Knepp Wildland — 20+ Years of Rewilding a 1,400-Hectare Former Arable Farm (West Sussex, England)

Knepp Estate (West Sussex, c. 1,400 ha / 3,500 acres) ended intensive arable and dairy farming in 2000 and turned to free-roaming grazing by old English longhorn cattle, Exmoor ponies, Tamworth pigs and deer, letting scrub and wood-pasture regenerate. Early funding came from Countryside Stewardship (2001) and later Higher Level Environmental Stewardship (2010); the estate now also earns income from c. 75 tonnes a year of pasture-fed meat and wildlife tourism.
Reported outcomes: a breeding-bird survey of the southern block counted 55 individuals of 22 species in 2007 and 559 individuals of 51 species in 2025 (+916%); singing nightingales reached 62 in 2025 (9 in 1999); turtle doves rose from 2 singing males (2008) to 22 (2024); dragonflies and damselflies rose c. 870% (2005–2025); and the estate hosts one of the UK's largest purple emperor populations. A 2018 Cranfield University study reported soil organic carbon had doubled since rewilding.
Caveats: an Oxford-led 2024 study found that standard tree-carbon models (i-Tree Eco) are unsuitable for rewilded scrub, whose root:shoot ratio (1.07) far exceeds the model assumption (0.26), so carbon figures remain uncertain. A 2025 comparison with an agricultural baseline (Boothby Wildland) is a space-for-time study, not a controlled experiment, and some scholars question whether the commercial 'safari' model amounts to true rewilding. Much of the biodiversity data are estate-reported.

Read the full analysis: https://knepp.co.uk/rewilding/