The beautifully intricate call of the songbird is a rare sound in England these days, but not at the Surrey site. Four years ago, a solitary nightingale could be detected at this hidden place in the countryside of Surrey; recently, they were everywhere. “We were hearing them chirping all night, from five different territories,” explains Meg Cookson, lead ecologist for the youth rewilding group. A group of Youngwilders were residing temporarily at the site, but the nightingales were so noisy, “we couldn’t sleep all night,” remarks an engagement lead. “We were all worn out the next day, but it was so amazing.” An professional from the local conservation group came to help them capture and tag one of the nightingales the next morning, the ecologist recalls: “He’d never touched a songbird in his care before. He was emotional.”
Ecological Restoration Speeds Up at Maple Farm
Ecological restoration is by nature a gradual endeavor, but in this place at Maple Farm, after only four years, the outcomes are already visible, and noticeable. The farm used to be a retirement home for equines. Today it’s a model for the Youngwilders’ mission: to hasten habitat revival, in one of the biodiversity-poor regions in the planet, and to connect youth (18-30-year-olds) with a environment they are often shut out of, and a climate crisis they are often ineffectual to halt. Climate change advances, tree clearing eliminates natural habitats, and yet another international meeting draws to a disappointing conclusion in Brazil – so who could criticize youth for wishing to act independently?
Our project was founded on the notion that there were people prepared to let a bunch of young amateurs on to their land
“The younger generation is the best educated in terms of nature that there’s ever been,” explains the group's leader, Jack Durant. They are also “the most emotionally involved in the challenges, and have added the minimal role to their origin, and, then, are also going to be affected the greatest as a consequence.”
Revitalization of the Property
Today, the organisation is taking root across the United Kingdom – and this location started it all, in all respects. “It’s our origin point, and the place we created our network,” notes Molly Easton, as she provides a walkthrough of the expansive site. “This used to be divided plots,” she says, as we move through tall vegetation featuring bushes, bordered by forest. “The main noticeable change is that we’ve removed all the enclosures, 1.2km of it, to give the sense like one landscape.” In the summer, they wore protective gear and removed significant quantities of invasive plants, an non-native plant that can burn the flesh. “We’ve introduced loads of hedgerows,” explains she. “But the key action is we’ve just allowed it to rest for a little bit. We’ve eliminated a lot of animal feeding and seen what’s sprung up.”
Bushes and shrub lines are a ideal songbird environment, she says, but now they’re trimming some of the thorny plants to develop a greater range of ecosystems and to join two parts of the property. Fresh plantings will take a while to grow, but new growth from the adjacent oaks are already establishing themselves in the open areas; the crew have been placing guards to protect them from grazing deer.
Animals Comes Back in Abundance
It’s not just the songbirds – wildlife is reappearing in abundance. Lately they’ve observed grass snakes, slowworms, bats and insects, explains another co-director, as he lifts up one of their survey equipment (such as a mat over a small hollow in the ground). “You get snakes and wildlife sheltering under there, but it’s possibly a somewhat chilly for them now.” Organic beehives, built using carved pieces of tree trunk and active with insects, are fixed to some of the plants. The lack of livestock has allowed small creatures opportunity to prosper in the overgrown areas. When they came to this time, says he, “I’d never observed so many lepidoptera. There were just swarms of them. We were like, ‘What is occurring?’”
Beginnings of the Initiative
The original founders – Bennett, Jack, Easton and more individuals – came together as youth, studying or having an interest in environmental science. In 2019, the IPCC was predicting that the acceptable threshold of one and a half degrees of climate change was seeming impossible, Greta Thunberg was leading the youth protests for environmental action, and campaigner a speaker was talking about youth experiencing “environmental stress”. It was also the period of a writer's publication, Wilding, on how they transformed the a Sussex location from a unsuccessful dairy farm into a thriving wildlife haven. “We were deeply influenced by the Knepp story, but what was the function for young people?” asks Easton. “So we made a online presence and called many of environmental organizations and were saying, ‘Do you sometimes get your landowners seeking to do something and you don’t have time?’”
Durant continues the narrative: “Our entire project was essentially based on the belief that there were individuals who were ready to permit a collection of young amateurs on to their estate indiscriminately, to take major decisions that would change land value
