How you can help beat Britain’s biodiversity crisis and see the country at its wildest

Britain’s biodiversity is in crisis and has been for decades, with almost 1 in 6 species threatened with extinction, according to State of Nature’s latest report. But not all hope is lost as rewilding projects up and down the country are fighting back by reintroducing species.

While some projects have been open to the public since their beginnings, more and more are opening their doors to those interested in seeing the country at its wildest.

Safaris in Africa may boast the Big Five, but tours of rewilding projects in the UK offer the opportunity to see bison, red squirrels, butterflies, birds and much more.

You can contribute in a very real way to the future of these projects and their restoration efforts by sharing their story with others, and helping fund their vital work.

Kevin Cumming, Rewilding Director of Rewilding Britain, said, “The state of nature and biodiversity in this country is devastating and on life support.

“People look out over the treeless hills of the Lake District or the Highlands and see what they think is wilderness — but it’s actually a barren landscape. We need large-scale intervention and funding to allow nature to thrive, because nature allows us to thrive.”

Here are three rewilding projects across the UK that you can visit and support now.

From a former aristocratic estate to one of the UK’s most successful rewilding stories, Knepp Castle Estate is a story of hope. Home to free-roaming herds of cattle, ponies, pigs and deer, these animals help shape the landscape, creating dynamic scrubland, wild meadows, wetland and wood pasture where nature thrives.

Today, vehicle safaris led by expert ecologists and guided walks across the estate offer visitors a chance to experience wild Britain firsthand, with revenues supporting expansion.

Since rewilding began in 2000, life has flocked back to Knepp, including nightingales, turtle doves and even purple emperor butterflies – some of the rarest creatures in Britain.

You can book onto tours that focus on different animals depending on the season and the time of day, with options such as beaver, bat and moth, or white stork safaris.

Rachel Greaves, visitor manager at Knepp Castle Estate, said, “Ecotourism plays a huge and direct role in supporting and developing rewilding efforts. We are popular enough to do safaris all day, every day, and we want to encourage people to see and learn, but not to the detriment of the wildlife.

“Knepp is a beacon of hope in scary times that we can do something, even if that is taking a step back and letting nature do what it wants.”

Public access is limited to 16 miles of footpaths, with the majority of the rest of the estate dedicated to wildlife.

Camping, cabins and even treehouses are available for visitors who want to get up close and personal with the natural world, with a restaurant stocked with food sourced from the estate.

The nature-led conservation project doesn’t just help animals, either: Studies by Dr Nancy Burell, the daughter of the owners of Knepp Castle Estate, have shown that the scrubland that is now prevalent at the estate holds similar levels of carbon to planted woodland, without as great a need for human intervention, which ultimately helps tackle the climate crisis.

Matt Phelps, lead ecologist at Knepp Castle Estate, said, “Scrub is the birthplace of so much wildlife. What was once ploughed fields is now layered with life.

“Rewilding isn’t just about shutting the gate and walking away. In the UK, we’ve lost so much megafauna that we have to reintroduce those driving forces, the animals that shape the land.

“In just over 20 years, Knepp has shown how dramatically nature can recover. It’s proof that positive change can happen fast.”

More information: knepp.co.uk

Giants now walk among us. Or at least they do at Blean Woods, which successfully reintroduced European bison, the continent’s largest land mammal, in 2019.

Visitors to the woods can embark on educational tours and safaris to catch a glimpse of the giants in their natural habitat (as they are included in the Dangerous Wild Animals Act (1976), bison must be kept separate from humans with at least 40km of electric fencing to keep them in), and learn about the impact they have on the thousand-year-old English forest.

A significant impact at that, too. Considered ‘ecological engineers’, the bison’s natural behaviours can help other creatures thrive.

As they forge a path through the forest, they create standing dead wood, a vital habitat for woodpeckers, bats and fungi. Plus, the trails or ‘rides’ they form have seen butterflies return and their dustbathing sites become homes for sand lizards, insects and wildflowers.

