Isabella Tree and her husband abandoned farming on 3,500 acres for rewilding

On a 3,500-acre estate in Sussex, the decision to stop farming conventionally did not mean simply leaving the land untouched. Isabella Tree and her husband, Charlie Burrell, began changing the way the Knepp Estate was managed, allowing large grazing animals to move across areas of the farm while reducing the interventions that had shaped the land for generations, as reported by Rewilding Institute. The change was partly driven by economics, but it also became an experiment in what might happen when natural processes were given more room. Over time, Tree describes soils recovering, earthworms returning and species that had become scarce appearing again. The estate became a working example of a different approach to land management.A 12th-century estate takes a new path under Isabella TreeKnepp had been part of the English countryside for centuries. Its history stretches back to the 12th century, while the Burrell family has been connected with the estate since the 18th century.By the late 20th century, however, farming the estate on its relatively small scale had become increasingly difficult to sustain. Tree and Burrell faced a choice between selling the land to larger farming oper...