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Countryside
Stewardship was the catalyst back in 2002,
which lead to the restoration of parkland
around Knepp Castle, near Horsham. Then
several years of successively poor arable
commodity prices helped to encourage the
owner, Sir Charles Burrell, to consider a
conservation project, the likes of which
have not been seen before in the south east.
“I
fell in with a bad crowd,” says Charlie,
“ecologists, conservationists, scientists,
free thinkers. It struck me that my father's
advice back in the 1980s - to ring-fence and
ranch - might actually be the best way of
managing this estate. Now with the support
of Natural England we are about to embark on
preparing our third massive enclosure, which
will see over 2000 acres of the estate
ring-fenced in three adjacent blocks. We
hope one day to link them New Forest
style”
NARNIA-LIKE
ENVIRONMENT
The
science behind the project is 10,000 years
old, literally. It is to do with maximising
biodiversity, which in nature is generally
associated with woodland margins. But rather
than man determining where this succession
from pasture to woodland is, it is the
animals - cattle, deer, ponies and pigs -
that drive it by their grazing, browsing and
disturbance. If you fly over Knepp in 20
years it will be difficult to distinguish
the traditional boundaries between woods and
fields, as the latter scrub up and the woods
are thinned by grazing. And the areas kept
open by animals will move and change as
populations boom and bust.
It's
messy and can be unpopular with the
neighbours -
or at least the perception of it can be.
Personally I live in the middle of one of
the blocks and am thrilled that my children
are growing up in this environment. Friends
enjoy rough shooting here and liken it to
Narnia - not many spaniels come face to face
with a farrowing pig while hunting for wild
game!
Whether
it's moral or not depends on your
definition. Those that feel we should be
using this marginal land to maximise food
production may think that what we are doing
is immoral. We prefer to celebrate the
undoubted wildlife enhancement and carbon
sequestration that the project offers; we
cannot just rely on the rainforests to look
after us! Besides we are still farming beef,
deer and pigs albeit on a very extensive
scale, in a system where natural processes
predominate.
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LAND
WILL NOT BE DEVALUED
Natural
England support's the project because it is
of a scale and design that provides genuine
space and opportunity for wildlife. With the
threats of climate change and an increasing
global population, it is places like this
that we need to protect. By that I don't
mean that we are hoping for an SSSI (Sites
of Special Scientific
Interest) prescription - in fact quite the
opposite, the land has been with the
Burrells for 200 years and it is essential
that the next generations are given the
freedom to decide whether the project works
for them. So this is not a forestry project
devaluing land, nor is it totally reliant on
subsidy, but it is a fully-reversible
attempt to turn back the clock to a time
long before chemicals and autumn cropping
put paid to our farmland birds and other
wildlife.
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Is
all this financially sustainable? Generally
rents achieved on properties that bound the
"parks" are greater than those
that stare at a wall of wheat, and one would
assume that house prices would fare the
same. The system has also freed up a vast
infrastructure of agricultural buildings,
many of which are now business premises. And
as for agri-subsidies, we are assured that
the policy makers are channeling more money
in this direction, and although we know we
won't benefit from the bumper years of
farming, these don't seem to come around
very often these days. .
Jason
Emrich is resident agent at Knepp Castle
Estate, and also heads the Haywards Heath
rural department.
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