That manically melodic song of the nightingale is a rare presence in Britain nowadays, yet it's different at this rural location. Previously, a single bird could be heard at this secluded location in rural Surrey; this summer, they were in multiple locations. “We were hearing them chirping all night, from several zones,” notes Meg Cookson, chief environmental expert for the youth rewilding group. A team of participants were camping out at the location, but the birds were so boisterous, “we stayed awake all night,” comments a project coordinator. “We were all exhausted the next day, but it was so cool.” An expert from the Surrey Wildlife Trust came to help them trap and mark one of the nightingales the next morning, the ecologist states: “He’d never held a songbird in his hands before. He was teary.”
Habitat Revival Accelerates at Maple Farm
Nature recovery is by its very essence a slow business, but at this site at this property, after only several seasons, the results are already apparent, and hearable. The land previously served as a retirement home for horses. Today it’s a model for the youth-led mission: to hasten ecological restoration, in one of the most nature-depleted regions in the globe, and to engage the younger generation (18-30-year-olds) with a natural world they are often shut out of, and a climate crisis they are often unable to stop. Rising temperatures persists, habitat loss damages natural habitats, and yet another international meeting ends with a frustrating outcome in the host country – so what person could blame youth for choosing to take matters into their own hands?
Our initiative was founded on the belief that there were individuals willing to allow a group of youthful amateurs on to their property
“The youth is the most knowledgeable environmentally that there’s historically,” explains the Youngwilders’ founder, a key figure. They are also “the highly invested in the problems, and have played the smallest part to their causing, and, then, are also going to suffer the greatest as a outcome.”
Change of the Property
Today, the initiative is growing across the UK – and this location started it all, in every sense. “It’s where we started, and the place we built our network,” says Molly Easton, as she provides a walkthrough of the 12-hectare site. “This used to be six different fields,” she comments, as we walk through overgrown meadows featuring low scrub, hemmed by forest. “The main visible difference is that we’ve eliminated all the enclosures, a significant length of it, to make it feel like a unified environment.” In the warmer months, they wore hazmat suits and eradicated masses of harmful weeds, an aggressive flora that can burn the flesh. “We’ve planted loads of natural barriers,” says the director. “But the key action is we’ve just let it breathe for a brief period. We’ve removed a lot of animal feeding and seen what’s come up.”
Underbrush and shrub lines are a perfect songbird home, she explains, but currently they’re managing some of the wild growth to develop a more diversity of environments and to connect two parts of the land. Fresh plantings will take considerably longer to establish, but new growth from the nearby oaks are already taking root in the fields; the crew have been installing barriers to protect them from grazing deer.
Nature Reappears in Abundance
There's more than the songbirds – animals is coming back in abundance. This year they’ve observed reptiles, slowworms, flyers and invertebrates, notes Noah Bennett, as he raises one of their survey equipment (like a cover over a indentation in the soil). “You discover snakes and wildlife residing under there, but it’s likely a somewhat cold for them now.” Organic beehives, built using hollowed-out parts of tree trunk and humming with insects, are strapped to some of the plants. The removal of animals has given insects opportunity to prosper in the meadows. When they explored this summer, states the director, “I’d not ever observed so countless lepidoptera. There were just masses of them. We were like, ‘What is happening?’”
Origins of the Initiative
The first Youngwilders – Bennett, Durant, Easton and more individuals – came together as students, focusing on or having an interest in nature. In that year, the IPCC was predicting that the target of 1.5C of warming was appearing unachievable, Greta Thunberg was leading the youth protests for environmental action, and activist another voice was talking about youth experiencing “climate anxiety”. It was also the period of Isabella Tree’s book, on rewilding, on how they changed the a nearby property from a struggling farm into a flourishing ecosystem. “We were highly motivated by the Knepp story, but what could be the part for youth?” asks Molly. “So we created a platform and contacted loads of conservation groups and were saying, ‘Do you ever get your property owners wishing to do something and you don’t have capacity?’”
Jack explains the narrative: “Our complete organisation was essentially premised on the idea that there were individuals who were willing to permit a collection of youthful amateurs on to their estate indiscriminately, to make significant actions that would change land value
