The beautifully intricate call of the songbird is a scarce sound in the UK nowadays, however not at the Surrey site. Back in 2020, a single nightingale could be heard at this hidden spot in rural Surrey; recently, they were everywhere. “We were listening to them singing all night, from several zones,” explains a lead scientist, top biologist for the Youngwilders. A team of volunteers were residing temporarily at the property, but the birds were so loud, “we stayed awake all night,” says a project coordinator. “We were all exhausted the next day, but it was so cool.” An professional from the local conservation group came to help them net and ring one of the songbirds the next morning, she recalls: “He’d never held a nightingale in his care before. He was emotional.”
Ecological Restoration Progresses at This Location
Rewilding is by definition a lengthy process, but here at Maple Farm, after just several seasons, the outcomes are already apparent, and audible. The property used to be a retirement home for animals. Now it’s a model for the Youngwilders’ goal: to speed up ecological restoration, in one of the most nature-depleted nations in the globe, and to connect young people (18-30-year-olds) with a natural world they are often excluded from, and a global warming issue they are often ineffectual to prevent. Rising temperatures advances, habitat loss damages wildlife homes, and another Cop summit ends with a frustrating end in Brazil – so who could blame young people for wishing to initiate change themselves?
The initiative was based on the belief that there were people prepared to allow a collection of young enthusiasts on to their land
“The youth is the most knowledgeable in terms of nature that there’s ever been,” explains the Youngwilders’ co-director, a key figure. They are also “the deeply concerned in the challenges, and have played the smallest part to their origin, and, then, are also going to be affected the greatest as a result.”
Revitalization of the Site
Now, the group is expanding across the UK – and the original site started it all, in multiple ways. “It’s where we started, and where we established our community,” explains a founding member, as she provides a walkthrough of the expansive property. “This used to be divided plots,” she says, as we move through tall vegetation dotted with low scrub, bordered by established trees. “The key visual transformation is that we’ve taken out all the enclosures, over a kilometer of it, to create the impression like a unified environment.” In the recent season, they used special clothing and cleared masses of harmful weeds, an non-native plant that can irritate the flesh. “We’ve introduced many of hedgerows,” notes Easton. “But the primary focus is we’ve just let it breathe for a short time. We’ve removed a large part of livestock impact and seen what’s emerged.”
Bushes and shrub lines are a excellent nightingale home, she comments, but now they’re trimming some of the thorny plants to develop a more range of ecosystems and to link up different sections of the site. Fresh plantings will take much more time to take root, but saplings from the nearby oaks are already taking root in the open areas; the team have been placing barriers to shield them from animals.
Wildlife Returns in Droves
It’s not just the nightingales – fauna is coming back in abundance. Recently they’ve seen grass snakes, slowworms, flyers and bugs, notes a team member, as he raises one of their monitoring tools (like a mat over a depression in the soil). “You find creatures and animals sheltering under there, but it’s likely a bit cool for them now.” Wild nests, constructed from hollowed-out pieces of tree trunk and buzzing with pollinators, are strapped to some of the woodland. The removal of grazing horses has allowed invertebrates opportunity to flourish in the meadows. When they came to this summer, says he, “I’d not ever observed so numerous lepidoptera. There were just clouds of them. We were wondering, ‘What is going on?’”
Beginnings of the Movement
The initial Youngwilders – Bennett, Jack, Easton and more individuals – formed as youth, studying or having an interest in ecology. In 2019, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was forecasting that the acceptable threshold of one and a half degrees of climate change was looking out of reach, a prominent figure was guiding the demonstrations for environmental action, and campaigner Clover Hogan was addressing youth experiencing “environmental stress”. It was also the period of Isabella Tree’s publication, about nature recovery, on how they transformed the a Sussex location from a unsuccessful farm into a thriving natural habitat. “We were super-inspired by the case study, but what was the role for the next generation?” questions Molly. “So we created a online presence and called many of conservation groups and were like, ‘Do you sometimes get your estate holders seeking to do something and you lack capacity?’”
Jack continues the narrative: “Our entire initiative was fundamentally based on the idea that there were landowners who were ready to permit a group of young idiots on to their property indiscriminately, to decide on fairly massive actions that would affect land value
