A rewilding venture at Boothby Wildland, a former 1,525-acre arable farm south of Grantham in Lincolnshire, is attempting to prove that restoring nature can be commercially profitable. The project is led by Sir Charles "Charlie" Burrell, the aristocrat behind the celebrated Knepp estate in West Sussex, whose company Nattergal bought the intensively farmed site for £13.8m in late 2021. The article matters because it tests a bold proposition: that private investment, rather than government or grassroots action alone, could reverse Britain's steep decline in wildlife by making conservation pay.

Boothby had been "hard-arsed" intensive farming — an absentee landlord, over 92% ploughed field, and £250,000 annual profit, half of it from a basic land subsidy due to be scrapped by 2027 under reforms shifting payments to "public goods". Nattergal plans to end 6,000 years of cultivation there, sowing no crops, using no fertilisers or pesticides, and breaking up field drains to let wetlands and weeds return. Burrell hopes to replicate Knepp, which he and his wife Isabella Tree turned from a loss-making farm into a profitable rewilding and ecotourism success hosting rare species. The piece notes the scale of decline it aims to counter: England and Wales have lost 98% of wildflower meadows, half their ancient woodland and 90% of freshwater wetlands.