'Nowhere like it' Conservationists aim to raise £1.5m to save rewilding trailblazer

When new rules in the 1980s encouraged farmers to "set aside" some arable fields from crop-growing to reduce EU-wide overproduction, Hugh White rebelled.

- Patrick Barkham

"He said, 'If you don't want my corn, I'll put the whole lot in setaside," recalled his son, Graham. And so, in 1988, cultivation abruptly ceased on all 153 hectares (377 acres) of Strawberry Hill, a farm in rural Bedfordshire.

Well before "rewilding" was invented, White's wheatfields became rough grassland and a haven for barn owls.

Five years later, when government funding for his setaside finished, White appeared on the BBC TV show Countryfile to urge the authorities to help keep his fields wild. White had once been a passionate champion of conventional farming but had found a new vocation - as a wild barn-owl farmer. Strawberry Hill's vole-filled meadows and disused barns produced more than 200 barn owl chicks over a decade.

Fortunately, government funds were found to enable White to continue his unique rewilding experiment for another 20 years.

Strawberry Hill blossomed into a wilderness of scrubby hawthorn, blackthorn and wildflower glades - a haven for endangered nightingales, turtle doves, dragonflies, orchids and other rare wildlife in the heart of intensively farmed rural Bedfordshire.

Now conservationists are campaigning to raise £1.5m to save the farm once more for wildlife.

After White and later his wife died, his family hoped to find new owners who would respect the farmer's legacy. Bedfordshire Cambridgeshire and Northamptonshire (BCN) Wildlife Trust has bought half the former farm thanks to funds from Biffa, the waste management company, and has launched a crowdfunding to buy the other half, which is unprotected by any conservation designations.

Marbled white butterflies jinked through sunny glades as blackcaps and whitethroats sang from groves of young oak when the Guardian explored the farm with Brian Eversham, chief executive of BCN.