The Knepp Wilding Podcast – Details, episodes & analysis

Episode 31 is a short n’ sweet one which sees the return of Dr Matt Wainhouse to Knepp, in his exciting role as Natural England’s Fungi and Lichen Senior Specialist. We’re also joined by Tom Burns, Knepp’s fantastic ranger and woodsman.

We catch up with Matt about the findings from his tree-coring project at Knepp back in 2021 (check out episode 14) and also learn about a new project that he’s trialling at the moment. 
 
We join Matt whilst he’s fitting some curious wooden boxes to some of our oaks. The boxes have been filled with sawdust that’s inoculated with different rot fungi to provide a rot-hole habitat to lure in saproxylic (deadwood) insects – these are some of our rarest insects. The contents will be sampled in the autumn and DNA analysis will show what’s been utilising the boxes.

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It's episode 30 so it's time for a beaver project update! We’re joined again by national beaver specialist, and all-round good egg, Mark Elliott.

We talk about the progress of the Knepp beaver enclosure and its hard-working inhabitants, and what they've been up to since our last beaver podcast back in November 2022. Following a very wet winter and spring the robust beaver dams are holding up well and are helping to store a huge amount of water, slowing the flow in heavy rainfall events.

We explore what's happening nationally and the big decisions that need to be made as enclosed beaver families across the country are expanding.

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It’s a wet and wild episode 22! We’re joined by national beaver specialist, Mark Elliott, down in the Knepp beaver pen after a night of heavy rain. We marvel at the amazing work of the beavers - how they’re creating the most wonderful wetland area that’s holding on to water during winter floods and providing an oasis for life during droughts. 

We tap into Mark’s encyclopaedic knowledge of the natural history of beavers in Britain: why they became extinct, how they’re making an incredible come-back and the amazing benefits they bring to wildlife and us humans too. 

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Episode 21 finds us at an uplifting event surrounded by a hundred young people: a youth rewilding summit held at Knepp in September in collaboration with Heal Rewilding and Young Wilders. 

The event was created by young people to connect and inspire other young people with a passion for rewilding, and to give the next generation of rewilders a platform and an opportunity to drive change. Join us to hear more about the day from the brilliant people who organised it, and some of the enthusiastic bunch who came along for the day.

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Episode 20 takes us on an early morning mission to catch a Cuckoo or two with the brilliant Lee Barber, from the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO). With a special net configuration and lure set up to entice the birds in, we waited like coiled springs to jump in to action if we saw one come into the nets. 

Tune in to hear if we were successful (we may have struck lucky otherwise this would have been a very short podcast!) and to learn more about this African migrant’s story, and why satellite tagging contributes to integral research to learn more about why these long-distance migrants are facing difficulty on their journeys.

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Episode 19 finds us in a newly rewilded location at Knepp – the garden! 

Charlie Harpur, Suzi Turner and Moy Fierheller are our keystone species, or garden team, in the 1.3-acre Victorian walled garden and have kick-started natural processes to make the garden more sustainable and buzz with biodiversity. We talk about how this horticultural experiment is challenging traditional gardening and how we can all do something to rewild our gardens and window boxes too.

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It’s episode 18 so it’s about time we go underground, delving well below the surface to unearth the life cycle of a rather brilliant ecosystem engineer: the earthworm. We join a survey session at Knepp with four brilliant scientists: Emma Sherlock from the Natural History Museum, Inez Januszczak and Chris Fletcher from the Darwin Tree of Life Project, and Keiron Brown from the Field Studies Council. They teach us about the different groups, or eco-types, of worms; how they recover in rewilded landscapes; and how they are quite picky when on the look-out for a mate. 

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Episode 17 takes me and my brilliant team-mate, Ivan de Klee, outside of the Knepp Estate boundaries. Ivan is our rainbow chaser and helps us imagine what a wilder landscape might look like as we explore the idea of the Weald to Waves corridor. We talk about how such collaborative landscape scale projects, and new rewilding projects, could be funded by new agri-environment schemes, biodiversity net gain and carbon sequestration – and how these markets might work. Ivan explains what natural capital is and how rewarding landowners for ecosystem services, such a biodiversity and soil restoration, could pave the future for nature conservation in the UK. 

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Isabella Tree is joint owner of Knepp, and author of the best-seller Wilding book, and has been a long-awaited guest on the podcast. In episode 16 Issy and I go for a lovely wintery walk and chinwag in the scrubland, where we talk about the importance of scrub for wildlife. We explore many facets of the scrub, including the influence of the large herbivores, ‘Vera’ oak saplings, the role of the Jay and what the Knepp landscape might look like in the future. The hot topic of tree-planting comes up, as does the local development that’s been proposed on Knepp’s neighbouring land.

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It’s episode 15 and we’re exploring a different part of the Knepp Estate! Join me as I find out more about our new regenerative farm from farm manager Russ Carrington. We visit the grazing herd of Sussex cattle, learn about mob-grazing and NoFence collars, and talk about the plans for this exciting new venture, sitting alongside the Knepp Rewilding Project. 

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