knepp Wilding Kitchen and Shop. We consider their regenerative approaches to growing, everything from encouraging good soil health to keeping living roots in the soil and attracting pollinators through to natural predators. We touch on the importance of watching and learning from the nature around us, and we hear about some of the grower team’s aspirations for the future.We marvel at Rosanna’s carrots (a proud moment) and take in the beauty and scale of the tomato tunnel. Rosanna’s enthusiasm and love for growing is so infectious you’ll be inspired to get growing yourself.Send us a message or leave a commentFind out more about Knepp on our website and why not follow us on Instagram?

A Wild Way to Grow

Join us on a beautiful June evening for episode 36 of the Knepp Wildland Podcast. We’re joined by Knepp’s lead ecologist, Matt Phelps, deep in the scrubland to learn all about one of the jewels in Knepp’s crown…the rare and beautiful Turtle Dove.We talk about migration, how they’re doing in Europe following a recent hunting ban, what we’re learning about them at Knepp and the features they need in a landscape to successfully nest. We end this episode by touching on what the future holds for this pretty, shy bird and a moment to enjoy the soft purring song to send us on our way.Send us a message or leave a commentFind out more about Knepp on our website and why not follow us on Instagram?

The Dove From Above

Buckle yourselves in for episode 35 of the Knepp Wildland Podcast with the vivacious Erica McAlister, Principle Curator for Diptera and Siphonaptera (that's flies and fleas to you) at the London Natural History Museum. Erica has made it her life’s work to make flies cool - her enthusiasm has inspired so many people to love and value flies during her career. Erica teaches us a lot of new things about flies: we talk about twerking flies, egg-bombing flies, migratory flies, cheesey flies, desiccating flies, cryofreezing flies, and most importantly…how we wouldn’t have chocolate without flies. Fly sample collections being made by Erica at Knepp Wildland through malaise trapping are providing some fascinating data through genome sequencing.This episode may leave you with more questions that answers but you will certainly have some fun facts to share with your friends, and a new respect for flies.Send us a message or leave a commentFind out more about Knepp on our website and why not follow us on Instagram?

Queen of the Flies

It’s episode 34 of the Knepp Wildland Podcast and we return to the White Stork Project, five years on, to hear the latest news with White Stork Project Manager, Laura Vaughan-Hirsch.We tune in to the live stork nest camera to check in on Ania and Bartek, a breeding pair bonded since 2020. We talk about this year’s nests and meet up with long-serving volunteer Silla to hear about what she does for the project and what the project means to her. We have a wander around the pen to visit some of the rehabilitated storks’ ingenious ground nests and Laura brings us up to speed on all the exciting news including the first successful return of a migrant bird and an announcement about the forthcoming inaugural Storrington White Stork and Nature Revival Festival, coming up in May 2025.Send us a message or leave a commentFind out more about Knepp on our website and why not follow us on Instagram?

The Return of the Stork

In episode 33 of the Knepp Wildland Podcast we meet Knepp’s brilliant new Lead Ecologist, Matt Phelps. We chat about the exciting news, released just a few hours before, of wild release licencing for beavers and how this might affect the Knepp beaver family. We discuss the abundance of Hawfinch here over the winter and speculate what opportunities are made available to them by the habitat that's emerged from the rewilding here at Knepp. As spring approaches, we talk about ongoing and upcoming surveys and how this has got Matt eager and ready to leap into the season ahead.Send us a message or leave a commentFind out more about Knepp on our website and why not follow us on Instagram?

Dam Good News for Beavers!

It's episode 32 and we’re joined by Tom Burns, Knepp’s marvellous ranger and woodsman.We learn what Tom gets up to in his daily work at the Knepp Rewilding Project - everything from managing the huge team of fab volunteers to managing the public rights of way across the estate. Not to mention collecting stork nesting materials from the coppice! We spend most of our time, however, discussing Tom's main passion and that is trees - ancient and veteran ones in particular, and why Knepp is so special for these old giants. Send us a message or leave a commentFind out more about Knepp on our website and why not follow us on Instagram?

