Farming left them in deep debt – so they let nature take back the land

Sydney Morning Herald

21-05-2025

WILDING ★★★½
(PG) 75 minutes
Isabella Tree and her husband, Charlie Burrell, were deep in debt when they stopped farming 25 years ago.
Their soil, which was never very fertile, had been further degraded by pesticides, fertiliser and all the other chemicals they had been using to coax their crops to grow. Seeing no future for the farm, they sold their dairy herds and agricultural machinery, paid their debts, and let nature take its course.
It was not an easy decision. To give Burrell his full title, he is Sir Charles Burrell, 10th Baronet of Knepp, a West Sussex estate that has been in his family since 1787. Selling the land and moving on from his ancestral home, a castellated mansion alongside the medieval ruins of Knepp Castle, was unthinkable.
But he and Isabella were up for an experiment. They were both environmentalists, painfully aware of the many species of birds and mammals heading for extinction in Britain, and they wanted to see if anything would change if the land were allowed to return to its natural state.
Tree has written a book about this transformation and she guides us through David Allen's documentary with her account of the couple's experiences as the land gradually changes its shape and its character.
The couple's most radical decision is prompted by a meeting with Dutch ecologist Frans Vera, who bucks conventional wisdom with his belief that the landscape can be enhanced by permitting large animals to roam free. It's too late for Charlie and Isabella to find an aurochs, it has been extinct for centuries. But they bring in the next best thing – old English longhorn cattle, together with Exmoor ponies and, as a substitute for wild boar, Tamworth pigs. All are left to forage for themselves and dig up the ground as they please.
There are some early disasters. At a gathering on the estate, one of the ponies raids the catering tent and disrupts a polo game. And later, at a meeting with the local farmers, rewilding is criticised as a potential threat to farmland. Nor do the farmers like the messy appearance of a landscape left to its own devices, and they fear the dangers posed by the spread of invasive plants.