ABSTRACT
The privately owned Knepp Castle Estate, in West Sussex, England, was one of the UK’s first rewilding projects. Based on the Dutch Oostvaardersplassen template, Knepp Wildland assumes the wildwood forest of yore is a myth and herbivores, sustaining open landscapes, are required for the return of declining species.
There are a number of additional but unspoken assumptions behind the Knepp model which conflict with recently defined rewilding principles. Most importantly Knepp remains locked within a human supremacist paradigm, the underlying cause of species’ extinctions; rewilding ourselves—by changing our relationship with nature—is needed to address the reasons rewilded landscapes are required at all. We acknowledge that elements within our approach, including fertility control, create their own dilemmas. Ultimately the British country estate has constraints in terms of what owners can afford rewilding to be. Recreating the wildwood might not fit any business model even if this should be a lowland rewilded landscape’s apogee.
