Our management of our breathtaking landscape is changing. We are enhancing biodiversity and sequestering carbon by creating habitat banks, transitioning to regenerative farming, and restoring the botanical complexity of our parklands. Join us at our Natural Environment events to find out more.
Join us for a series of informal evening talks about nature and landscapes, every third Tuesday of the month in Castle Howard's Courtyard Cafe. Our Future Landscapes talks explore how we see, interact with and manage our unique local landscapes, with a presentation by a guest speaker followed by an open Q&A.
Doors open at 6.30pm.
20th January
Tom Hook, Forest of Flowers
17th February - Howardian Hills National Landscape priorities
Ellie Hook, Howardian Hills
17th March - Rewilding in Yorkshire and the work of the Yorkshire Rewilding Network
Jeff Davitt, Yorkshire Rewilding Network
The Yorkshire Rewilding Network is a charity founded in 2020 to bring together anyone in the region with an interest in rewilding. In this talk, Jeff Davitt, Co-Founder and Trustee of YRN, will describe some the rewilding projects happening in Yorkshire, what YRN does, and how everyone can be involved.
21st April - Exploring the woodlands for Castle Howard
Castle Howard
16th June - Practical experience of "No-fence" collars for conservation grazing, challenges and opportunities
Ben Fargher
21st July - Why and how is rewilding being implented across Britain?
Lauren Barnes, University of York
This presentation will outline how and why rewilding is being interpreted and operationalised across Britain by different landowners and practitioners. Interest in rewilding across Britain has grown in recent years. Within academia, research has mainly focused on attempts to define rewilding and document its origins. In practice, rewilding is interpreted and implemented depending on the desires and needs of the practitioner within the spatial and ecological bounds of the project. To better understand the reality of rewilding implementation on the ground, I spoke to various different landowners and practitioners across Britain who have self identified their project as rewilding. I will present an overview of outcomes of these conversations to provide an insight into the motivations which initiated the decision to adopt a rewilding approach and the management implementations being utilised to achieve a rewilding vision.
We are thrilled to announce a landmark nature restoration and rewilding project on our historic Estate – designed and delivered in collaboration with Environment Bank.
A 440-acre area of the Estate known as Bog Hall will go under a major project, to transform it from difficult to farm, low-yielding agricultural land into a thriving space for nature. The area, which is greater than the area inside the York City Walls, is a designated as a Site of Importance for Nature Conservation (SINC), within the Howardian Hills National Landscape, and has been carefully selected for its immense potential to enhance biodiversity. Working with Environment Bank ecologists, our goal is to almost triple the biodiversity over the next 30 years.
Find out more about the project and how to get involved