In June 2022, a group of landowners, land agents and investors gathered beside three steel barns on a stretch of flat farmland south of Grantham, Lincolnshire. They had come to hear Sir Charles Raymond Burrell, the 10th Baronet, explain how buying 1,525 acres of prairie-style wheat and bean fields might reshape both farming and conservation in Britain.
The land, formerly known as Boothby Lodge Farm, had been intensively farmed by a contract operator for an absentee landlord. More than 92 percent of it was ploughed field, worked only a few days a year by large machinery. Pheasants were released on the remaining woodland for winter shoots. According to the Guardian, the farm generated around £250,000 in annual profit, but half of that came from the government's "basic payment" subsidy, which is due to end by 2027 under reforms introduced by former environment secretary Michael Gove. Future support will depend on farmers delivering "public goods" such as clean water, healthy soils or wildlife habitat.
Burrell's company, Nattergal, bought the site in late 2021 for £13.8m and renamed it Boothby Wildland. The plan is to end cultivation entirely: no more crops, fertilisers or pesticides, and the eventual removal of drainage systems installed by generations of farmers, allowing the soil to grow wild with weeds. Free-ranging herbivores such as cows, ponies, Tamworth pigs or bison could be introduced after five to seven years to maintain open habitat through grazing and dung, which restores soil life.
The Guardian reports that intensive farming has contributed heavily to Britain's ecological decline, with England and Wales having lost 98 percent of wildflower meadows, along with half of the country's ancient woodland, half of its lowland ponds, 90 percent of freshwater wetlands and 62 percent of farmland birds over the past century.
Burrell's confidence rests on his experience at Knepp, his family's 3,500-acre estate in West Sussex, where he and his wife, Isabella Tree, abandoned conventional farming in 2000. Despite early criticism from neighbours, Knepp became known for rare nightingales, turtle doves, white storks and purple emperor butterflies, while also drawing ecotourism, producing free-range meat and vegetables, and employing more people than a standard farm — all while turning a profit.
Betting on nature as an investment
Nattergal is backed by investors including Peter Davies of Lansdowne Capital, green investor Ben Goldsmith and solar entrepreneur Jeremy Leggett, and promises at least a 4.5 percent return. Burrell told the Guardian he hopes to expand the model across Europe, describing ambitions for "a billion-dollar project."
Central to Boothby's business model is the sale of Biodiversity Net Gain units. From 2024, housebuilders and infrastructure developers in England are required under government rules to deliver measurable biodiversity gains — creating a potential market for land like Boothby that is being restored to a wilder state.
Whether the project can match Knepp's success remains to be seen, but Burrell's wager is that demonstrating nature's financial value may be as important to conservation as any government policy or grassroots campaign.