Wilding - The Return of Nature to a British Farm

Isabella Tree is an award-winning author, travel writer, and owner of the the Knepp Wildland Project, together with her husband the conservationist Charlie Burrell. Forced to accept that the intensive farming of the heavy clay soils of their farm at Knepp in West Sussex was driving close to bankruptcy, in 2000 Isabella and Charlie took a spectacular leap of faith and handed their 3,500 acres back to nature. With minimal human intervention, and with herds of free roaming animals stimulating new habitats, their land is now heaving with life. Rare species such as turtle doves, peregrine falcons and purple emperor butterflies are now breeding at Knepp and biodiversity has rocketed. The Knepp project has become a leading light for conservation in the UK, demonstrating how letting nature take the driving seat can restore both the land and its wildlife in a dramatically short space of time, reversing the cataclysmic declines that have affected most species elsewhere in Britain over the past five decades. Part gripping memoir, part fascinating account of Britain's rural ecology, Wilding is, above all, an inspiring story of hope...