I caught up with Tarsha Finney outside her house at Slape Manor in August 2025, amongst the buzz of insects from their recently rewilded front meadow. We discussed her role as both a Trustee of West Dorset Wilding and a partner on the Brit Valley Project. Her background growing up and working in Australia provides many cross-cultural connections that inform her own understanding of landscape recovery and adds unique perspectives to the project’s development.

I met Rob on a wild day in late March; as broken sunshine and icy showers battled it out for the remains of the day. With a clunk, then a creak, the front door opens and Rob beckons me in. The great oak door is hundreds of years old, its leaky and draughty to both light and air. Yet it has facilitated, and witnessed, the passage of many inhabitants – including, over the last four decades, the comings and goings of Rob Newall and his family. The house, and Rob himself, are ful

Photo © Butterfly Conservation | ‘Respair’: renewed optimism after a period of despair, fresh hope. Sometime in the depths of March, before this year’s spell of glorious spring-shine had begun: I’m working quietly in the local bookshop – a one day-a-week job that I’ve had, and held on to, since Covid times. At the end of the day the proprietor pops by to say hello, and points out a darkish moth resting, contrastingly, against a white wall...