It was really just an experiment.
That this unloved area became a sanctuary.
They come from the
inhospitable landscape out there.
And seeks Knepp.
It's like a fairy tale.
The earth coming to life behind them.
Isn't that a great sound?
We didn't understand it at
all when we were farming.
We hadn't seen the magic.
But it happened here.
It started a long time ago.
Charlie and I were very
young, in our twenties.
We drove through this wonderful,
traditional agricultural area.
It was an English idyll.
As we now know, it is
something quite different.
A lost landscape.
We were blissfully unaware of the
insidious developments that were underway.
But since we were born in the 60s,
We have lost millions
of birds from the sky.
Our native mammals are
threatened with extinction.
We are one of the most
exhausted countries in the world.
Back then we saw it as normal.
Knepp Castle was built in 1812
and is surrounded by agricultural land
of approximately twelve square kilometers
in south-east England.
Charlie was a trained farmer
and was ready to take over the family farm.
He was already told at the age of 14,
that it should skip a
generation and go to him.
What a privilege.
And yet something was
bubbling beneath the surface,
which we did not understand.
The area was completely plowed up.
Field after field of crops,
drowned in chemicals.
Fertilizer and fungicides and weed K*llers.
And it is well known that the
soil here is difficult to cultivate.
It is simply not suitable
for industrial agriculture.
Intensive farming was practiced all the
way down to the lake and around the house.
Everything was plowed,
sprayed and fertilized.
And it was all
financed via subsidies.
And that probably applied
to everyone around here.
We farmers were dependent on subsidies.
Which, among other things, helped
pay for tons of fertilizer and pesticides.
- There you are. - Yes, in the cornfield.
Geez, look at that 80s hairstyle.
But that is not
sustainable in the long run.
And it destroys the land
on which we depend.
And not having a plan for the future,
but knowing that we couldn't
continue as we were doing,
was depressing. All those sleepless nights.
And no one mentioned the earth?
You didn't walk around smelling it and
saying, "What a nice organic material."
Not that way.
Maybe it was just me giving up, but...
Our story is about the earth.
The layer that covers the planet.
Which we depend on for everything. And
we were in the process of destroying it.
Something is not right.
You sense that something is wrong.
It was only when we
realized how bad things were,
that we started listening.
I believe that the one who made us
look at the earth in a completely new way,
was Ted Green. The Nestor
when it comes to farming.
He was a bit of an untamed child.
He is symbiotically connected to the trees.
He is a wandering mycorrhizal fungus.
He doesn't take a shower.
He thinks it's a terrible thing.
That we are all bacteria and fungal
spores. He thinks completely differently.
Ted came and advised us
about our oak trees at Knepp.
There was something wrong with them.
He was horrified by what he discovered.
Wherever I looked, I saw a sea of wheat.
And I thought, Oh, theyre k*lling them.
They die."
He said that the tree's roots extend
almost fifteen meters out from the crown.
Away from the crown.
All the oak trees seen here,
are connected via microscopic fibers.
Mycorrhizal fungi that run through the
soil and collect minerals and nutrients.
They're really small threads. Like cotton.
He described it as a seething,
chemical circuit beneath our feet.
The life-giving system that keeps
almost every plant on the planet alive.
Plants and trees can
actually talk to each other.
Communicate about diseases.
About attacks from plague and insects.
Or about being eaten by animals.
Some claim that mycorrhizal
fungi can span continents.
Over hundreds of kilometers
without affecting their system.
And we've been getting
through it every year.
And sprayed the soil and
mycorrhizal fungi with poison.
It was we who destroyed the vital system,
on which the trees depend.
The earth eventually turns
to dirt. Without organic life.
And it needs fertilizer if
anything is to grow in it.
A young couple, two
children and a huge area.
To take them out here and show them trees
like this, and consider them.
To look at the tree in a different way.
And they understood it.
When I went home, I thought:
They're going to do something.
Something's going to happen.
In a way, we couldn't look at
the earth the same way anymore.
People like Ted told us how connections
can start a chain reaction,
which can start a whole cycle.
