Knepp castle estate..intensive farmland turned natural

[conisag]

Anyone else heard/read about this? its pritty amazing, the owner has set loose on his 3500 acres estate based in sussex Wild tamworth pigs, wild English Longhorn cattle, fallow deer/roe, rabbits, a herd of exmoor wild ponies
all with the intent of leaving the land to truly return to its wild state with help from the grazing animals and a virtual complete lack of human interference with the land.

In the future they are looking at reintroducing Elk, yep the massive 6'6 deer, possibly European Bison and beaver to help re-wild the river aurn that runs thru the "wildland".

The Website- Welcome to the Knepp Castle Estate
I think if alot more surrounding farmers took up the same intiative..which the current owner of Knepp is saying his making more moeny of the animals now..meat and all than with intensive farming then we could see massive habbitat improvements with England and all Britain.

if you read some of the information on the site the place is now alive with bugs and flora and fauna again after being a dead site for years.

[muldonach]

Quote from the Knepp castle website:-

With the advent of ‘single farm payments’ in 2004 – whereby subsidies are given for occupation rather than production of the land - an ecological alternative to farming began to seem a viable and extremely attractive way forward for Knepp.

We increased the area under the Countryside Stewardship Scheme to 750 acres south of the A272 running down to Dial Post, and entered a further 750 acres north of the A272 into a new scheme.

We are now looking into the possibility of taking this idea further and including other parts of Knepp in similar schemes. (see Knepp Wildland Project)

To paraphrase - the entire thing is underpinned by a subsidy based on the former farming activities, which have been severely curtailed whilst the landowner continues to pick up the subsidy. This sort of thing is all very well but the question long term is - is this an acceptable long term use of the taxpayers money? If the public are happy to see a sustantial wedge handed over this and other landowners to provide stewardship schemes then fair enough - but i suspect that this estate will be looking with some trepidation at potential changes in the SFP system.

There is a good deal of pressure within farming circles at least to remove the "farming entitlements" from schemes such as this. There is also overall pressure from politicians and public, not least in the UK,to reduce CAP spending in general.

I suspect that a large scale move by the farming community in general to such systems, as you seem to advocate, would not meet with approval from the general public once they realised that they are paying for it.

Regards
mac

[conisag]

Originally Posted by muldonach

Quote from the Knepp castle website:-

With the advent of ‘single farm payments’ in 2004 – whereby subsidies are given for occupation rather than production of the land - an ecological alternative to farming began to seem a viable and extremely attractive way forward for Knepp.

We increased the area under the Countryside Stewardship Scheme to 750 acres south of the A272 running down to Dial Post, and entered a further 750 acres north of the A272 into a new scheme.

We are now looking into the possibility of taking this idea further and including other parts of Knepp in similar schemes. (see Knepp Wildland Project)

To paraphrase - the entire thing is underpinned by a subsidy based on the former farming activities, which have been severely curtailed whilst the landowner continues to pick up the subsidy. This sort of thing is all very well but the question long term is - is this an acceptable long term use of the taxpayers money? If the public are happy to see a sustantial wedge handed over this and other landowners to provide stewardship schemes then fair enough - but i suspect that this estate will be looking with some trepidation at potential changes in the SFP system.

There is a good deal of pressure within farming circles at least to remove the "farming entitlements" from schemes such as this. There is also overall pressure from politicians and public, not least in the UK,to reduce CAP spending in general.

I suspect that a large scale move by the farming community in general to such systems, as you seem to advocate, would not meet with approval from the general public once they realised that they are paying for it.

Regards
mac

With all due respect, when did the public decide what our money was spent on?
we give 60 billion a year to foreign country's that do nothing for us while 26000 pensioners freeze to death at home each year because they cannot afford to heat there own homes, this is not a political thread and im not heading in that direction, what iam saying is, we have no control over what happens anyway, so im sure the public wouldn't mind our money doing something HERE for once and maybe doing something for our own wildlife rather than foreign wildlife and trying to have funds around to help farmers out when they need it.