These paths also naturally open up the canopy, allowing sunlight to reach the forest floor, giving life to plants and flowers on the ground – all of which you’ll see while out on a tour.

Better still, the efforts of the Wildwood Trust and Kent Wildlife Trust to reintroduce bison and diversify the grazing animals within the woods is helping with carbon storage.

Donovan Wright, bison ranger for the Wildwood Trust, said, “A herd of 170 bison in the Carpathians captures and stores 54,000 tonnes of carbon annually — the equivalent of taking around 84,000 petrol cars off the road.

“The evidence and the facts are there. Bison are helping us build resilience, fight biodiversity loss and tackle the climate crisis.”

Heidi Aguirregoicoa, bison ranger for Kent Wildlife Trust, added, “The UK is suffering from one of the worst nature depletions in the world, and what we need now is not just conservation – it’s nature restoration.

“People don’t realise what they’re losing until it’s gone. Eco-tourism is a useful tool, not only to bring in money for conservation initiatives, but also it’s an amazing way to engage people to care about UK conservation.”

More information: wildwoodtrust.org / kentwildlifetrust.org.uk

In the heart of Cumbria, Lowther Castle has taken a more radical approach to rewilding, and at a much faster rate.

At 2,000 hectares, it is one of the largest rewilding projects in England, yet ecotourism has not been the priority for Lowther, focusing instead on urgently restoring nature that was ‘on the brink of collapse’.

Having recently established a new tramping route, that’s changing. Lowther Castle’s forestry and conservation manager Kelvin Archer told Wanderlust, “We need to open up more. People need to learn about rewilding and conservation, and they can’t do that if they can’t see it.”

Part of the estate is now open to walkers and cyclists, but almost 4,000 acres of the rewilding area remains restricted to wildlife, allowing it to thrive with minimal disturbance.

Up until 2019, Lowther Castle was a traditional food-producing estate. Yet owner, Jim Lowther, a dedicated beekeeper, realised that his bees had almost nothing to eat on his flowerless and almost treeless estate, and decided something had to be done.

In an almost overnight change, the estate shifted to conservation, with 3,000 acres given to conservation directly, with more following in stages.

Lowther opted for a completely natural approach, stopping tree clearing, planting 800 acres of new forest, and removing sheep from the land. 

The estate diversified its herbivores, including longhorn cattle, Tamworth pigs, red deer, ponies, and beavers, and as a result, wildlife returned in abundance.

According to data from Lowther Estate, the changes have seen a 300% increase in nesting and fledgling birds, a 600% increase in butterflies, and red squirrels have bounced back, and the woodlands have expanded outwards.

Lee Schofield, author of Wild Fell and nature recovery lead at Lowther, said, “If you walk through the farm now, it’s a complete glorious mess – different heights of vegetation, flowers, insects, birds busy on the river, pigs and cattle grazing. Nature needs a mess.

“Restoring nature isn’t the same as abandoning land. When you lean into nature recovery, you nearly always get an uplift in employment: more opportunities for ecotourism, more visitors, and a richer, wilder landscape.

“The spectre of rewilding as something that will push people from the land is just nonsense; it needs people. It’s about change, and change is always difficult.”

Unlike Knepp and Blean, Lowther is still a working farm, producing beef, milk, timber and honey, yet it does so in a way that is ecologically beneficial to the land, and with animals that are native to it.

More information: lowthercastle.org

Rewilding organisations maintain that the key to enabling species to survive and thrive is to create a “nature recovery network of bigger, better quality, and more joined-up habitats,” according to Kent Wildlife Trust.

Knepp Castle Estate is seeking to create a wilderness corridor to the sea, and Kent Wildlife Trust is hoping to connect Blean Woods Bison Park with RSPB Blean and nearby Woodland Trust land.

As the climate crisis rolls on, sustainable and responsible tourism becomes more important than ever.

Rewilding projects offer a chance of travelling not just to see exciting animals, but to travel back in time to when nature was permitted to run its natural course. 

If you can’t make it down to one of the three rewilding projects yourself, head over to the Rewilding Britain website to discover projects local to you.

More info: rewildingbritain.com

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