Wilding: the return of nature to a British farm, by Isabella Tree

Author: Isabella Tree. Review by Simon Webb

The Durham Quaker book group turned out to be remarkably well-qualified to discuss Isabella Tree’s 2019 book Wilding, our choice for February 2021. The Quakers and others who attended via Zoom included two professional ecologists, at least four serious walkers, and a couple with an extensive city garden that they are already ‘wilding’. One of the ecologists was joining from Athens, and both were able to provide insights into conservation issues as they apply to Greece.

In her book, the suitably-surnamed Tree discusses the question of whether what she and her husband Charles Burrell have done to their Knepp estate should be called ‘wilding’, ‘re-wilding’, or perhaps something else. They began to take the estate, which has been in Charles’ family for generations, in a startling new direction around twenty years ago, when they realised that intensive farming on such intractable, clay soil was leaving them exhausted and in serious debt.

Intensive arable farming was also making their soil progressively worse, and had made their corner of rural West Sussex into a virtual no-go area for wildlife. After decades of hands-on hard graft, Isabella and Charlie had to learn to ‘sit on their hands’, an activity (or non-activity) that is mentioned frequently in Tree’s bestselling, award-winning book.

Despite practical set-backs, funding problems, bureaucratic tangles, scientific controversies, and serious criticism from some of the neighbours, nature has indeed returned to this British farm. Birds, invertebrates and wild mammals, some of which have not been spotted in the area for decades, have returned, or have appeared for the first time. As well as the fauna, the flora of the estate has now become astonishingly diverse, and a delicate balance between woodland and open country is maintained by the feeding habits of Knepp’s lightly-managed cattle, ponies and pigs.

Wilding has a strong historical aspect, and Tree presents new ideas about what our countryside looked like centuries ago, in an accessible and compelling style. Both of our Zooming ecologists had been taught that in early medieval times most of lowland Britain had been covered in primeval forest. This forest was dark, impenetrable and mysterious – or, as experts now describe it, it was a ‘closed canopy’ forest.

According to Tree, drawing on the latest scientific literature, the existence of wild or semi-wild cattle, wild boar and deer in this landscape would have prevented the trees covering everything. It is now thought that our ancient landscape was a mix of woods and more open spaces, like many parts of the New Forest today. This is what medieval people meant by the word ‘forest’, and they managed the landscape for hunting on horseback, which would have been difficult in dark, impenetrable woods. What they now have at Knepp is ‘wood pasture’: it is nice to think of George Fox striding imperturbably through such a landscape on his missionary travels.

After twenty years it is not just the flora and fauna of ‘wilded’ Knepp that have improved. The soil is much healthier and the relevant part of the River Adur is much purer. Charlie and Isabella would like to introduce beavers to manage the river for them, and their lack of large predators like wolves to keep down the numbers of deer, ponies and pigs means that these have to be culled from time to time. Isabella dreams of expanding the wild domain across miles of country to the sea at Brighton. Likewise, Durham Quakers, with our big garden, would like to include our neighbour’s garden in a wilding scheme. We spoke about the possibility of applying wilding principles to some steep, poor-quality land near Durham City.

Also at the book group session, our man in Athens was able to offer a perspective from a country that still has wolves and even bears in its wildernesses. These are not there because of a wilding or re-wilding scheme – they have always been there, since long before a baby called Oedipus was abandoned on a hillside.

A German perspective from a member of our group suggested that extensive closed-canopy woodlands might have existed in that country in the remote past, when, for instance, the locals wiped out a Roman legion in the Teutoburg Forest. A US forest was also used as a weapon against the early Quaker Elizabeth Hooton, who was marched for two days into the midst of a deep wood and left to starve, on the orders of the governor of Massachusetts. Elizabeth survived, even though she was over sixty at the time. 

Our other ecologist, based in Durham, talked about his experience of other re-wilding schemes such as the one at Ennerdale in the Lake District, and also mentioned some of the possible downsides of introducing a busy and unpredictable species like the beaver into an ecosystem. Both ecologists were able to question and qualify some of Isabella Tree’s assertions, for instance about the alleged poor nutritional content of some intensively-farmed foods, and the superior quality of meat from Knepp’s culled animals.

As a typical Quaker vegetarian, I am uneasy about the Knepp estate’s reliance on sales of meat products; but then a couple of years ago I did think about buying and eating cuts of venison from the nearby Raby Castle estate. The culling of deer, I thought then, is a price we pay for having these animals in the landscape. One thing I have learned from reading and discussing Wilding is that the culling is the price we (and the deer) pay for not tolerating wolves and other large predators in Britain.

Discussions of issues such as those raised by Tree’s book often lead us into scientific areas where few of us have any really comprehensive expertise. Even with two ecologists virtually present at the book group, I hesitated to raise the big question I need to ask about Wilding, which is simply ‘Can wilding schemes like the one at Knepp save us from the terrible consequences of climate change that we are already facing?’ I suspect that there can never be a straightforward answer to that question but, despite the difficulty and complexity of the issues, I had a strong sense that our most recent book group discussion was taking place against a background of deep and growing interest in such matters among Quakers, as well as our ecumenical and interfaith partners.

Several of the last ecumenical meetings I attended before Covid appeared were concerned with local churches’ efforts in this area, and Steve Aisthorpe’s 2020 book Rewilding the Church is attracting a lot of attention. On one of my routes into Durham City, I pass a ‘wilded’ Anglican churchyard, and in recent discussions centred on Quaker faith & practice the ecological aspects of that book have come to the fore. To many who would not even dream of attending a church or a Quaker Meeting, our natural environment is a mossy green door into something spiritual. The loss of that environment is a spiritual issue as well. Isabella Tree quotes tellingly from Isaiah 5:8 at the start of her seventh chapter: ‘Woe to you who add house to house and join field to field till no space is left and you live alone in the land’.

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