Advertise on podcast: The Knepp Wilding Podcast

On the day that Tim Mackrill and his team install an osprey nesting platform at Knepp, Isabella Tree grabs the chance to chat to the raptor reintroduction specialist about his work and his vision for ospreys and other birds of prey in England. What kind of nest is an osprey looking for? Why do they need a helping hand? How many ospreys would England have had in the past, and how many should we hope for in the future? And what did it take to turn a trout farmer on Rutland Water from being an ardent opponent of ospreys to one of their most enthusiastic supporters? Isabella Tree is co-owner of Knepp and the award-winning author of ‘Wilding’, which was made into a major film in 2024.  Her book ‘White Stork – restoring a missing bird to Britain’ will be published by Bloomsbury on 1 April 2027.  Send us a message or leave a comment Find out more about Knepp on our website and why not follow us on Instagram?

Derek Gow is one of the UK’s most ardent and proactive reintroduction specialists. The Guardian calls him ‘the guerrilla rewilder’. Join his impassioned conversation with Isabella Tree as they discuss the possibilities of restoring bison to Britain, and how these ‘creators of disturbance’ might impact landscapes, people and their dogs. Knepp is still hoping to have bison one day – but what will it take to get them here? Isabella Tree is co-owner of Knepp and the award-winning author of ‘Wilding’, which was made into a major film in 2024.  The award-winning film ‘Derek vs Derek’, featuring Derek Gow locking antlers with his farming neighbour Derek Banbury, is released in UK cinemas this month.  Send us a message or leave a comment Find out more about Knepp on our website and why not follow us on Instagram?

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?

Isabella Tree catches up with two of the White Stork Project volunteers, Tim Morgan and Rosemary Dewan, as they prepare food for the non-flying storks in the pen at Knepp. It’s a freezing day with slashing rain, typical of the weather the unflinching volunteers have had to face almost every day this winter. The project relies on around 25 stork-feeding and 30 stork-monitoring volunteers – out in the wildlands of Knepp come rain or shine. Their purpose – to help establish and observe the first breeding white stork colony in Britain for over 600 years. Begun in 2016 and with 25 nests at Knepp to date, the stork reintroduction is proving an astonishing success. With Tim in charge of data crunching, the project - partnered by Cotswold Wildlife Park, Wadhurst Estate and the Roy Dennis Wildlife Foundation - is uncovering new insights into stork behaviour. This year is already throwing up surprises, with the unfolding drama of the pair of storks who have reliably brought up chicks under the eye of the live webcam for the past three years. The male, Bartek, has forsaken his partner Ania and hooked up with a new mate, busting the myth that storks make faithful, lifelong pairs. With the webcam now live on the White Stork Project website, tens of thousands of viewers around the world will be able to watch the mating, egg-laying, chick-rearing and fledging of this year’s storks. 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?

Isabella’s guest is Harriet Rix, the Indiana Jones of tree science. She’s chased down rare trees in some of the remotest, wildest places in the world, and in the UK she’s worked for DEFRA, researching tree diseases and strategies for trees in cities. Her latest book The Genius of Trees explains how trees have influenced, even controlled, life on our planet. Wandering through the ancient oaks and young saplings of Knepp’s scrubland, Harriet opens up a perspective of millions of years of tree evolution. Far from being static and vulnerable, as we tend to think of them, trees are resilient survivors, agents of their own destiny – and quite possibly ours. Harriet explains the secrets of genetic diversity and how, by encouraging natural regeneration as we do at Knepp, we can help trees adapt to climate change and resist disease. She shares extraordinary insights, including that the English oak, our country’s pride and joy, is originally American. 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?

Not according to Mark Elliot, beaver expert and Isabella Tree’s latest podcast guest. Licensed beaver pens – designed by Government as the first stage to wider release over three years ago – are beginning to fail. Beavers, including those installed in a six-acre pen at Knepp, have begun burrowing out of their watery prisons. As Isabella leads Mark through the incredible new wetlands created by Knepp’s AWOL beavers, he describes the importance of beavers in flood defence, neutralising water pollution, storing carbon and restoring biodiversity. But with the Government reluctant to come up with a workable Beaver Management Plan, some farmers and land managers are nervous about the prospect of these furry water engineers turning up on their land. Meanwhile, frustrated by government inaction, ‘beaver bombers’ have been illegally releasing beavers into rivers up and down the country. The beavers are already colonising England after an absence of over 400 years – but can we learn to live with them again? Where will the funding for troubleshooting beaver-human conflicts come from? Mark shares his experience leading the landmark River Otter trial and gives some fascinating insights into how communities – including farmers – can find solutions and enjoy a world where these incredible creatures once again live free. 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. This podcast is produced by The Podcast Coach. Send us a message or leave a comment Find out more about Knepp on our website and why not follow us on Instagram?

