the Southern Block had been left completely unmanaged for between 1 and 6 years. The first meeting of the steering group was held the same year. In 2009 Ravens nested at Knepp for the first time in hundreds of years; 13 out of a total of 18 UK bat species were recorded that summer along with 15 ‘UK Biodiversity Action Plan Priority Species' (4 bats and 11 birds) and 60 invertebrate species of conservation importance and 76 additional species of moths. By March 2009 a 9-mile-long perimeter fence around the Southern Block had been completed and 53 Longhorn Cattle were introduced to the area, followed shortly afterwards by 23 Exmoor Ponies, 20 Tamworth pigs and 42 Fallow deer. Purple Emperor Butterflies were spotted for the first time at Knepp that year, and by 2015 it had become the largest breeding colony of Purple Emperors in the country. In 2010 the project received Higher Level Environmental Stewardship funding, by which time Knepp was supporting some 1% of all nesting nightingales in the UK, only 9 years into the project. By 2011 there were eleven singing male turtle doves at Knepp. 2016 saw the first pair of breeding falcons. In the same year, work was carried out on the River Adur within the project boundaries to remove the artificial banks and allow the river to flood the surrounding meadows in a more natural way. In 2012 the Environment Agency removed the largest weir and disabled the rest, and within a year Sea Trout were spotted migrating up the river. In 2016 a black stork, one of the rarest birds in Western Europe, was spotted, and 441 species of moth were recorded. Between 2015 and 2016 experts recorded 62 species of bee and 30 species of wasp, including 7 bee and 4 wasp species of national conservation importance. White stork were observed raising chicks in UK for the first time in 600 years at Knepp in 2020. Beaver were re-introduced to Knepp in February 2020, having been absent from Sussex for several hundred years. One of the beavers escaped in December that year. Description The project uses herds of free-roaming animals including Old English longhorn cattle, Exmoor ponies, Tamworth pigs, red deer and fallow deer to drive habitat generation and focuses on restoring dynamic natural processes. The project has witnessed an 'extraordinary abundance' of many rare species, including turtle doves, barbastelle bats, slow-worms