By: Francesca Mundrick, Founder & CEO
The Knepp Estate is a 3,500-acre rewilding project in West Sussex, England. Over the past few decades, Knepp has become an internationally recognized example of success for rewilding in practice.
Over thirty years, the rewilding practices at Knepp took hold and with that, sustainable business followed. Knepp offers the public access to walking trails, educational workshops and classes, a wild shop, a wild restaurant and market supplied by on site regenerative farming practices, and, a state-of-the-art primitive camping area with a camp field for tents, outdoor showers, fully equip outdoor kitchens, outhouse facilities, a yoga hut, a sauna, and a natural swimming pond.
During my time at Knepp, I took advantage of the opportunities offered. My campsite was at the center of the large primitive camping area with access to outdoor bathrooms, showers, and kitchens. I utilized the wild shop for light food, wood, and other sustainable camping materials- all produced on site. I trekked across the estate to the Wild Shop & Restaurant, adjacent to the Knepp Farm, where I ate some meals and purchased produce. I utilized the sauna, natural swimming pond, and yoga hut to find community, connection, and relaxation.
My main goal coming to Knepp was to connect with rewilding practitioners to understand the application of scalable rewilding and community facilitation. Knepp hosts a plethora of educational opportunities for citizenry and professionals. I attended several of these activities, most significantly, a Small Scale Rewilding workshop by Tony Whitbread, President of the Sussex Wildlife Trust.
The workshop started with a lecture that detailed the history of the Knepp Estate, scaleable rewilding methods, herbivore-driven natural processes, ecosystem services, and concepts of natural capital and green finance that can work to support rewilding projects. The lecture supported citizenry with small and medium sized properties to envision how they may work to restore nature with the intent to build a functional web that works for farming and livestock activities.
After our lecture, we set off into the Knepp Estate on foot to witness habitat diversity and the natural management processes that create habitat systems through biodiversity. Focus was placed on ecological identification of flora and fauna.
My biggest takeaways from the workshop were: (1) Megafaunas, large herbivores and carnivores, heavily influence and shape environments. Carnivores, such as wolves, coyotes, and bobcats, balance herbivore populations. Herbivores, such as deer and bison, influence plant life and soil health. (2) The microbial life in soil is heavily important to the greater ecosystem. Our disruption of not only macro biodiversity but micro biodiversity has greatly damaged environments. (3) Megafaunas disrupt soil and add to microbial life with the deposition of their waste. (4) Rewilders are constantly evolving theories and practices. Should we seek to rewild based on the past or the present? What is our baseline for ecological restoration? (5) Many rewilding projects reintroduce megafaunas, some of which are are currently active species and others modeled off of extinct species to mimic important roles in the ecosystem. (6) Economy is increasingly linked to rewilding- with ecological restoration and biodiversity enhancing being used as markers for overall environmental gains.
The Knepp Estate, at its core, is about witnessing successful rewilding results, however, what is arguably more important, is the linkage of people to the site-transformation, knowledge, and the community built through nature. That is what rewilding is all about.
It is safe to say that I will surely be back at Knepp soon!
For more on the Knepp Estate and rewilding, please visit their website at https://knepp.co.uk/.
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One response to “Adventures from the Knepp Estate England Part III”
Very interesting!
On Mon, Aug 25, 2025 at 11:53 AM Rewild New Jersey Community Cooperative
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