This time we are absolutely delighted to welcome Tony Juniper to the Knepp Wilding Podcast. Tony is well-known to us here at Knepp. A massive supporter of rewilding and an important figure in the conservation world, Tony is currently serving as the Chair of Natural England.  In this stimulating conversation, Tony tackles the deepest issues behind our inability to act with the pace and scale needed to address the emergencies of climate change and nature decline. He confronts the idea that economic growth and nature recovery are opposing forces - stressing that if we want a resilient economy into the future, we must restore nature. We also discuss his profound new book, Just Earth, which argues that environmental recovery is inextricably linked with achieving human happiness, economic fairness and social cohesion.  Tony says that to achieve this long-term change, we need to heal the massive disconnection between people and the natural world. He sees Knepp as a "real beacon of hope" and a practical demonstration of what can be done. 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. This podcast is produced by The Podcast Coach. Send us a message or leave a comment Find out more about Knepp on our website and why not follow us on Instagram?

Geetie and Guy Singh-Watson are powerhouses of the organic and regenerative food and farming movement. They’re the inspiration behind the Knepp Wilding Kitchen and Market Garden.  In this month’s podcast with Isabella Tree, Geetie and Guy vent their frustration with supermarkets, industrial farming, restaurant supply chains and lack of accountability. They explain the thinking behind Riverford Organic Farmers and Geetie’s rigorously ethical pub, The Bull Inn in Totnes - where Isabella’s son Ned Burrell, Executive Chef at the Knepp Wilding Kitchen, began his restaurant career.  They may not agree with the landownership of Knepp or want to dive into rewilding themselves but they admit a little bit of Knepp’s magic has rubbed off on them. 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. This podcast is produced by The Podcast Coach. Send us a message or leave a comment Find out more about Knepp on our website and why not follow us on Instagram?

In this very special episode Penny Green officially hands the host’s mic to Isabella Tree. Penny has been behind the Knepp podcast since it launched in 2020 and has been Knepp’s ecologist for a decade. She's moving on for pastures new (in fact, just down the road to the Wiston Estate).  In this warm and poignant episode, Isabella asks Penny to take her to the corners of Knepp’s Wildland which meant the most to her over the years. Together they recall the peaks and troughs of her time at Knepp, including capturing fugitive beavers and how nightingale song in lockdown – ringing out without anyone to hear it - inspired the very first episode of the podcast. 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. This podcast is produced by The Podcast Coach. Send us a message or leave a comment Find out more about Knepp on our website and why not follow us on Instagram?

In Owl Quiet on the Nesting Front, Penny Green interviews Matt Phelps, Knepp’s lead ecologist. They’re out on the Wildland checking 22 owl boxes. In this episode, they discuss barn owls’ silent grace and striking beauty… as well as how much people love to investigate their pellets to discover what the owls have had for breakfast! It’s a quiet year for owl breeding. Last autumn’s poor acorn yield spelled tough times for the small mammals who feed on them. That’s translated into a challenging year for owls. But this resilient species will bounce back. Send us a message or leave a comment Find out more about Knepp on our website and why not follow us on Instagram?

It’s been a bumper summer for ragwort, the plant folks love to hate. In this month’s Knepp Wilding Podcast, Isabella Tree unearths the truth about this spectacular native wildflower with ragwort specialist, Mick Crawley.  Is it a toxic killer or a bountiful source of life? And what happens when you pull it up? Could trying to eradicate it actually be helping the plant to proliferate? The Knepp Wilding Podcast is generously supported by Ecosia – the search engine that plants trees and restores nature. All of us at Knepp are now changing our default search engine to Ecosia – and I do recommend you do too. You can help restore the planet from your desk! Find out more at www.ecosia.org Send us a message or leave a comment Find out more about Knepp on our website and why not follow us on Instagram?