And recreate the landscape that we
have missed for hundreds of years.
Ted told Charlie,
that if he really wanted to understand
what a landscape should look like,
then he was to visit and take a closer look
at a radical experiment in the Netherlands.
Sometimes it is called Oostvardersplassen.
Here, an ecologist, Frans
Vera, had a radical idea:
how animals integrated into the
landscape long before humans changed it.
Science believes that all
of Europe looked like this.
Covered by trees. I think that's wrong.
Few believe my idea of what
the natural landscape looked like.
My theory is that the natural landscape
driven forward by large
hordes of large animals.
Frans began a startling experiment.
He introduced Konik ponies,
a herd of ancient horses,
and heck cattle, a wild breed of cattle.
The herds imitated the ancient
animals that once roamed across Europe.
The large animals would hold
down the trees, turn the earth,
change the landscape and show us what
Europe may have looked like in the past.
A landscape that we can no longer imagine.
Even scientists believe that you are
crazy if you believe in such an idea.
"It doesn't make sense.
It's not going to work."
You only believe it when you see it.
The trees did not take over the terrain.
Instead, a patchwork of
different species emerged,
which supplied an
enormous number of animals,
where so few had survived before.
Charlie came. I didn't know him.
He watched the cattle and
the wild horses and deer.
I didn't expect it to lead to anything.
Why would a crazy
Englishman adopt such an idea?
He liked it, but I know from experience,
that you will encounter a lot of
resistance if you adopt such an idea.
Instead of constantly
fighting against nature,
I would adapt the idea to Knepp.
If we come home with this idea,
it will bring about great change.
It's never been done before,
and there are so many laws,
which prevents one from
even thinking along such lines.
If you are a farmer, or especially
belong to a generation of farmers,
is the moment when you decide to stop,
burdened with so much
guilt and so much pride.
SALES OF AGRICULTURAL MACHINERY
The Burrell family has farmed
the land here for over 200 years.
Good morning and welcome
to Knepp Castle's farm.
On this wet September morning.
They sell their agricultural materials
and equipment for cattle farming.
For those who have never
been to an auction before...
All your efforts, hopes and dreams.
They admit to the outside
world that it has all been in vain.
It is incredibly painful to watch.
Sold for 25 pounds.
Charlie couldn't stand to watch.
He was in his office.
It was still too new.
Francis' message was clear:
We were going to tear down
the fence. Tear everything up.
And let the animals roam freely.
It was incredibly exciting when
we let the Exmoor ponies out.
They kicked and jumped around.
They have a robust appearance
that takes you back to the Ice Age.
There is a wildness about them that
domesticated animals do not have.
We were looking for ancient breeds.
Cattle that are as close to their
ancestor, the aurochs, as possible.
Instead of wild boar, we
acquired Tamworth pigs.
Like that, yes. Off you go.
It was the beginning of a
journey for all these animals.
From domestic to wild.
I remember the pigs best.
They seemed so incredibly docile.
Is it possible for these animals,
these huge, domesticated
animals, to survive out here?
The first winter it would break or bear.
Could the animals really survive out here?
All the long winter?
Farm animals are fed in the winter.
But ours had to take care of itself.
After all the doubts and worries
It was pure joy when you met a sow
walking along an old hedge with
a retinue of piglets behind him.
When the day was drawing to a close,
She carefully led them
to the shelter of a clearing.
Using the leaves on the ground
She built a little nest for them.
She had returned to her natural behavior.
They find a small cave
where they can stay warm,
because they are quite small
and quite thin when they are born.
But it doesn't stop there.
She returns with leaves and moss,
which she puts them in, and
which acts as a duvet at night.
And at this time of year, the pregnant cows
wander around looking for a secluded spot,
where they can calve.
After generations in captivity
This calf is born one
step closer to the outdoors.
After giving birth, she needs iron, so
she immediately starts eating nettles.
She doesn't eat them at
other times of the year.
And when the time comes, the cow introduces
her calf to the rest of the herd.
It is a touching experience to see all
the cows, starting with the matriarch,
Welcome the calf and watch
it become part of the tribe.
