It is a place where ‘carbon’ in form of woody material, is in abundance - the climate change mitigation potential of rewilding is huge and that can clearly be seen at Knepp It is more traditional open parkland in the romantic tradition, where the deer roam and trees left to die but not taken down or away It is ‘exploded’ hedgerows which have been allowed to expand, grow out, disperse their seeds into fields, provide homes to invertebrates, birds and mammals It is open fields - former pastures - that are also favoured by the grazers and appear almost like they did 20 years ago It is ponds, natural scrapes, streams and waterholes where the free-roaming animals congregate and mingle as they would in Africa It is patches of relict woodland with a more open understory providing shelter and shade for livestock and home for woodland birds It is a set of shallow river valleys (laggs) which are relatively unchanged since the project started because they are favoured for grazing It is scrub dominated by Bramble, or by Dog Rose, or by Blackthorn I say ‘at first glance’ above because once you start to delve deeper, past the bramble mounds and scrubby Blackthorn, sedges and Ragwort, in fact Knepp is a myriad of different ecosystems and ‘niche spaces’.
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