The Value of the Land: Wilding Author Isabella Tree

Published: Aug. 5, 2019, 4:24 p.m.

b"Isabella Tree is an award-winning travel writer and author and married to the conservationist Sir Charles Burrell. She will be in conversation with Catherine St Germans, journalist and co-founder of Port Eliot Festival, about her latest book \\u2018Wilding\\u2019, which tells the amazing story of the couple's daring wildlife experiment: the rewilding of Knepp Estate in West Sussex.\\n\\nForced to accept that intensive farming on the heavy Sussex clay was economically ruinous, they decided to step back and let nature take over. By introducing free-roaming herbivores \\u2014proxies of the large animals that once roamed Britain\\u2014 the Burrells\\u2019 degraded agricultural land has become a functioning ecosystem again. \\n\\nIn less than 20 years wildlife has rocketed and numerous endangered species have made Knepp their home. The Knepp experience challenges conventional ideas about our past and present landscape, and points the way to a wilder, richer future\\u2014a countryside that benefits farming, nature and us."