2026-07-31
49 分钟This is The Guardian.
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It makes your heart sing.
Can a pioneering project show that rewilding really works?
By Patrick Barkham, read by Dermot Daly.
In the silent countryside south of Grantham, three vast steel barns rattled in the breeze.
Gathered in a loose circle beside them were 15 landowners, land agents
and a couple of young investors, all expensively dressed men, many with a sceptical mean.
It was June 2022 and Sir Charles Raymond Burrell, 10th Baronet, was explaining
how the purchase of 1,525 bleak acres, 617 hectares, of prairie fields of wheat and beans could revolutionise farming
and nature conservation, not just in South Lincolnshire, but across Britain and beyond.
Borough, known by everyone as Charlie, led the group on a walk from the barns beside the unlovable modern farmhouse,
a red brick behemoth with small windows like piggy eyes.
We began by crossing a field of broad beans.
Less than a century ago, it had been a patchwork of ten fields.
As we walked over the hard, cracked ground, we encountered not a single insect.
Later, by a verge, a couple of butterflies flew.
As for humans, we didn't meet a single other person