Since August 2021, when we first met the team on the ground at Southill Estate in Bedfordshire, it was clear there is remarkable potential for so-called ‘traditional’ roles, such as gamekeeping, to migrate into the nascent sector of nature restoration.

In many cases, gamekeepers, alongside farmers, naturally, are arguably the hardest working of rural employees: often working 18 hour days in the field to deliver their land management goals. Passionate about what they do, their voice is often buried below accusations of illegal raptor persecution and outdated land management practices. Roles, however, can also change over time.

In the two years working with Southill Estate’s Paul Dunn, and the wider estate team, RESTORE has found a powerful ally on the ground: a gamekeeper turned nature restoration guru, capable of combining traditional land management techniques with innovating new habitats. Paul’s most remarkable achievement has been delivering – in just two years – the seemingly impossible task set him by our CEO, Benedict Macdonald; to cull and remove non-native muntjac and Chinese water deer from an estate of over 6000 acres.

In a remarkably short space of time, Paul’s incredibly hard work on the ground as seen Southill’s vegetation transform. In the areas where culling has been most concentrated, a vegetation pulse has lifted out of the ground. Grasshopper warblers and nightingale have been heard in new areas of woodland edge, and floral diversity and density has began to recover. Such a feat should not be underestimated: Southill lies within one of the worst hotstops for non-native deer in Britain. On top of this, Paul is almost unstoppable now in his quest to dig ponds, expand scrub and help the estate team with what we hope will be Bedfordshire’s first beaver reintroduction.

It has become clear to RESTORE that one gamekeeper, changing the way he or she thinks, is worth more to our nature restoration efforts on the ground than ten clipboard conservationists.

Paul’s ability to envisage and create habitats that do not yet exist, and his open-mindedness to change has allowed us to shift the focus from preserving game to restoring living systems, where game is merely one by-product of bio-abundant land.

Our ability to transform the countryside depends upon the people who live within it – and this inspiring journey at Southill is something we hope to replicate across many of the estates we work with, over the coming years.

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