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Charles Burrell
Co-Owner of Knepp Estate and Knepp Wildland Foundation Trustee
Charlie inherited the 3,500-acre estate from his grandparents in the 1980’s and is the inspiration behind the Knepp Wildland Project. Having run Knepp Home Farm for 20 years, Charlie had a dramatic change of heart after a visit to the Oostvaardersplassen project in Holland in the 1990s and saw the potential for a similar “rewilding” project at home in Sussex.
Beyond Knepp, Charlie is deeply involved in large-scale conservation efforts. He chairs Carpathia in Romania, a project often referred to as the “Yellowstone of Europe.” He also chairs Nattergal and serves as vice-chair of RePLANET, both of which focus on mobilizing private finance to fund landscape-scale ecological restoration. Additionally, he sits on the advisory board of Arcadia and serves on the oversight committee for one of its flagship initiatives, the Endangered Landscapes and Seascapes Program. Having previously chaired Rewilding Britain, he has since retired from its board and now holds a position on the supervisory board of Rewilding Europe.
“Knepp is on heavy clay, and it’s always been a struggle to farm here. With the rewilding project we’re still raising cattle and livestock, only now it’s extensive rather than intensive farming – more like ranching, really – and the animals are driving the great positives like biodiversity, habitat and soil restoration. Because we have no goals or targets, and the project is ‘process-led’, Nature is teaching us. We’re on a thrilling journey. The possibilities are endless, and the relevance to conservation and eco-systems services has never been greater.”