Part of their collective consciousness.
You realize that these instincts
are completely unattainable.
In a farm environment.
Charlie doesn't like
to talk about the past.
He focuses on us creating a
new landscape for the future.
But we are definitely trying to
awaken ancient relationships.
Our animals may look like
tame ponies and shabby old cows,
But right from the
beginning, the animals
begin to become something
completely different.
That's not to say there weren't
challenges on the journey.
From the domesticated to the wild.
Not least with the rather
complicated Duncan.
Duncan was not afraid of people at all,
and he fell into a heap outside
the door of the property's office.
They do this to mark their territory.
One day he broke into the office
and went straight to the reception.
He scared the life out of our secretary.
Out with you now.
He was problematic because he
didn't know if he was wild or tame.
He found himself in a strange borderland.
It wasn't just Duncan who was too tame.
At that time we collected money
through fairs and polo tournaments.
He has to go all the way.
And the pigs, of course, began
to associate party tents with food.
They went straight into the tent
and began mingling with the guests.
And eat canapes.
He takes the ball.
They are looking for an
opportunity up the field.
They broke into a catering tent.
And ate boxes of
Mr. Whippy's ice cream mix.
They are moving forward. Now they
have the ball and are approaching the goal.
And then Duncan appeared.
They press and move the ball forward.
It looks like a track
runner. A wild Exmoor pony.
Stay calm.
Duncan is mixing with
these precious polo ponies,
and is ready to fight.
We have a few problems,
but the game continues.
Just stay calm.
There was always total chaos.
Oh, no. He's heading for the marquee.
He comes out and knocks over
the table! The lemon cake is ruined.
He's returning to the field.
He's definitely not a polo pony.
He is on his way to the goal.
The pony is flying all over the place.
It's funny here afterwards,
but that kind of behavior
could have easily turned
the public against us.
If that happened, we risked
the state removing their support.
The clock was ticking.
Could this motley assembly of
animals reshape the landscape?
In the way that people like Ted
and Frans claimed they would?
The first signs of how animals could
change this small part of England,
came from the pigs.
The first thing they did was plow the
edges down along all the driveways.
Furrows on both sides of the driveways.
The reason was that these areas
had never been plowed before.
It was the only part of the area
that we had never plowed or sprayed.
Which were full of life, with the
worms, insects and roots that they sought.
It was as if they were showing
us what we had done to the earth.
The places that we had not cultivated
were the ones that the pigs flocked around.
Suddenly, Charlie had a clear vision.
That's what happened to the earth,
which would show us whether
the project would be successful.
Whether life actually returned.
There is a circular ornament
outside the main door.
With a stone statue of a dog in the middle.
Of course, we have never plowed there.
They went straight for it.
But pigs digging in the
lawn was a bit too much.
Not even Charlie, no
matter how much he
wanted to, could let
go of the grass circle.
He always has a whip
hanging by the umbrellas.
It's hard to get a giant
sow to turn around,
when she is determined to
turn upside down on the lawn.
You only need to do it a couple of
times because they are quite intelligent.
They remember that and
tell the piglets not to go there.
"There's free play everywhere,
except for the circle there."
I get crazy when they mess up the lawn.
They're fast.
Yes. You have to ride
a bike to catch them.
Imagine Indiana Jones on a bike.
Okay, another red one.
Whoops, it flew away.
The strangest things happen sometimes.
There was a dead owl in the freezer
next to the ice cream for six months.
There's a lot of junk in it.
I have stored a lot of
different things in the freezer.
We tried to create a database.
A beginning of the story
and our starting point.
A form of scale.
Early on, we saw no signs of change.
And it was an eye-opener.
What had we been up to?
What were we thinking?
A kind of guilt.
We share that mindset now.
We are responsible for a
period of massive destruction.
We'll have to think about it.
And we do. We've started to think about it.
The farmer I married had
become an insect collector.
He crawled around and rummaged through
cow crates to see what he could find.
It was important, because from
nothing I could find in the coke boxes,
when we were farmers,
we began to consider them as
a kind of new universe for life.
Even at a very early stage
we began to see life return
to what had been farmland.
