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.

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.

Learn about the habitat that keeps snakes and lizards safe, and how we can improve conditions for them in our landscapes and gardens.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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 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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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 me and you) at the London Natural History Museum.

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.

In episode 33 of the Knepp Wildland Podcast we meet Knepp’s brilliant new Lead Ecologist, Matt Phelps. We chat about the exciting news, released just a few hours before, of wild release licencing for beavers and how this might affect the Knepp beaver family.

We learn what Tom gets up to in his daily work at the Knepp Rewilding Project - everything from managing the huge team of fab volunteers to managing the public rights of way across the estate. Not to mention collecting stork nesting materials from the coppice!

Episode 31 is a short n’ sweet one which sees the return of Dr Matt Wainhouse to Knepp, in his exciting role as Natural England’s Fungi and Lichen Senior Specialist. We’re also joined by Tom Burns, Knepp’s fantastic ranger and woodsman.

It's episode 30 so it's time for a beaver project update! We’re joined again by national beaver specialist, and all-round good egg, Mark Elliott.

It’s Episode 29 and we’re visiting the beaver pen with a gaggle of delightful artists who help us draw a different perspective on rewilding.

Episode 28 of the Knepp Wildland Podcast transports us far away from Knepp and into the beautifully rugged landscape of Asturias in Spain. We’re visiting stunning Wild Finca to meet a family, inspired by Knepp, making a big change on their 13-hectare landholding.

Episode 27 of the Knepp Wildland Podcast finds us in the field with Rosie Moss from the wonderful Newt Conservation Partnership and Shaun Hancox, digger-driver extraordinaire! The Partnership have been harnessing funds from developers through the NatureSpace District Licensing Scheme to create high quality habitat for Great Crested Newt, and a whole host of other wetland species. We’re delighted to have recently had 12 impressive new ponds dug at Knepp through this scheme.

Episode 26 of the Knepp Wildland Podcast takes us on the trail of Micromys minutus, the harvest mouse. Knepp’s ecologist is joined by fellow mammal appreciators Ryan Greaves and Laurie Jackson to find out more about how these minute mice make a living at Knepp.

Join us on episode 25 where we learn more about a ground-breaking microclimate project with Assistant Professor Rebecca Senior and PhD student Cameron Goodhead from Durham University.

In Episode 24 of the Knepp Wildland Podcast, we are joined by brilliant artist Hazel Reeves to hear how she has been inspired by the Knepp soundscape to extend her artistic practice beyond her studio.

To celebrate 10,000 downloads of our first ever episode, The Nightingale, we’re delighted to be able to offer you a bite-size version of it!

It’s episode 23 and we are taking a blustery walk with some fascinating researchers from Oxford Archaeology and Historic England… we are stepping back in time! We discuss an innovative and collaborative research project called ‘Rewilding Later Prehistory’ exploring Bronze Age and Iron Age ecology from around 4,500yrs ago to 2,000yrs ago.

It’s a wet and wild episode 22! We’re joined by national beaver specialist, Mark Elliott, down in the Knepp beaver pen after a night of heavy rain. We marvel at the amazing work of the beavers – how they’re creating the most wonderful wetland area that’s holding on to water during winter floods and providing an oasis for life during droughts.

Episode 21 finds us at the inaugural Resurgence Youth Rewilding Summit held at Knepp in September 2022. Organised in a wonderful collaboration with Knepp Wildland Foundation, Heal Rewilding and Young Wilders

This episode takes us on an early morning mission to catch a cuckoo or two with the brilliant Lee Barber, from the British Trust for Ornithology. With a special net configuration and lure set up to entice the birds in, we waited like coiled springs to jump in to action if we saw one come into the nets.

Charlie Harpur, Suzi Turner and Moy Fierheller are our keystone species, or garden team, in the 1.3-acre Victorian walled garden and have kick-started natural processes to make the garden more sustainable and buzz with biodiversity. We talk about how this horticultural experiment is challenging traditional gardening and how we can all do something to rewild our gardens and window boxes too.

t’s episode 18 so it’s about time we go underground, delving well below the surface to unearth the life cycle of a rather brilliant ecosystem engineer: the earthworm. We join a survey session at Knepp with four brilliant scientists: Emma Sherlock from the Natural History Museum, Inez Januszczak and Chris Fletcher from the Darwin Tree of Life Project, and Keiron Brown from the Field Studies Council.

