By donating to this campaign, SOS will help finance part of a series of works to improve the area including a freshwater control structure, a bund built to separate the freshwater areas from the brackish water areas.
@mayfieldbirder.bsky.social @mostlyscarce.bsky.social @jamko69.bsky.social

Hi Ben, sorry for the slow reply. So glad you enjoyed your beaver pen tour! So we now need to look at how and when we could apply for licence to release beavers into the wider Adur catchment, as that is how the wild release process will work. Hopefully in due course we can remove the fence!

Will do Karin, got a bit out of the habit!

At Knepp we've recorded 527 different moth species, including some rare & declining ones: sloe carpet, rush wainscot, webb’s wainscott, dusky thorn, figure of eight, ghost moth & bulrush veneer.

More: knepp.co.uk/rewilding/wi...

📷Pippa Reay, Neil Hulme
🧠 Matt Phelps @mostlyscarce.bsky.social (2/2)

...but also a wealth of feeding opportunities for wintering species. This is particularly significant this winter when we have been experiencing both an influx of Hawfinches into the south of England combined with a shortage of some of their other typical food sources such as Hornbeam & Yew seeds.

Note in the photo here the left-hand bird was clearly interrupted mid-meal! This is very exciting as it proves what we had been suspecting; that the rewilded scrubland landscape at Knepp is not only providing a resurgent sanctuary for scarce breeding species such as Nightingale and Turtle Dove...

Rummaging through the leaf litter under the hedges I was very pleased to find plenty of split sloe stones, sliced open by the finches' incredibly powerful bills (capable of exerting over 60kg of pressure per square inch!).

Thank you Citizen Zoo for a thoroughly hopeful and inspiring two days!

Hope keeps me going, it's why I do what I do and it's why I truly believe rewilding can change the world. After all, one only has to listen to the many inspiring stories coming out of this weekend's conference to realise that it already is.

Every time I spend time out in the wildlands at Knepp I feel it. My esteemed predecessor Penny Green always refers to those of us lucky enough to work in the world of rewilding as being 'conservation optimists' and it is so very true.