You can feel the lightness of the earth,
when it starts to recover
thanks to all these little creatures.
And the life that returns to the dead earth
after a hundred years of
plowing, is amazing to observe.
We did something that was
completely without purpose.
We had to rely completely on nature
and see what would happen.
It was a challenge after 200 years
of so-called progress in agriculture.
And it required careful communication
with our farming neighbors.
Hello there.
Charlie stood up and talked
about free-living animals
and the re-creation of the earth.
And he explained that agricultural
support had to be changed.
He showed pictures of Knepp
and pictures of what we expected
Knepp to look like in ten years.
We had expected a great
degree of enthusiasm.
Please come and have a
chat with us. Thank you.
But there was deafening silence.
But then some of them spoke up.
- It doesn't put food on the table.
- That's the problem.
They said it was a disgrace.
That's pure madness.
That we were irresponsible.
Should we have wild boars
running around on the main road?
That there would be weeds growing
everywhere, and worst of all, meadow fire.
It will k*ll cattle and horses.
There is no doubt about that.
This kind of thing has to
be handled by the individual.
The anger they felt when they
saw our fields covered in them.
This journey would not be
as easy as we had hoped.
We were trying to raise two young children.
We tried to build a life.
We felt under a lot of pressure.
I've felt like a bit of an
outsider for much of my life.
I'm adopted, and so you probably
always experience some kind of distance.
And a vague feeling of
not being part of the group,
or that one is not born to
follow the conventional path.
I think it can help you when you
think everything is going wrong.
My dad always said I was
looking for the hole in the fence.
In a way, that's what we're doing. We're
looking for a way out of a mindset that
which has limited us for so long.
We needed some signs that
it wasn't leading to nothing.
We needed to see that
something would actually come of it.
It was at that time that
we went out at sunrise
and suddenly became completely
overwhelmed by birdsong.
It took us back to our childhood.
The nightingale quickly returned,
and they were now more
numerous than ever before.
But then something quite amazing happened.
That wonderful coo.
We had never had lovebirds before.
That one of the country's most
endangered birds had found us...
This is Chaucer, Shakespeare.
The kind we sing about at Christmas.
"My true love gave me."
We are losing this species.
They are our second most endangered bird.
Suddenly there is a
place in Southern England,
where the number of
lovebirds is actually increasing.
This goes completely against the trend.
No one expected that.
Something quite amazing is happening here.
This ugly, thorny, unloved piece of
land began to become a sanctuary.
And other rare animals
found their way to us.
The small animals that
many of us have forgotten.
And I love the idea of the dwarf mouse.
We had not observed this mammal
before the start of the project.
They found us somehow. I enjoy imagining,
that they somehow
instinctively seek us out,
now that we have an area for them.
You can imagine them in
the hostile terrain out there.
Out on an adventure. In
search of a better place.
They come in through
viaducts. Under the roads.
And end up in places like here, with
perfect opportunities to build nests.
And they build the
most beautiful little nests.
Where they balance everything.
They weave them around these long stems,
and then they feed them with thistle seeds.
So it ends up being these incredibly
beautiful and luxurious nests.
We are amazed every day by what we find.
What animals are coming to find us?
We never know what little
thing will make a difference.
That butterfly effect that
can initiate a transformation.
Wherever you look, animals and
plants are rediscovering connections,
which has long been lost
in the modern landscape.
When a cow leaves a footprint,
even the footprint in the ground can
become a whole universe
of fantastic creatures.
A place where you can
find water lilies and snails.
We even found a small fly that has
never been seen before in the UK.
All of these creatures become
food for crops, bats, and birds.
Thanks to the cows that
wander around the landscape.
Even oak trees have complex relationships.
They need open spaces to grow.
And it is the large ruminants
that create these open areas.
With a little help from the forest damage.
This is how oak trees grow in the open.
Their life begins under thorny bushes.
This way, the young tree is
protected from gnawing mouths.
Until it is strong
enough to fend for itself.
Just as with Oostvaardersplassen,
the changes in the landscape took place
through the influence of animals.
