A sound I haven’t heard in 15 years (a story of hope)
Almost 20 years ago, I remember sitting outside my in-laws’ house on a summer’s evening, listening to the soft, rhythmic churring of a Turtle Dove calling from an old ash tree at the end of the field. It was just part of the background. Something you expected to be there. And then one year, it wasn’t. Not gradually. Just… gone. I haven’t heard that sound there for at least 15 years.
That story has been repeated across the UK. In the 1960s, there were around 125,000 pairs of Turtle Doves in Britain. By 2018, fewer than 3,600 remained – a staggering 98% decline in less than 50 years.
I remember working at BirdLife International and learning more about the pressures Turtle Doves face across their migration routes – habitat loss, drought, hunting, desertification – and these are real and serious challenges. It felt too big a challenge to tackle…
But then heard about places like Knepp.
You might have seen the recent news – after 20 years of rewilding, species are returning in remarkable numbers. And what’s especially powerful is what’s happening with Turtle Doves. At Knepp, 20 singing males were recorded in the southern block in 2021 alone, compared with just three on the entire estate in 1999.
In landscapes where the right conditions have been restored – scrub, water, natural processes – they are coming back.
What I find so striking about this isn’t just the outcome, but the approach. Knepp didn’t succeed by doing more.
And perhaps most importantly, it shows just how quickly nature can recover when given the chance.
At a time when we hear so much about global declines in wildlife, it’s easy to lose hope. But rewilding offers something different. It shows that recovery is not only possible, but that it can happen faster than we might expect.
In a few months’ time, I’ll be moving back to the same family home where I used to hear Turtle Doves all those years ago. And I remain hopeful that, one day, we might hear them there again, at the end of our field.
That’s why I’m genuinely excited about the direction rewilding is taking conservation – and why I’m running a free live training on Monday: Rewilding Project Planning Masterclass with our amazing Rewilding Expert in Residence, Pedro Ribeiro.
Together, we’ll explore how rewilding projects actually work in practice – and how you can start getting involved.
If you’ve been looking for a more hopeful, practical way to approach conservation, I think you’ll find this one really interesting.