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The Duke of Norfolk is best known for presiding over the coronation as hereditary Earl Marshal, but what really gets him excited is a native farmland bird, the grey partridge. Nearly 20 years ago he was appalled to learn from the veteran ecologist Dick Potts that the species was down to its last three pairs on his estate in Sussex and about to go extinct.
He decided to do something about it. Today the Peppering estate has around 300 pairs of partridges, as well as corn buntings, lapwings, rare butterflies, long lost cornfield flowers and other wildlife. Last year the duke brought curlew eggs south from the Pennines and hatched them off to try to re-establish the species on the South Downs.
This story is told in a charming new book, Return of the Grey Partridge, by Roger Morgan-Grenville and ‘Eddie’ Norfolk, and is an example of a new trend for private landowners to do pioneering conservation work on a scale that often dwarfs and sometimes shames the wildlife conservation charities that get more media attention.
These are not purist ‘rewilders’, who see their role as getting human beings out of the way of nature
Philip Merricks is another example.
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