In the Netherlands,
the project was
eventually regulated
due to public concerns.
People believed that natural
deaths caused unnecessary suffering.
Here at Knepp we take care of the animals.
But we have our own
problems with public opinion.
A letter to Charlie said his grandparents
would be turning in their graves,
horrified at what he had done.
That we were unpatriotic.
One woman simply said that what
we were doing hurt her feelings.
It was perceived as an insult
by those who saw the village
as something controlled, managed and
as something with its own ideal of beauty.
And that we turned something
beautiful into something very ugly.
It actually came close to
breaking us from time to time.
It became personal and hurtful.
And it caused the feeling that
you are no longer welcome.
You stand outside
society. You feel ostracized.
We were under great pressure
and criticism was growing.
Large areas of land are left to nature.
But questions can be asked about this.
TV broadcasts.
Last summer there were reports of
fields infected with meadow fire blight.
Angry letters to ministers.
This horrible weed. It makes me nauseous.
Radioindslag.
You can do this because you
are so immensely privileged.
We could have thrown in the towel.
But we stood firm.
Because throughout the entire
period we saw how life returned.
I've spent my whole
life looking at insects,
so I could see that something was up.
The worms that migrated
here and moved in the soil...
Something that scientists
thought could take a hundred years,
happened in ten years.
Now we have 19 different
species of earthworms.
All the material from
the surface that is
pulled down into the
small holes creates soil.
It is the building block of life.
All the millions of worms that
contribute life and organic material
and provides nourishment
for all the small insects.
And nourishes Ted's
network of mycorrhizal fungi.
That's impressive.
The renewal of the earth.
That's what the transformation
of Knepp is all about.
Encouraged by the changes in the earth
Charlie took his obsession with
landscape change to a new level.
He would now re-wild the river Adur,
which runs through our land and which had
been compressed into a straight channel.
He wanted to restore the beautiful curves,
which can still be seen casting
shadows of the past across the plains.
But of course, it required a huge
amount of equipment and investment.
Ten years of studies on
the environmental impact
in collaboration with the
authorities. It was a huge project.
Then Derek Gow appeared.
We showed Derek around,
and he rolled his eyes and said:
A couple of beavers would have
fixed it for free in six months.
And they would have done a better job.
I clearly remember saying to Charlie,
that beavers have been doing
this for hundreds or millions of years.
They are far better at restoring
wetlands than we will ever be.
Derek has created a sanctuary for
European beavers on his farm in Devon.
He is Britain's leading beaver specialist.
He invited us over so we
could meet the beavers,
which he hoped to be able to
put out into the open one day.
You can see the water but
not many visible branches.
When they build the foundation,
You can clearly see that they are
made of branches, wood and stone.
This creature is going
to change the landscape.
You can see that the water
that the beavers dam up,
cuts off the forest, which
opens up in response.
And it all turns into a
big, wet, hanging garden.
Full of life.
They make a landscape
that is in bad shape better.
These destructive relationships,
where the water flows
directly from the fields,
directly down the main
canal, down to the city
and "bang". Flooding schools
and single-family homes.
Cars are overturning and people
are standing and crying into the drain.
It will be over soon.
When Charlie met Derek, we knew
that one of the most important things
that we had to bring
back here were beavers.
They have been missing for over 400 years.
If we were to release beavers,
We had to get approval
from the authorities.
That's totally ridiculous.
A permit to keep two
beavers in an enclosure.
An animal that can prevent
floods, purify the water,
restore biological diversity.
What is the problem?
They're not radioactive.
It's not an allosaurus,
which we release into nature.
Who overturns buses in central London.
It's just an animal that does
an incredible amount of good.
There were already a
number of beavers in
England, but they had
been released illegally.
Of the guerrilla within
rewilding, you could say.
No matter how sympathetic
we found this approach,
It wasn't something we could do.
I'm not going to talk about
covert operations. That won't work.
- What is this about? - My mouth is closed.
There are many ways to
bring beavers back to an area.
We do it with a license.
We had to wait eight years for the permit.
We may not have beavers at Hammer Pond yet,
But the pigs show us
something completely new.