Ground Control to Ranger Tom

Episode 31 is a short n’ sweet one which sees the return of Dr Matt Wainhouse to Knepp, in his exciting role as Natural England’s Fungi and Lichen Senior Specialist. We’re also joined by Tom Burns, Knepp’s fantastic ranger and woodsman.We catch up with Matt about the findings from his tree-coring project at Knepp back in 2021 (check out episode 14) and also learn about a new project that he’s trialling at the moment.  We join Matt whilst he’s fitting some curious wooden boxes to some of our oaks. The boxes have been filled with sawdust that’s inoculated with different rot fungi to provide a rot-hole habitat to lure in saproxylic (deadwood) insects – these are some of our rarest insects. The contents will be sampled in the autumn and DNA analysis will show what’s been utilising the boxes.Send us a message or leave a commentFind out more about Knepp on our website and why not follow us on Instagram?

The Inoculated Boxes

It's episode 30 so it's time for a beaver project update! We’re joined again by national beaver specialist, and all-round good egg, Mark Elliott.We talk about the progress of the Knepp beaver enclosure and its hard-working inhabitants, and what they've been up to since our last beaver podcast back in November 2022. Following a very wet winter and spring the robust beaver dams are holding up well and are helping to store a huge amount of water, slowing the flow in heavy rainfall events.We explore what's happening nationally and the big decisions that need to be made as enclosed beaver families across the country are expanding.Send us a message or leave a commentFind out more about Knepp on our website and why not follow us on Instagram?

The Beavers Revisited

It’s Episode 29 and we’re in the beaver pen with a gaggle of delightful artists who help us draw a different perspective on rewilding. Led by the inimitable James Ort this collective is bringing rewilding to life through different mediums – clay and metal, watercolour, pencil and oil, freestyle stitching, printmaking, needlefelt and environmental art. Hearing from these artists about their work, and how art in the field can heighten one’s observation of nature, is inspiring. Make sure you get along to see their wonderful work, or join in on one of their workshops, at our forthcoming ‘Inspired by Knepp’ art exhibition during May 2024: www.knepp.co.uk/art Send us a message or leave a commentFind out more about Knepp on our website and why not follow us on Instagram?

The Artists

Episode 28 of the Knepp Wildland Podcast transports us far away from Knepp and into the beautifully rugged landscape of Asturias in Spain. We’re visiting stunning Wild Finca to meet a family, inspired by Knepp, making a big change on their 13-hectare landholding. They’re using local herbivore breeds, Asturcon horses and Casina cattle, to create a wildlife oasis and a place where people can be inspired to make positive changes for nature. We talk to Luke Massey about his exciting vision for this landscape, delving in to farming subsidies, wolves and education with a backdrop of croaking Nightingales, chirping crickets and the shrill call of the Black Woodpecker. Send us a message or leave a commentFind out more about Knepp on our website and why not follow us on Instagram?

Wild Finca

Episode 27 finds us in the field with Rosie Moss from the wonderful Newt Conservation Partnership and Shaun Hancox, digger-driver extraordinaire! The Partnership have been harnessing funds from developers through the NatureSpace District Licensing Scheme to create high quality habitat for Great Crested Newt, and a whole host of other wetland species. We’re delighted to have recently had 12 impressive new ponds dug at Knepp through this scheme.Tune in to hear about the new ponds at Knepp and the importance of ponds in our landscape, and to find out more about this crucial drive for the creation of more ponds. Large or small, and in their varying degrees of succession, ponds provide an essential habitat for both wildlife to thrive in and for us to enjoy!Send us a message or leave a commentFind out more about Knepp on our website and why not follow us on Instagram?

The Ponds

Episode 26 of the Knepp Wildland Podcast takes us on the trail of Micromys minutus, the Harvest Mouse, with fellow mammal appreciators Ryan Greaves and Laurie Jackson.Weighing in at just six grammes this tiny Biodiversity Action Plan species seems to be in good numbers at Knepp, mostly concentrated in the habitats around the wetland areas. We talk about how to find their nests, what they feed on and their speedy life cycle. Join us as we set some traps at dusk and find out what we catch!Send us a message or leave a commentFind out more about Knepp on our website and why not follow us on Instagram?

The Harvest Mouse

Join us on episode 25 where we learn about a ground-breaking microclimate project with Assistant Professor Rebecca Senior and PhD student Cameron Goodhead from Durham University.They’re here at Knepp to investigate the microclimates provided by the complex structure of vegetation that has emerged through rewilding. A variety of remote data-loggers will be deployed in different vegetation structures and, combined with drone footage, LiDAR data and thermal images, will help to collect evidence to support nature-based solutions for climate change.Send us a message or leave a commentFind out more about Knepp on our website and why not follow us on Instagram?