Episode 17 takes me and my brilliant team-mate, Ivan de Klee, outside of the Knepp Estate boundaries. Ivan is our rainbow chaser and helps us imagine what a wilder landscape might look like as we explore the idea of the Weald to Waves corridor.

Isabella Tree is joint owner of Knepp, and author of the best-seller Wilding book, and has been a long-awaited guest on the podcast. In episode 16 Issy and I go for a lovely wintery walk and chinwag in the scrubland, where we talk about the importance of scrub for wildlife.

It’s episode 15 and we’re exploring a different part of the Knepp Estate! Join me as I find out more about our new regenerative farm from farm manager Russ Carrington. We visit the grazing herd of Sussex cattle, learn about mob-grazing and NoFence collars, and talk about the plans for this exciting new venture sitting alongside the Knepp Rewilding Project.

Join Matt Wainhouse, Geoff Liddell and myself as we take a deep dive in to one of Knepp’s magnificent oak trees. Matt is an ecologist undertaking a PhD in the ecology and conservation of heart-rot fungi, investigating how communities of fungi assemble in living trees, linking in with their function as ecosystem engineers.

I’m joined by Sideshow Dave to find some of the star songsters of the Wildland; we listen out for our iconic bird species and enjoy listening to their songs, we talk about some of the successes of the scrub but also some of the bird species we are now missing from our landscape and what sounds they would have bought to the dawn chorus in the past.

Episode 12 is a bonus episode with Matthew Oates. A visit from Matthew in early June meant we could take this opportunity to have a catch-up about the forthcoming Purple Emperor season, weird weather and what our summer butterfly season might look like!

Episode 11 finds us on a bright spring day sitting by a stream with Matthew Oates. Matthew, a remarkable field naturalist and author, has spent his lockdown winter dreaming of springtime at Knepp and the first glimpse he might have of the exotic-looking orange-tip butterfly.

Episode 10 finds us in the rewilding project at springtime during our old English longhorn cattle calving season, with Knepp’s splendid stockman, Patrick Toe. We discuss everything from habitat creation and animal behaviour to dung, cattle round-ups and animal health. And Pat’s desire for a big ship’s bell.

Episode 9 brings us something a little bit different to usual as we meet an incredibly wild musician! Richard Durrant has drawn inspiration from Knepp and his love of nature to create his latest album ‘Rewilding’ which includes bird song recorded at Knepp.

It’s Episode 8 and I’m joined by Side-show Dave! We go ringing at a noisy redwing roost in the Wildland scrub, and back at home we enjoy a glass of wine and reflect on some of the marvellous wildlife encounters we’ve had at Knepp in 2020.

Episode 7 takes us back in time as we learn about fallow deer: what their ancestors would have looked like and how they would have behaved. We also enjoy some of the sounds that we hear at Knepp Wildland during present day, as we take a front row seat at the deer rut lek, a display ground where the bucks (males) show off their impressive bellowing and scenting to onlooking does (females).

Our sixth episode is dedicated to some of the world’s most wonderful ecosystem engineers: dung beetles. As well as being funky little insects they punch well above their weight in the ecosystem services they provide.

In episode 5 we meet the ebullient Matthew Oates to talk about the inebriated and hedonistic life of His Imperial Majesty, the purple emperor. We talk about the life cycle of this magnificent butterfly, what we’re learning about them at Knepp Wildland, and how to go about spotting one yourself.

During episode four we delve in to the intriguing lives of reptiles and learn more about these fascinating animals at Knepp Wildland. I’m joined by my good friend, Ryan Greaves, who shares some remarkable reptile facts and encounters, and we find out what we can do for these captivating creatures in our gardens and in the wider landscape.

In our third episode we investigate a fascinating research project being carried out at Knepp Wildland, which is studying the social behaviour of the orange-legged furrow bee Halictus rubicundus.

In our second episode we explore the lives of the white storks nesting at Knepp Wildland which have featured on Springwatch this month.

Our inaugural episode celebrates the return of the nightingale to Knepp Wildland this spring. The nightingale (Luscinia megarhynchos) has seen an impressive increase in numbers at Knepp Wildland since the beginning of the rewilding project, and 2020 has been a bumper year (although we didn’t know this at the time of recording!) with somewhere in the region of 30 singing males in the southern block of the project.