A behavior that we never expected.
They swim, or rather dive.
They can hold their
breath. That's quite unique.
I don't think cows can, but pigs
can hold their breath underwater.
And they come up with huge
pond mussels in their mouths.
With each passing year, we saw how
one species could set off a chain reaction,
which we could never have imagined.
Like the seeds of the willow tree,
drifting like down through the air in May.
They need to find moist, bare
soil. Otherwise they will die.
The pigs create the open areas,
where the willow's seeds can grow.
So now we have a lot of willow trees
where the pigs have been messing around.
And willow is food for the
larvae of the small Iris butterfly.
One of our most rarely seen butterflies.
There are now hundreds
of them around Knepp.
We now have the largest
population in the country.
So one of the rarest butterflies
thrives here thanks to the pig.
There are so many similar connections,
that extends out and makes
the landscape more complex.
And there is also a new
complexity in their lives.
You see their personality emerge.
A whole spectrum of expressions,
interaction and interest.
And you realize that farm
animals are a shadow of themselves
because of the context
in which we place them.
It arouses emotions to see
the animals express themselves.
I remember a special moment,
where one of the foals led the
herd to the boundary around Knepp,
and a beautiful
thoroughbred horse looked in
from the human world outside.
It's easy to have a
romantic view of it all,
but I couldn't shake the thought that
she must have looked on with longing.
Perhaps with a form of the
horses' response to jealousy.
It wasn't just the horses
who were watching.
It felt like the whole world was watching
as a new threat to our credibility arose.
Began to spread across the yard.
We had unleashed a monster from the earth.
A plant that farmers have always
feared and fought against. Milk thistle.
Its roots spread like wildfire underground,
when it clones itself and
creates huge colonies.
Only powerful pesticides can knock it down.
Even in this country, where it belongs,
There are government regulations
to control its spread in the fields.
It was not the new landscape
we had expected after so long.
Charlie began to doubt and thought,
Maybe we should just spray them.
Too much was at stake.
We were sure that an official would come.
And close the project down.
Incredibly, and without our knowledge, our
rescue is being mobilized in North Africa.
In 2009, for the first
time in over ten years,
A huge number of thistle
butterflies migrate to Europe.
They arrive with a high pressure
and are moving across the
channel in ever-increasing numbers.
On the morning of May 25th
A radar station in New
Hampshire detects a migration
with eleven million butterflies
heading towards Britain.
I don't know how they found Knepp.
They descended from the sky outside the
front door and flew towards the thistles.
Tens of thousands of butterflies.
If you closed your eyes, it
sounded like a distant waterfall.
It was amazing. You
could feel their presence.
They laid their eggs on the thistles.
The caterpillars began to eat the leaves.
Soon only the stems remained.
They were completely molested.
We were saved for a while. By
a cloud of millions of butterflies.
People are still talking
about the amazing year 2009.
They didn't come back the next
spring. Not a single one of them.
Finally, we got a glimpse
of how nature works.
A group of species that connect
and cover an English landscape,
which no one has seen in hundreds of years.
It's magical. An unreal landscape.
With tall, thorny, white flowers.
And birds chirping everywhere.
The highest concentration
of songbirds in the country.
Paths that open up the shrubbery and
intersect like the mushroom network below.
And creates a fantastic, complex,
dense and deep vegetation structure,
which is like rocket fuel for wildlife.
The feelings you get, the
things that well up inside you,
relegates one to the past.
It feels like you are in a
completely different place.
Think about how a small
microcosm like Knepp
can create something much
greater than the sum of its parts.
The feeling of having accomplished that.
Just by letting go.
The years of watching this
happen have also changed us.
It has made us more and more aware
about the loss that occurred continuously.
All around us.
Fourteen million birds have
disappeared from the sky.
We have lost 97 percent
of our wildflower meadows.
We have plowed up 120,000 km of hedges.
We have lost tens of
thousands of old-growth forests.
A quarter of all mammals in the
UK are threatened with extinction.
We are one of the most
exhausted countries in the world.
