Skip to content
Kate Wolstenholme
ECOLOGICAL CONSULTANT & SAFARI GUIDE
Kate comes to Knepp from a career in ecology consultancy, with special interests in scrub-loving marginal species, including dormice and herptiles. Prior to consultancy Kate worked in universities and schools in both educational roles and in an events team.
With a background in geography, Kate has always been interested in landscape scale processes, ecosystems, and the dynamic interactions and exchanges between people and the environment. Having studied paleoenvironmental reconstructions here in Sussex, and with an interest in climate change and its indicators within the polar regions, Kate’s studies took her to Alaska, where she looked at the heterogeneity of the boreal forest and its soil carbon content in relation to canopy and understory species diversity. At the University of Fairbanks, she also studied the ecology and management of large mammals, from musk ox, caribou, and moose, to bears, wolves and coyotes, and their dynamics at scale across the landscape.
More locally, Kate has enjoyed national water vole monitoring, leading waterway bat surveys and urban botany walks, and setting up a new Toad Patrol site as part of Froglife’s Toads on Roads Project. Kate has always loved finding ways to connect people with nature that feel meaningful and memorable.
‘It’s a delight to showcase the astonishing changes taking place here, and to share the joys of the natural world at our fingertips with others. After just a short time at Knepp, it’s impossible not to come away feeling a little wilder, and certainly more connected to our natural history and to one another.’