Name: East-Waste

Size: 12 acres

Date rewilding began: March 2022

Acquired in March 2022 East-Waste (so called because it is on the East of an area Godney Waste), is the first piece of land purchased outright by the charity. Just a few metres from our original site at Waste Drove in creates a wonderful 20 acre block of rewilding land. It is too soon to have seen many changes yet, but we’ve already spotted otter footprints down by the bank of the rhyne (a kind of large ditch or canal which runs along the northern edge of the property).

This land was bought with a generous philanthropic loan from We Have the Power – and we need to pay it back to make sure we can keep making more space for nature. Donate via the crowdfunder or on this website to secure this land, and help us buy more in the future.

East Waste Drove has long been used for grazing sheep. Our plan is simple. Leave it alone as best we can for nature to take its course. We may need to make a couple of small interventions at the start, or clean the odd ditch to keep our neighbours happy, but as far as we can this will simply be land left alone to ‘go wild’. Over time this and other patches of land will create a mosaic of different habitats (they are all different after all). These will form refuges for wildlife and space for scruffy edges and natural processes. We will not build car parks or visitor centres. They will simply be wild stepping stones in the landscape.

Julia Davies of ‘We Have The Power’, helped us to acquire this site through their Funding Nature project. You can find out about their work here.