The Microclimate

It’s Episode 24 and I’m joined by the brilliant artist, Hazel Reeves, to hear how she has been inspired by the Knepp soundscape to extend her artistic practice beyond her studio. Hours before many of our alarms go off Hazel can be found sitting quietly in the Knepp Wildland taking sound recordings of the dawn chorus and one of her favourite birds in particular: the Nightingale. We talk about aberrant Nightingale songs, the joy of clattering White Stork bills and how soundscape ecology can give us hope as we hear how the health of a landscape can be detected through the richness of sound.Send us a message or leave a commentFind out more about Knepp on our website and why not follow us on Instagram?

The Soundscape

To celebrate 10,000 downloads of our first ever episode, The Nightingale, I'm delighted to be able to offer you a bite-size version of it!It seems apt to be able to release this at this time of year as the Nightingale is back at Knepp in brilliant numbers and is singing away in the scrubland. Many thanks indeed go to Rob Burns for distilling the magical essence of the Nightingale in to a short podcast. Enjoy!Send us a message or leave a commentFind out more about Knepp on our website and why not follow us on Instagram?

The Nightingale Bite-size

It’s episode 23 and we are taking a blustery walk with some fascinating researchers from Oxford Archaeology and Historic England… we are stepping back in time! We discuss an innovative and collaborative research project called ‘Rewilding Later Prehistory’ exploring Bronze Age and Iron Age ecology from around 4,500yrs ago to 2,000yrs ago. Where the focus of this period is usually based around human progress, this project aims to discover more about the wildlife that would have been found in our landscape around this time. From this research the hope is that we can use archaeology to link in with current nature recovery practices – thinking about restoring landscapes and bringing back lost species.Send us a message or leave a commentFind out more about Knepp on our website and why not follow us on Instagram?

The Archaeologists

It’s a wet and wild episode 22! We’re joined by national beaver specialist, Mark Elliott, down in the Knepp beaver pen after a night of heavy rain. We marvel at the amazing work of the beavers - how they’re creating the most wonderful wetland area that’s holding on to water during winter floods and providing an oasis for life during droughts. We tap into Mark’s encyclopaedic knowledge of the natural history of beavers in Britain: why they became extinct, how they’re making an incredible come-back and the amazing benefits they bring to wildlife and us humans too. Send us a message or leave a commentFind out more about Knepp on our website and why not follow us on Instagram?

The Beavers

Episode 21 finds us at an uplifting event surrounded by a hundred young people: a youth rewilding summit held at Knepp in September in collaboration with Heal Rewilding and Young Wilders. The event was created by young people to connect and inspire other young people with a passion for rewilding, and to give the next generation of rewilders a platform and an opportunity to drive change. Join us to hear more about the day from the brilliant people who organised it, and some of the enthusiastic bunch who came along for the day.Send us a message or leave a commentFind out more about Knepp on our website and why not follow us on Instagram?

The Youth Rewilding Summit

Episode 20 takes us on an early morning mission to catch a Cuckoo or two with the brilliant Lee Barber, from the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO). With a special net configuration and lure set up to entice the birds in, we waited like coiled springs to jump in to action if we saw one come into the nets. Tune in to hear if we were successful (we may have struck lucky otherwise this would have been a very short podcast!) and to learn more about this African migrant’s story, and why satellite tagging contributes to integral research to learn more about why these long-distance migrants are facing difficulty on their journeys.Send us a message or leave a commentFind out more about Knepp on our website and why not follow us on Instagram?

The Cuckoo

Episode 19 finds us in a newly rewilded location at Knepp – the garden! Charlie Harpur, Suzi Turner and Moy Fierheller are our keystone species, or garden team, in the 1.3-acre Victorian walled garden and have kick-started natural processes to make the garden more sustainable and buzz with biodiversity. We talk about how this horticultural experiment is challenging traditional gardening and how we can all do something to rewild our gardens and window boxes too.Send us a message or leave a commentFind out more about Knepp on our website and why not follow us on Instagram?

The Rewilded Garden

It’s episode 18 so it’s about time we go underground, delving well below the surface to unearth the life cycle of a rather brilliant ecosystem engineer: the earthworm. We join a survey session at Knepp with four brilliant scientists: Emma Sherlock from the Natural History Museum, Inez Januszczak and Chris Fletcher from the Darwin Tree of Life Project, and Keiron Brown from the Field Studies Council. They teach us about the different groups, or eco-types, of worms; how they recover in rewilded landscapes; and how they are quite picky when on the look-out for a mate. Send us a message or leave a commentFind out more about Knepp on our website and why not follow us on Instagram?

