Just over a year ago, a friend and I took a trip to the Knepp rewilding project in West Sussex. The day we had planned it turned out to be a wet one but we packed waterproofs and set out anyway, hoping the weather would improve on the drive. It didn't and we were perpetually doing that thing where every time it slowed to a drizzle we would say hopefully 'oh, it's clearing up!' (This was wishful thinking, but we did get a couple of dry hours towards the end of our time at Knepp.) As if to capture the wild energy of a rewilding project we listened to Heilung on repeat the whole way.
Knepp isn't a tourist attraction and doesn't really have amenities, though you can walk the footpaths freely. Upon arrival we started one of the trails, as the grey rain fell. At the time I had only just started reading Isabella Tree's wonderful book Wilding, so I didn't know much of the science of the project while I was actually there, but I will say that on our rainy visit we saw more birds more easily than I have on nice dry days in some nature reserves. Birdwatching can sometimes feel like hard work, even in 'busy' times like migration season, because there are simply fewer birds than there should be for the size of our land. Birds that few non birdwatchers have heard of now would have been daily sightings for someone living in the countryside a couple of centuries ago, though they might have called them by a different name. Industrialisation of farming has been going on for so long now that few in living memory could tell us about the biodiversity we have lost, and if you transplanted someone from the 18th century countryside into a modern field, they would be horrified at how quiet it was. The lack of insects everywhere and the complete absence of familiar bird species, and tiny numbers of the ones that have stayed- to them the land would feel dead.
On the scrub that presumably used to be arable fields we watched a whitethroat songflighting from a telegraph wire, two male yellowhammers coming to blows in a territory dispute, a linnet pair and a family of garden warblers. Many times we heard cuckoos sing their sinister song, and suddenly one floated past, its long tail and slim wings making it look like a falcon. In Southern England it's now very difficult to hear a cuckoo without making a special trip, and even then you might not be lucky enough, so nowadays most people don't know how beautiful and strangely graceful this famous nest parasite is when you see it on the move.
Best of all, as we entered a sparsley wooded area, we heard the beautiful purring call of a turtle dove, hidden in a thicket. Knepp is famous for its success with turtle doves, which seems to have been quite unexpected even for the managers of the land. For me the loss of the turtle dove feels very near and dear, as it's the only bird species I can point to as having declined significantly in just my adult years. I'm 32 and about 10 years ago I would have been able to take you to a reliable turtle dove site not far from my home, but records have declined to the point that only a single singing bird was reported there in 2017, and since then there have been none. Maybe a few still come and go unspotted and unheard, but it's also entirely possible that there really are none left returning there, and that breaks my heart. Hearing the turtle dove again after all those years made me tear up.
The people who manage Knepp have spoken frankly and realistically about their doves- while they are doing well now, they may not be there forever. It is possible that, for a number of reasons, the turtle dove will become extinct as a breeding species in Britain in my lifetime and become a scarce passage migrant only, like the red backed shrike before it. It will live on in other countries (not that countries mean much to this beautiful migratory being), but not in ours. This is one reason Knepp has resisted being designated as a nature reserve or taking on any specific targets, and funding, related to turtle doves- they suspect the slow but steady decline of the turtle dove in Britain may be inevitable, and if they became locked into an agreement to conserve a certain number of breeding pairs at Knepp, managing the land for the doves would have to become their main goal. Rewilding is about an entire web of organisms, from the earthworms to the dung beetles to the fungi that only lives on oaks over a certain age, and the beautiful birds from cuckoo to turtle dove are the happy consequence of that.
Thinking of those near silent fields again, it's common for birdwatchers in this country to visit poorer countries in Eastern Europe and then write about the incredible diversity and abundance of bird life in the countryside, similarity in the species there making it feel so familiar and yet so alien, an ancestral memory of fields of crop before full industralisation in the UK. I try not to travel abroad for environmental reasons so I don't think I will ever see this for myself, but I can't help but think if the richer countries of Europe have enjoyed the convenience and availability of food that comes with industralised farming, poorer countries deserve it too. So who knows what the future holds for other countries, but for us here, books like Wilding create an image of hope- things don't have to be hopeless for our wildlife, and wild cycles tend to sort themselves out if left alone for long enough. Livestock at Knepp are thriving, the animals raising their young untouched by human hands for the majority of their lives, fulfilling their natural function as managers of the land. They instinctively avoid the ragwort for its bad smell and eat around it- the problem is when the poisonous plant is unwittingly disguised in human-made hay. Their number is controlled by careful culling- as an island where all our native top predators have been exterminated, the only alternative is to let animals slowly starve in lean years, which is something that received considerable bad press a few years ago in Dutch rewilding project Oostvaardersplassen. Now rewilding projects seem to agree that culling is best, and at Knepp they sell the meat.
That's just some of the impressions I took from the book Wilding by Isabella Tree, which I highly recommend, and from my visit last year. I hope to visit Knepp again this year, to try and see their purple emporers, a beautiful and hard to see butterfly whose season peaks in early July. Wish us luck for better weather!!
