The Knepp Wilding Podcast

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 i...

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 ...

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 relis...

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,...

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 de...

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 Na...

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 c...

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 K...

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 b...

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 emergen...

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 Ge...

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 me...

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 ...

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 gene...

Join Knepp’s Isabella Tree and an over-excited Matthew Oates, the purple emperor’s No 1 devotee, to celebrate a bonanza year for this rare, beautiful and thuggish butterfly. Numbers at Knepp have broken all records and Matthew takes us to three of the emperor’s favourite haunts in the hope of catching a last glimpse of His Imperial Highness as the flight season draws to a close.

Matthew explains why this has been t...

It’s an early morning start for episode 38, as we meet with wonderful grower Rosanna before the heat of the day kicks in, and before she and the rest of the team get to work on the day’s harvest. 

We talk about the incredible transformation of a three-acre pony paddock to a bountiful market garden, producing delicious seasonal veg for the Knepp Wilding Kitchen and Shop. We consider their regenerative approaches to g...

Join us on a beautiful June evening for episode 36 of the Knepp Wildland Podcast. We’re joined by Knepp’s lead ecologist, Matt Phelps, deep in the scrubland to learn all about one of the jewels in Knepp’s crown…the rare and beautiful Turtle Dove.

We talk about migration, how they’re doing in Europe following a recent hunting ban, what we’re learning about them at Knepp and the features they need ...

Buckle yourselves in for episode 35 of the Knepp Wildland Podcast with the vivacious Erica McAlister, Principle Curator for Diptera and Siphonaptera (that's flies and fleas to you) at the London Natural History Museum. 

Erica has made it her life’s work to make flies cool - her enthusiasm has inspired so many people to love and value flies during her career. Erica teaches us a lot of new things about flies: we talk about ...

It’s episode 34 of the Knepp Wildland Podcast and we return to the White Stork Project, five years on, to hear the latest news with White Stork Project Manager, Laura Vaughan-Hirsch.

We tune in to the live stork nest camera to check in on Ania and Bartek, a breeding pair bonded since 2020. We talk about this year’s nests and meet up with long-serving volunteer Silla to hear about what she does for the project and what th...