The Earthworm

Episode 17 takes me and my brilliant team-mate, Ivan de Klee, outside of the Knepp Estate boundaries. Ivan is our rainbow chaser and helps us imagine what a wilder landscape might look like as we explore the idea of the Weald to Waves corridor. We talk about how such collaborative landscape scale projects, and new rewilding projects, could be funded by new agri-environment schemes, biodiversity net gain and carbon sequestration – and how these markets might work. Ivan explains what natural capital is and how rewarding landowners for ecosystem services, such a biodiversity and soil restoration, could pave the future for nature conservation in the UK. Send us a message or leave a commentFind out more about Knepp on our website and why not follow us on Instagram?

The Rainbow Chaser

Isabella Tree is joint owner of Knepp, and author of the best-seller Wilding book, and has been a long-awaited guest on the podcast. In episode 16 Issy and I go for a lovely wintery walk and chinwag in the scrubland, where we talk about the importance of scrub for wildlife. We explore many facets of the scrub, including the influence of the large herbivores, ‘Vera’ oak saplings, the role of the Jay and what the Knepp landscape might look like in the future. The hot topic of tree-planting comes up, as does the local development that’s been proposed on Knepp’s neighbouring land.Send us a message or leave a commentFind out more about Knepp on our website and why not follow us on Instagram?

The Scrubland with Isabella Tree

It’s episode 15 and we’re exploring a different part of the Knepp Estate! Join me as I find out more about our new regenerative farm from farm manager Russ Carrington. We visit the grazing herd of Sussex cattle, learn about mob-grazing and NoFence collars, and talk about the plans for this exciting new venture, sitting alongside the Knepp Rewilding Project. Send us a message or leave a commentFind out more about Knepp on our website and why not follow us on Instagram?

The Regenerative Farm

Join Matt Wainhouse, Geoff Liddell and myself for episode 14, as we take a deep dive in to one of Knepp’s magnificent oak trees. Matt is carrying out research on the heart-rot communities found in oak to get an idea of how communities of fungi assemble in living trees, and try to relate this to their function as ecosystem engineers. With the aid of a tree-corer, and Matt’s in-depth knowledge, we learn a lot more about what’s going on with fungi inside the tree, and not just from the fruiting bodies on the outside of the tree. Apologies for the mobile phone interference in the middle of the podcast.Send us a message or leave a commentFind out more about Knepp on our website and why not follow us on Instagram?

The Tree-corer

Episode 13 finds us at Knepp Wildland at dawn, which is a pretty early start in the middle of May! I’m joined by Sideshow Dave to find some of the star songsters of the Wildland. We listen out for our iconic bird species and enjoy listening to their songs, we talk about some of the successes of the scrub but also some of the bird species we are now missing from our landscape and what sounds they would have bought to the dawn chorus in the past.Send us a message or leave a commentFind out more about Knepp on our website and why not follow us on Instagram?

The Dawn Chorus

Episode 12 is a bonus episode with Matthew Oates, we take the opportunity to have a catch-up about the forthcoming Purple Emperor season, weird weather and what our summer butterfly season might look like!This podcast wouldn’t have been possible without the support of some very talented people so many thanks go to: Lia Brazier for the beautiful artwork, Mat Davidson for the wonderful music and the fantastic Ian Bunn for his patient editing skills. For more information about Matthew and his publications please take a look at his websiteFollow Matthew on Twitter @MatthewOates76Send us a message or leave a commentFind out more about Knepp on our website and why not follow us on Instagram?

The Purple Emperor Update

Episode 11 finds us on a bright spring day sitting by a stream with Matthew Oates. Matthew, a remarkable field naturalist and author, has spent his lockdown winter dreaming of springtime at Knepp and the first glimpse he might have of the exotic-looking orange-tip butterfly. We talk about this heart-lifting harbinger of spring, its life-cycle and foodplants, and why Matthew would pick the orange-tip over gramophone records as a desert island companion.This podcast wouldn’t have been possible without the support of some very talented people so many thanks go to: Lia Brazier for the beautiful artwork, Mat Davidson for the wonderful music and the fantastic Ian Bunn for his patient editing skills. Send us a message or leave a commentFind out more about Knepp on our website and why not follow us on Instagram?

