Sir Charles Burrell, 10th Baronet

Sir Charles Raymond Burrell, 10th Baronet (born 27 August 1962) is an English landowner and conservationist.

Burrell spent his early years on his parents' farm in Rhodesia and then in Australia but returned to England for secondary education. He was educated at Millfield and the Royal Agricultural College. He succeeded to the baronetcy upon the death of his father, Sir John Raymond Burrell, 9th Baronet, on 29 May 2008. He married the writer Isabella Elizabeth Nancy Tree on 2 December 1993.[1] They have two children, Nancy (born 29 May 1995) and Edward (born 10 October 1996).

Estate management

He lives with his family at Knepp Castle, West Sussex, a castellated mansion built for the Burrells around 1808 by John Nash.[2][3] He has managed the 3,500-acre Knepp estate since he was 21, and is now internationally known for the rewilding project that he has undertaken there.[4][5][6][7][8] His decision to move into nature conservation was taken in 1999 having for seventeen years attempted to make the Estate's arable and dairy enterprises profitable. On heavy Low Weald clay, with poor drainage and traditional, small, hedged fields, the Estate was ill-suited to compete with modern intensive farming. His Damascene moment came when, in 2000, he received Countryside Stewardship funding to restore 350 acres around the castle that had been under the plough since the Second World War. The restoration of Knepp's Repton park presented him with the chance to look at the land in an entirely different way.

Further inspired by a visit to the Oostvaardersplassen nature reserve in the Netherlands in 2002 and the work of pioneering Dutch ecologist Dr Frans Vera[9][10], Burrell set about establishing a 'hands-off', process-led, naturalistic grazing system across the entire Estate. Using free-roaming herds of old English longhorns, Exmoor ponies and Tamworth pigs as proxies for the aurochs, tarpan and wild boar that would once have roamed the British countryside, as well as red and fallow deer, to create dynamism and drive the processes of habitat creation, the Knepp Wildland Project has seen astonishing wildlife successes[11]. Headline species include nightingales[12], turtle doves and purple emperor butterflies[13][14]. Knepp now has all five UK species of owls and 13 out of the UK's 17 species of bats[15].

In 2010 the project received Higher Level Environmental Stewardship funding. The Knepp Wildland Advisory Board of over twenty or so ecologists, including Dr Frans Vera and Prof Sir John Lawton, author of the 2010 'Making Space for Nature' report, advises the project. The Knepp Wildland experiment has become an enterprise of considerable influence, informing ideas about the future of nature conservation and the provision of ecosystem services such as soil restoration, biodiversity, water purification, flood mitigation, carbon sequestration, human health and recreation. The RSPB, National Trust, British Trust for Ornithology and The Wildlife Trusts are amongst the many conservation organisations regularly visiting and taking inspiration from Knepp's success.

The Estate is still farming, albeit far more extensively, producing 75 tonnes of low-input, organic, pasture-fed meat per annum from its free-roaming herds[16]. Wildlife tourism provides another significant income stream.

Awards & recognition for the Knepp Wildland project

2015 People Environment Achievement (PEA) award for Nature

2015 Innovative & Novel Project award in the UK River Prize for the River Adur restoration project

2017 Anders Wall Award for special contribution to the rural environment in the European Union

2017 Gold, Best Guided Tour of the Year, Beautiful South Awards

The Knepp Wildland project is recognised as a Verified Conservation Area (VCA) and is a member of the Rewilding Europe Network.

'Sir Charles Burrell's Knepp Estate' is cited as an outstanding example of landscape-scale restoration in the Government's 25 Year Environment Plan[17].

Appointments

Sir Charles Burrell is Chair of Rewilding Britain, Foundation Conservation Carpathia and The Beaver Advisory Committee for England. He is on the board of The Arcadia Fund, Ingleby Farms Environment Committee, The Endangered Landscapes Programme, Wildlife Estates England, and The Bronze Oak Project.

References

  1. ↑ Person Page 18983
  2. ↑ Welcome to the Knepp Castle Estate
  3. ↑ Miers, Mary. "Knepp Castle, Sussex". Country Life, 17 July 2003
  4. ↑ Taylor, Peter. "Home Counties wildland - the new nature at Knepp". ECOS 27 (3/4) 2006 pp.44-51
  5. ↑ Marren, Peter. "Recall of the wild". The Guardian, 9 May 2007
  6. ↑ Mitchell, Sandy, "Tear down the barricades". Country Life, November 15, 2007.
  7. ↑ 2009. "Knepp Castle: gone to the dogs, and horses, and pigs...". The Daily Telegraph.
  8. ↑ Farm Walk: Knepp Castle - West Sussex
  9. ↑ [[:nl:Frans Vera|]]
  10. ↑ Marren, Peter, "The Great Rewilding Experiment at Knepp Castle", British Wildlife, June 2016, Vol 27, No.5, p334
  11. ↑ Barnes, Simon. "The farm that went wild." The Spectator, 30 May 2015. p22.
  12. ↑ McCarthy, Michael. "The decline and fall of the nightingale". The Independent, 26 May, 2015
  13. ↑ Marren, 2016, p336
  14. ↑ Oates, Matthew. "In Pursuit of Butterflies". Bloomsbury, 2015. p392-3, p444-446
  15. ↑ Marren, 2016 p338
  16. ↑ Wale, Michael. "Say no to intensive farming". Home Farmer, April 2016
  17. ↑ 'A Green Future: Our 25 Year Plan to Improve the Environment'. DEFRA Policy Paper, 11 Jan 2018, p.60


Further reading

Goulson, Dave. 'Bee Quest'. Jonathan Cape, 2017. Chapter 8 "Knepp Castle and the forgotten bees".

Harvey, Graham. 'Grass-fed Nation'. Icon Books, 2016. Chapter 9 "Wild new farms".

Tree, Isabella. 'Wilding - the return of nature to a British farm'. Picador, May 2018.

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