James Rebanks (born 1974)[1] is an English sheep farmer and author, from Matterdale in Cumbria.
[7] Rebanks left school at the age of 16 to work on his family's farm with two GCSEs in woodworking and religious studies.
[3] He took A levels at evening classes in Carlisle before studying at Magdalen College, Oxford,[3][8] where he achieved a double first in history.
[10][11] He was involved in the bid for the Lake District to receive World Heritage status (which was approved by UNESCO in 2017),[12][13] and as of December 2020[update] had a following of 141,667 on Twitter as "Herdwick Shepherd" (@herdyshepherd1).
In 2018 he resigned from a government panel set up by Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Michael Gove, and also took a break from Twitter after the composition of the panel was criticised by environmentalists as being biased towards the farming community.