The Orange-tip

Episode 10 finds us in the rewilding project at springtime during our old English longhorn cattle calving season, with Knepp’s splendid stockman, Patrick Toe. We discuss everything from habitat creation and animal behaviour to dung, cattle round-ups and animal health. And Pat’s desire for a big ship’s bell.Tune in on your usual podcast platform or via our website: https://knepp.co.uk/knepp-wildland-podcastHuge thanks go to Pat for taking time out of his busy calving season to talk to us about his beloved herds. This podcast wouldn’t have been possible without the support of some very talented people so many thanks go to: Lia Brazier for the beautiful artwork, Mat Davidson for the wonderful music and the fantastic Ian Bunn for his patient editing skills. And many thanks, as always, go to Sideshow Dave for his ideas, support and ongoing enthusiasm!Send us a message or leave a commentFind out more about Knepp on our website and why not follow us on Instagram?

The Stockman

Episode 9 brings us something a little bit different to usual as we meet an incredibly wild musician! Richard Durrant has drawn inspiration from Knepp and his love of nature to create his latest album ‘Rewilding’ which includes bird song recorded at Knepp. It all started with a duet between Richard, playing his 5,000-year-old bog oak guitar, and a nightingale in a Knepp hedgerow and has resulted in a beautiful album which celebrates the return of nature both above and below ground.Tune in on your usual podcast platform or via our website: https://knepp.co.uk/knepp-wildland-podcastThis podcast wouldn’t have been possible without the support of some very talented people so many thanks go to: Lia Brazier for the beautiful podcast artwork, Richard Durrant for his wonderful music (including the intro/outro music) and the fantastic Ian Bunn for his super editing skills.Send us a message or leave a commentFind out more about Knepp on our website and why not follow us on Instagram?

The Musician

It's Episode 8 and I’m joined by Side-show Dave! We go ringing at a noisy redwing roost in the Wildland scrub, and back at home we enjoy a glass of wine and reflect on some of the marvellous wildlife encounters we've had at Knepp in 2020. Tune in for a relaxing bit of blethering as we take stock of the crazy year that was 2020 and share how Knepp provided an oasis in our landscape for wildlife and people alike.Tune in on your usual podcast platform or via our website:https://knepp.co.uk/knepp-wildland-podcastThis podcast wouldn’t have been possible without the support of some very talented people so many thanks go to: Lia Brazier for the beautiful artwork, Mat Davidson for the wonderful music and the fantastic Ian Bunn for his super editing skills.Send us a message or leave a commentFind out more about Knepp on our website and why not follow us on Instagram?

The Lock-down Round-up

Episode 7 takes us back in time as we learn about fallow deer: what their ancestors would have looked like and how they would have behaved. We also enjoy some of the sounds that we hear at Knepp Wildland during present day, as we take a front row seat at the deer rut lek, a display ground where the bucks (males) show off their impressive bellowing and scenting to onlooking does (females). We watch the deer in the woodland through a thermal imaging camera to see what they’re really getting up to when we can’t see them..Many thanks to Mollie Mills for sharing her experience of paleobiology, Darren Rolfe for his knowledge about the Knepp fallow deer and to Sideshow Dave for his technical support and enthusiasm for exploring nature in unusual ways…This podcast wouldn’t have been possible without the support of some very talented people so many thanks go to: Lia Brazier for the beautiful artwork, Mat Davidson for the wonderful music and the fantastic Ian Bunn for his patient editing skills.Send us a message or leave a commentFind out more about Knepp on our website and why not follow us on Instagram?

The Fallow Deer

Our sixth episode is dedicated to some of the world’s most wonderful ecosystem engineers: dung beetles. As well as being funky little insects they punch well above their weight in the ecosystem services they provide. I join scarab fanatics Darren & Ceri Mann as they delve in to some Knepp dung, and chat to Rob Howe, a livestock vet who is working with farmers to promote healthy on-farm ecology through the power of dung beetles.To keep up to date with dung beetle news check out the British Scarabs websiteThis podcast wouldn’t have been possible without the support of some very talented people so many thanks go to: Lia Brazier for the beautiful artwork, Mat Davidson for the wonderful music and the fantastic Ian Bunn for his patient editing skills.Send us a message or leave a commentFind out more about Knepp on our website and why not follow us on Instagram?

