Charlie Burrell

From near bankruptcy to Britain’s rewilding revolution, Charlie Burrell reveals to Hugh Somerleyton, how letting nature lead at Knepp reshaped farming, food and the future of the countryside. Charlie inherited the 3,500-acre estate from his grandparents in the 1980’s and is the inspiration behind the Knepp Wildland Project. Having run Knepp Home Farm for 20 years, Charlie had a dramatic change of heart after a visit to the Oostvaardersplassen project in Holland in the 1990s and saw the potential for a similar “rewilding” project at home in Sussex. Beyond Knepp, Charlie is deeply involved in large-scale conservation efforts. He chairs Carpathia in Romania, a project often referred to as the “Yellowstone of Europe.” He also chairs Nattergal and serves as vice-chair of RePLANET, both of which focus on mobilizing private finance to fund landscape-scale ecological restoration. Additionally, he sits on the advisory board of Arcadia and serves on the oversight committee for one of its flagship initiatives, the Endangered Landscapes and Seascapes Program. Having previously chaired Rewilding Britain, he has since retired from its board and now holds a position on the supervisory board of Rewilding Europe.