Fifteen years after we first
heard our lovebirds on Knepp,
I found a dead dove on the ground.
It may have died of old age,
stress or during migration.
And it coincided with a scientific report,
which showed that many of these
species are doomed to extinction.
Knepp can never stop extinction on his own
of lovebirds in Great Britain.
It underlined how small the project is.
Knepp is a bubble.
It's a drop in the ocean.
In relation to the enormous
transformation that this planet needs.
The experiment showed us solutions.
How to tie a rewilded landscape together.
But after fifteen years, our message
of recovery had not caught on.
It must go beyond these limits.
Beyond Knepp's fortress.
It should reach other people.
But a new animal
should profile us in a way,
which no cow or pig could ever have done.
This new chapter at Knepp would in a way
become the most important thing.
Like that, yes.
Head first.
Hello.
Sixteen years after
the start of the project
we introduced an animal,
which was not reported breeding in the UK
since 1416.
It feels like magic.
This thing about storks coming
with babies in their beaks.
They still symbolize luck,
rebirth and a new beginning.
It's so beautiful when the
birds take off from the enclosure.
They spread their wings and
immediately they hover over you.
And looking down at the new world.
The big question for us:
Can our birds even figure
out how to build a nest,
when storks haven't bred
here for hundreds of years.
When they collect branches, I think:
My God, do they even
know how to build a nest?
Later they begin an even stranger process,
where they try to do it on a seemingly
uncomfortable bed of branches.
And as the crowning glory
One morning I heard a
noise from the chimney.
I never thought they would be so confident,
that they would dare to
build a nest on our roof.
Now we have to wait
and see if any chicks hatch.
Which will be the first wild storks
to be born in Britain in 600 years.
And after waiting for
permission for ten years,
We finally got our beavers.
An animal that has been extinct in Britain,
and which we have eradicated through
hunting, had returned to British soil.
And they were there completely legally.
It was so exciting.
Beavers are amazing engineers.
They create complex watercourses
that absorb storms and prevent flooding.
It's amazing how an animal's actions
can not only heal the earth
but also change people's lives
far away from Knepp.
Incredibly, we now have two stork babies.
And they are ready for their first flight.
Inspired by this amazing story
People are arriving.
It has aroused some public interest.
So people now know what has been lost
in other parts of the country.
I found a butterfly!
A summer evening in June
The first stork chick in
Britain in 600 years hatches.
It left its nest.
And flew.
Now I have a big pile of
branches on top of the chimney.
An excuse to get Charlie to climb up there.
Are they on all three chimneys or just two?
He doesn't seem to be
listening. That's not unusual.
- Charlie. - And?
- What does it look like up there?
- There are meadowsweet growing up here.
Oh, no.
It may feel like the end
of our story, but of course
Charlie has new ambitions and dreams.
About a future far away from Knepp.
From up here I can see
the path through the
Downs to the River Adur.
The cattle, pigs and deer
and the ponies are looking for the water.
Think about how corridors can
be shaped like veins in a body.
Throughout the UK.
And change the landscape.
Throughout our country,
our world, our planet.
There is something magical
about this enormous transformation.
On this exhausted piece of land.
Most of the planet is exhausted.
It's amazing to imagine
these large herbivores
wander around and recreate
the landscape where they emerge.
It's possible that our pigs will
reach all the way down to the beach.
Where they root in the
seaweed and bring nutrients
from the coastal areas all
the way up to the mountains.
It felt lonely for so long.
In one of our darkest moments, a
friend sent this film clip of a man...
There's a crazy dance going on.
And everyone sitting
around him thinks he's crazy.
But soon other brave people start dancing.
Soon everyone joins him.
And suddenly they have formed a movement.
And the few who are still sitting
down suddenly appear strange.
They are not participating.
We are no longer lonely lunatics,
who dance like crazy
to attract our attention.
We are part of a large movement
of people who understand.
If we want to save the
systems on which all life depends,
then we must change our
way of looking at the earth.
And Knepp has shown how we can do it.
It shows that we can
bring life back to places
where it did not previously exist.
We know how to do it. We know
how to let nature back into our lives.
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