The beautifully intricate melody of the nightingale is a scarce presence in the UK these days, but not at Maple Farm. Back in 2020, a lone bird could be heard at this remote place in rural Surrey; lately, they were all around. “We were hearing them singing all night, from several zones,” notes Meg Cookson, lead ecologist for the Youngwilders. A band of Youngwilders were staying overnight at the site, yet the nightingales were so noisy, “we were unable to rest all night,” comments a project coordinator. “We were all exhausted the next day, but it was so amazing.” An professional from the Surrey Wildlife Trust came to help them capture and tag one of the birds the next morning, Cookson recalls: “He’d never held a songbird in his care before. He was emotional.”
Rewilding Speeds Up at the Surrey Site
Ecological restoration is by definition a slow process, but in this place at this property, after merely four years, the outcomes are already visible, and hearable. The land used to be a haven for animals. Today it’s a showpiece for the Youngwilders’ purpose: to accelerate nature recovery, in one of the ecologically impoverished countries in the globe, and to engage the younger generation (18-30-year-olds) with a natural world they are often excluded from, and a global warming issue they are often ineffectual to halt. Global heating continues, habitat loss eliminates wildlife homes, and another climate conference draws to a frustrating conclusion in Brazil – so what person could blame young people for wishing to act independently?
Our organisation was based on the notion that there were people prepared to allow a bunch of youthful amateurs on to their property
“The youth is the most knowledgeable ecologically that there’s historically,” states the group's co-director, a key figure. They are also “the most emotionally involved in the problems, and have contributed the minimal role to their origin, and, then, are also going to be affected most as a consequence.”
Transformation of the Landscape
Currently, the initiative is expanding across the Britain – and the original site planted the seed, in multiple ways. “It’s our origin point, and where we created our community,” notes Molly Easton, as she provides a tour of the expansive land. “This was previously divided plots,” she says, as we stroll through tall vegetation dotted with low scrub, hemmed by established trees. “The primary noticeable difference is that we’ve eliminated all the barriers, 1.2km of it, to create the impression like one environment.” In the summer, they wore special clothing and eradicated large amounts of giant hogweed, an invasive species that can burn the flesh. “We’ve established many of bush lines,” says she. “But the key action is we’ve just allowed it to rest for a little bit. We’ve eliminated a large part of livestock impact and noticed what’s come up.”
Bushes and hedgerows are a perfect nightingale home, she comments, but now they’re trimming some of the wild growth to establish a more variety of habitats and to connect two parts of the property. Young saplings will take much more time to establish, but new growth from the adjacent woodland are already taking root in the fields; the team have been placing barriers to protect them from animals.
Animals Comes Back in Abundance
It’s not just the songbirds – wildlife is coming back in droves. Lately they’ve seen grass snakes, creatures, nocturnal mammals and bugs, notes a team member, as he lifts up one of their reptile mats (similar to a mat over a indentation in the earth). “You discover creatures and things hiding under there, but it’s possibly a somewhat cold for them now.” Organic nests, constructed from empty pieces of tree trunk and active with pollinators, are strapped to some of the trees. The removal of livestock has given small creatures opportunity to thrive in the meadows. When they visited this time, says Bennett, “I’d never seen so many lepidoptera. There were just swarms of them. We were wondering, ‘What is occurring?’”
Beginnings of the Project
The initial founders – Bennett, Durant, Molly and two others – united as youth, studying or sharing an passion in environmental science. In that year, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was indicating that the target of 1.5C of warming was seeming out of reach, a prominent figure was leading the school strikes for environmental action, and campaigner a speaker was addressing the generation experiencing “climate anxiety”. It was also the era of Isabella Tree’s publication, Wilding, on how they revitalized the a nearby property from a struggling dairy farm into a thriving wildlife haven. “We were deeply influenced by the Knepp story, but what could be the role for youth?” asks Easton. “So we created a platform and contacted numerous of conservation groups and were like, ‘Do you ever get your estate holders wishing to do something and you lack capacity?’”
Durant adds the account: “Our whole project was essentially founded on the belief that there were landowners who were ready to permit a bunch of youthful idiots on to their property without strict rules, to decide on fairly massive choices that would affect land value
