Isabella Tree
Wilding: Returning Nature to our Farm by Isabella Tree is the story of the Knepp experiment of returning a 3,500-acre Sussex farm back to nature.
The estate, inherited by Tree’s husband, Charlie Burrell, had been in his family for centuries. The land was intensively farmed until doing so no longer became economically viable. That is when Isabella and Charlie decided to adopt a non-interventionist policy to the land and allow nature to take its course. Much to their amazement, nature rebounded with a flourish. Slowly but surely, the land experienced an astonishing increase in diversity of plants and wildlife, including birds whose numbers had previously been on the decline. The experiment yielded new understandings of the habitats of species of animals and birds and proposed new approaches to conservation while challenging some long-held assumptions.
Tree charts the gradual and considered steps they took to re-wild their land. She describes local opposition to their experiment, even citing some community letters of complaint. She bemoans governmental bureaucracy that denied them financial support in a timely manner. But through it all, there is celebration. The land is now home to a veritable cornucopia of flora and fauna. Nightingales, turtle doves, peregrine falcons, and purple emperor butterflies have settled in to breed; rare water violets have popped up on their pond and purple orchids on their land.
Tree and her husband visited re-wilding areas across Europe and sought the advice of experts in the field. The work of environmentalists and conservationists are cited. Tree includes historical and geographical information on various species. Some of the passages are overly technical with descriptions that are, perhaps, more detailed than necessary. Once the experiment was underway, her repeated efforts to justify it became tedious. But in spite of these minor drawbacks, the book was inspirational and educational. The chapters on the return of the nightingale and the turtle dove to the English countryside were heart-warming. And the chapter explaining the capacity of nature-managed soil to trap carbon has significant ramifications for the alleviation of global warming.
Knepp farm illustrates the interconnectedness and interdependence of all living organisms where even something as lowly as the earth worm has a valuable role to play in soil restoration. Tree is at pains to argue the economic, environmental, physical, and mental health benefits to rewilding. She wants to rid us of our biases against the appearance of a nature allowed to roam freely. She makes an impassioned plea for thinking holistically about land and advocates building systems that work with nature instead of against it. Her arguments are compelling and must be taken seriously if we ever hope to reverse the deleterious impact of the impoverishment of our natural environment.
Highly recommended.