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Lincolnshire rewilding project aims to restore lost woodlands and wetlands

natureJul 9, 202610107

In June 2022 Sir Charles Raymond Burrell led a walk across Boothby Lodge Farm south of Grantham, explaining how his company Nattergal plans to convert 1,525 acres (617 hectares) of arable land into rewilded woodlands and wetlands. Nattergal bought the former intensive arable holding for £13.8m and intends to stop sowing crops, stop adding fertilisers and pesticides, and allow natural habitats to recover. The farm had been more than 92% ploughed fields, produced pheasant shoots on about 3% woodland and made about £250,000 profit a year, half of which came from the basic payment subsidy that the government intends to end by 2027. Barkham’s report places the project in the wider context of long-term habitat loss in England and Wales: a 98% loss of wildflower meadows, half of ancient woodland gone, half of lowland ponds lost, 90% of freshwater wetlands lost and 62% decline in farmland wild birds. Burrell presents the scheme as a test of whether nature-based land use can deliver the public goods that agriculture subsidies will soon reward and so provide an alternative income model for landowners. The project is pitched as a potential template to influence other landowners, investors and policy by showing how rewilding might fit new “public money for public goods” payments.

The Guardian
@theguardian.com

‘It makes your heart sing’: can a pioneering project show that rewilding really works?

722h ago
Brynley Heaven
@brynleyheaven.bsky.social

Patrick Barkham visits a Lincs rewilding project and succumbs to the aristocratic embrace, dishes up half-truths about our history. Those traded biodiversity units are basically nonsense mate and you should say so. OK, I live nearby and it's brilliant

112h ago
Brynley Heaven6

our ancient woodlands were not in the main destroyed by intensive farming, it came much, much earlier than you think and the farming was anything but intensive, except in the sense of the labour applied

Thesecretfarmer2

There's some pretty awful journalism in places in thay article. Of course the owner (call him Charlie like he's one of us!) Can afford all that! Maybe the writer could visit an everyday farm to see what the economics & realities are like! Plus how we also have great wildlife alongside crops!

Dr Laura Sangha
@lsangha.bsky.social

I was lucky enough to see turtle doves in Tenerife last time I was there hiking. How wonderful it would be to see them in Devon in the future. www.themoorlander.co.uk/news/turtle-...

1521h ago
Marc Hunt
@somersetbirder.bsky.social

Canada Goose at North Brewham Rewilding Project in Somerset 😍

415h ago
Climate, Ecology, War & More - Dr Glen Barry BigEarthData.ai
@bigearthdata.ai

Rewilding Takes Hold in Illinois ->Sierra Club | More on "Illinois rewilding native ecosystem law" at BigEarthData.ai | #Rewilding

2Yesterday
Emily Green
@chanceofrain.bsky.social

"Thirty years ago, nightingales sang from the hedges of Boothby but they had vanished with the loss of bushy habitat. Dixon had told Burrell that she would forgive him for the loss of the farmland on one condition: he got the nightingales back." www.theguardian.com/news/2026/ju...

12h ago
Annie the Book
@anniethebook.bsky.social

I would love to participate in a project like this! This seed collecting/rewilding initiative in Scotland gives me hope: www.themarysue.com/would-you-ga...

1Yesterday
Katie Breathwick
@breathwick.bsky.social

“It will come good because it will have to, as the true bite of climate change hits”. Burrell talking before the extreme heat of this summer hit. We’d better start listening. www.theguardian.com/news/2026/ju...

1Just now
Dr Michael Fraser
@ffinlo.bsky.social

'It makes your heart sing’, by @patrickbarkham.bsky.social "Here, however, we were standing on a large slab of ordinary countryside that until three years ago had been an arable field. Now it was a wetland, roiling with life." www.theguardian.com/news/2026/ju... #Rewilding

1h ago
fossilfreeusa.bsky.social
@fossilfreeusa.bsky.social

#RebalanceEarth Is an investment fund funding ongoing rewilding project, its aim to treat nature as critical infrastructure & something that can be invested in, to achieve environmental and economic gains. BroughtonSanctuary is a 2500 acre rewilding project under way near Skipton in North Yorkshire

Yesterday
1 source
theguardian.com‘It makes your heart sing’: can a pioneering project show that rewilding really works?

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Lincolnshire rewilding project aims to restore lost woodlands and wetlandsnature