The Dung Beetles

In episode 5 we meet the ebullient Matthew Oates to talk about the inebriated and hedonistic life of His Imperial Majesty, the purple emperor. We talk about the life cycle of this magnificent butterfly, what we’re learning about them at Knepp Wildland, and how to go about spotting one yourself. And most importantly we learn the origins of the not-so-ancient proverb “When tits are down, emperors are up!” Move over Confucius…If you liked hearing from Matthew on this podcast then you might be interested in reading some of his books, of note his most recent works In Pursuit of Butterflies and His Imperial MajestyThis podcast wouldn’t have been possible without the support of some very talented people so many thanks go to: Lia Brazier for the beautiful artwork, Mat Davidson for the wonderful music and the fantastic Ian Bunn for his patient editing skills.Send us a message or leave a commentFind out more about Knepp on our website and why not follow us on Instagram?

The Purple Emperor

During episode four we delve in to the intriguing lives of reptiles and learn more about these fascinating animals at Knepp Wildland. I'm joined by my good friend, Ryan Greaves, who shares some remarkable reptile facts and encounters, and we find out what we can do for these captivating creatures in our gardens and in the wider landscape.For more information about reptiles please check out the Amphibian & Reptile Conservation Trust.This podcast wouldn’t have been possible without the support of some very talented people so many thanks go to: Lia Brazier for the beautiful artwork, Mat Davidson for the wonderful music and the fantastic Ian Bunn for his patient editing skills.Send us a message or leave a commentFind out more about Knepp on our website and why not follow us on Instagram?

The Reptile Tins

In our third episode we investigate a fascinating research project being carried out at Knepp Wildland, which is studying the social behaviour of the orange-legged furrow bee Halictus rubicundus.Dr Rebecca Boulton from the University of Exeter gives us an insight in to the intriguing lives of these little sweat bees, including tales of cheeky mating and sneaky eggs. This podcast takes a few unexpected twists and turns, and shows how this ‘plastic’ species may be able to adapt as the climate changes.For more information about Becky and her studies you might like to follow her on Twitter @DrBecky_B and check out her wordpress page: https://drbeckyb.wordpress.com/publications/ or https://biosciences.exeter.ac.uk/staff/profile/index.php?web_id=Rebecca_Boulton. This podcast wouldn’t have been possible without the support of some very talented people so many thanks go to: Lia Brazier for the beautiful artwork, Mat Davidson for the wonderful music and the fantastic Ian Bunn for his patient editing skills.Send us a message or leave a commentFind out more about Knepp on our website and why not follow us on Instagram?

The Bee Buckets

In our second episode we explore the lives of the white storks nesting at Knepp Wildland which have featured on Springwatch this month.The white stork (Ciconia ciconia) is a large charismatic bird that is the focus of a project to re-establish a breeding population in the south-east of England. Charlie Burrell, Knepp landowner; Lucy Groves, White Stork project officer and Kirsty Richardson, stork volunteer, join us in this episode to share their enthusiasm for the project whilst we get up close to these beautiful birds on the nest and also in their enclosure.Enjoy the sound of the storks bill clattering and fly with us as we carry out a nest monitoring drone flight.For more information about the project please visit the white stork project website or follow on Twitter @projectstorkThis podcast wouldn’t have been possible without the support of some very talented people so many thanks go to: Lia Brazier for the beautiful artwork, Mat Davidson for the wonderful music and the fantastic Ian Bunn for his patient editing skills.Send us a message or leave a commentFind out more about Knepp on our website and why not follow us on Instagram?

The White Stork

Our inaugural episode celebrates the return of the nightingale to Knepp Wildland this spring.The nightingale (Luscinia megarhynchos) has seen an impressive increase in numbers at Knepp Wildland since the beginning of the rewilding project, and 2020 has been a bumper year (although we didn’t know this at the time of recording!) with somewhere in the region of 30 singing males in the southern block of the project.Sideshow Dave joins us on this episode as we talk about nightingales during our nocturnal and dawn surveys. We’re also fortunate enough to be joined by Tony Davis, lead bird ringer and nest-finding guru at Knepp to talk about the importance of finding and monitoring the nests of this elusive species.We end with the most wonderfully pure nightingale solo from beneath a full moon.This podcast wouldn’t have been possible without the support of some very talented people who have kindly given their time and exceptional talent to help get this from egg to fledgling! Many thanks go to: Lia Brazier for the beautiful artwork, Mat Davidson for the wonderful music and Ian Bunn for his patient editing skills.Send us a message or leave a commentFind out more about Knepp on our website and why not follow us on Instagram?