The Knepp Wilding Podcast

Join Isabella Tree and butterfly man Neil Hulme as they anticipate the exciting reintroduction of the black-veined white – a butterfly that went extinct in Britain a hundred years ago. Standing in front of the cages at Knepp where butterflies recently imported from Spain have laid their eggs, Neil is like an anxious midwife. Will the caterpillars survive the winter and the various predators insinuating themselves through the netting? How many butterflies will emerge in spring for their release on the South Downs next year? 
Isabella Tree is co-founder of Knepp rewilding project and award-winning author of ‘Wilding’, which was made into a film in 2024. 
Send us a message or leave a comment
Find out more about Knepp on our website and why not follow us on Instagram?

Isabella Tree catches up with Carl Sayer, Professor of Limnology & Freshwater Ecology at University College London - aka the Eel Man - as he prepares for this year’s survey of Knepp’s eels. Once bountiful in the UK, eels have all but disappeared from most water systems, impacted by overfishing and obstructive dams and weirs that prevent their migration. Carl has loved eels since he discovered them as a boy and relishes the mystery that still surrounds their adventurous lifecycle. Happily, his surveying at Knepp provides grounds for optimism and giggles all round for his students attempting to measure and weigh the slippery customers.
Isabella Tree co-founded the Knepp rewilding project with her husband, Charlie Burrell. She is the award-winning author of ‘Wilding’, which was made into a major motion picture in 2024.
 
 
Send us a message or leave a comment
Find out more about Knepp on our website and why not follow us on Instagram?

Meet Reuben Martin, a seventeen-year-old herpetologist who has been monitoring Knepp’s snakes and lizards with his father Tim. Reuben’s ability to read a landscape and know where snakes and lizards lurk is extraordinary. He is passionate about communicating the wonders of these secretive creatures to those of us who may be a little less certain of their charms. Learn about the habitat that keeps snakes and lizards safe, and how we can improve conditions for them in our landscapes and gardens.
Isabella Tree co-founded the Knepp rewilding project with her husband, Charlie Burrell. She is the award-winning author of 'Wilding', which was made into a major motion picture in 2024.
Send us a message or leave a comment
Find out more about Knepp on our website and why not follow us on Instagram?

Compared to other insects, bees are pretty hopeless pollinators. Flies, on the other hand, can pollinate plants and kill your aphids. 
Join Isabella Tree as she finds out what gets Erica McAlister, Principal Curator at the Natural History Museum and bug-crazy fly afficionada, really excited about the hidden life in wilder gardens. And pick up some simple tips to encourage the best pollinators, predators, soil fertilisers and decomposers in your garden.
Isabella Tree co-founded the Knepp rewilding project with her husband, Charlie Burrell. She is an award-winning author, including of the best-selling book, Wilding: the return of nature to a British farm, which was made into a major motion picture in 2024.
Send us a message or leave a comment
Find out more about Knepp on our website and why not follow us on Instagram?

For many people, rewilding is a one-trick pony – it’s great for restoring nature and wildlife, but does it do anything for climate change?
In this episode, Isabella asks her daughter Nancy Burrell about her doctorate research at Knepp and the astonishing findings that are changing how rewilding is valued as a mechanism for storing carbon.
Join them as they wander through the scrubland at Knepp, visiting the sites where Nancy and her team excavated 270 trees, roots and all, to measure how much carbon they contained – a massive undertaking, producing the biggest dataset ever used for this kind of research. The browsing of our animals on hawthorn, blackthorn, dogrose, sallow and oak saplings, Nancy found, stimulates the growth of roots underground, as well as regrowth aboveground – storing 4x more carbon than was previously thought.
This has huge implications for how projects that aim to capture carbon are funded in the future. Should we planting trees – the default mechanism currently used to fight climate change which, however, does not produce good results for wildlife and is often environmentally destructive? Or should we be encouraging the natural regeneration of trees and shrubs, with animals to browse them – rewilding projects, essentially – which captures huge amounts of carbon and provides wonderful habitat for wildlife at the same time?
Isabella Tree co-founded the Knepp rewilding project with her husband, Charlie Burrell. She is an award-winning author, including of the best-selling book, Wilding: the return of nature to a British farm, which was made into a major motion picture in 2024.
Send us a message or leave a comment
Find out more about Knepp on our website and why not follow us on Instagram?