Rewilding update Summer 2025

18th August, 2025
by Katie Tokus | 5 Min Read
Share with friends
A Painted Lady butterfly on Buddleia in The Barn's gardens at The Sharpham Trust

Butterflies and pollinators are under threat elsewhere - but we’re bucking the trend on our rewilding fields and seeing lots of positive changes, according to our partners in restoring nature.

Hares have been seen for the first time on our rewilding fields this year, more pollinators have been recorded feeding on a wider variation of plant-life and 2025 has been 'spectacular' for butterflies.

Contrast this with the international scenario of declining insect numbers and biodiversity loss and our six-year-old rewilding experiment is proving its worth - not only to us but to its non-human inhabitants.

Caterpillars of the Peacock butterfly on nettles in our rewilding fields

Mike Cooke, ecologist with our rewilding partners Ambios Ltd, reports that there are new orchids, improved tree regeneration and ‘spectacular’ numbers of butterflies on the land that is bisected by the foot and cycle path from Totnes to Ashprington.

“Insects have been better this year than ever..and although this is much to do with the fact that it’s an exceptionally strong year for butterflies generally, the numbers are certainly also down to the progression of the rewilding,” he said.

Nettle plants have supported caterpillars that have developed into butterflies, he said, adding: “It's also been particularly heartening to see plentiful Small Tortoiseshells after seeing virtually none through the last five years. We've seen quite a few Painted Ladies arriving this year too.”

Mike said that solitary bees, great green bush crickets and grasshoppers have done really well this year. “Walking through Lower Brick Meadow, there has been a riot of great-green chirruping,” he said.

A field vole
Bruce McAdam on Wikipedia

However, some mammals have been conspicuous by their absence - although that’s not necessarily a problem.

“We've seen a large-scale absence of field vole - this almost certainly being a normal stage in their population cycle,” said Mike. “This seems to fit nicely with the much lower number of kestrel sightings. No matter - they'll likely be back in force next year.”

Stoats and weasels have been spotted on the rewilding fields and badgers have appeared pretty regularly on camera traps set by Ambio nature conservation trainees, suggesting that they are re-establishing on the estate after being seen at Sharpham much less over the last ten years. Badger culling was taking place on land neighbouring the Sharpham Estate, after fears that badgers spread bovine turberculosis, but no culling took place here.

A hare
Vincent van Zalinge on Unsplash

One longer-legged mammal has also been spotted. 

“It's been particularly exciting to see hare down on the rewilding for the first time given that we've only seen them on the surrounding high agricultural land before,” said Mike.

“It looks like hares might like rewilding too. Perhaps it is giving them the security of cover they need to be on the low-ground and so near to lots of people”

A Southern Marsh Orchid
Takeaway/Wikipedia

Varieties of plant-life, including greater bird's foot trefoil, germander speedwell, common knapweed and hogweed have been recorded at Sharpham in greater abundance, helping to feed and shelter insects, mammals and birds even more.

Southern marsh orchid has returned to the land, along with common spotted orchid. This suggests, according to Mike, that soil health is improving with more mycorrhizal fungi - necessary for orchids to germinate.

Meanwhile, tree regeneration seems to be getting a better foothold this year too, he adds.

A Eurasion cuckoo
Kev on Wikipedia

Bird-wise, the breeding of stonechat and whitethroat continues and goldcrest breeding in the central part of the site has been recorded for the first time.

Cuckoos have been spotted on the rewilding areas in June for the first time, after they've bred on Dartmoor, suggesting that they are stopping here, perhaps to forage, on their journey south to Africa.

Other bird biodiversity gains on the rewilding fields include a dozen or so curlew roosting on the lowest part of Lower Brick Meadow. 

Said Mike: “It's a new thing to see overwintering curlews using both sides of the river now, and it's tempting to think that we've upped the local capacity of the River Dart to support this dwindling species during the winter months”.


Learn more about the rewilding we’re doing on The Sharpham Estate here: www.sharphamtrust.org/wild

 

Picture credits:

Hare - photo by Vincent van Zalinge on Unsplash

Field vole - photo by Bruce McAdam, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic licence

Cuckoo - Image by Image by Kev from Pixabay

Southern Marsh Orchid - image by Takeaway, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons