Stockman Safari

This safari is with Knepp stockman, Patrick Toe, and is targeted at people working in conservation and land management who would like to learn more about naturalistic grazing and managing livestock in an open system.

Our free-roaming grazing animals are really the managers of our rewilding project. Their disturbance creates a mosaic of dynamic, shifting habitats that is rocket-fuel for wildlife. Without grazing animals, the scrub emerging from our post-agricultural fields would soon turn into closed-canopy woodland, which is a poor habitat for most wildlife. Disturbance from grazing, browsing, rootling, rubbing and trampling, provides a check on galloping scrub; and the battle between these two processes – animal disturbance versus vegetation succession – creates all sorts of vegetation structures which contribute to a dynamic, ever-shifting mosaic of valuable habitats.

After a short presentation over coffee and biscuits, you will head out to look for Knepp’s herds of old English longhorn cattle, Tamworth pigs, and red and fallow deer.

You will learn primarily about cattle management, health checks, how to round up cattle over large areas using the Bud Williams technique, as well some detail about pigs in an open system.

This is a vehicle-based safari but there will be some walking on uneven ground.

Stockman Safaris are scheduled for 14 June, 19 July and 20 September.

9.30am-12.30pm
£85 per person