That richly complex call of the songbird is a scarce presence in England today, yet not at Maple Farm. Previously, a single nightingale could be detected at this secluded spot in the countryside of Surrey; lately, they were all around. “We were hearing them calling all night, from multiple areas,” explains Meg Cookson, chief environmental expert for the youth rewilding group. A band of volunteers were residing temporarily at the property, however the nightingales were so noisy, “we stayed awake all night,” comments a project coordinator. “We were all knackered the next day, but it was so cool.” An specialist from the local conservation group came to help them trap and mark one of the songbirds the next morning, the ecologist states: “He’d never handled a nightingale in his hands before. He was teary.”
Rewilding Progresses at This Location
Ecological restoration is by its very essence a gradual business, but at this site at Maple Farm, after only a short period, the results are already visible, and hearable. The land was once a haven for horses. Now it’s a model for the Youngwilders’ mission: to speed up ecological restoration, in one of the ecologically impoverished countries in the world, and to connect young people (18-30-year-olds) with a ecosystem they are often excluded from, and a global warming issue they are often unable to halt. Climate change advances, tree clearing damages natural habitats, and yet another climate conference draws to a unsatisfactory end in the host country – so who could criticize the younger generation for choosing to act independently?
The organisation was based on the idea that there were landowners ready to allow a group of youthful amateurs on to their land
“The newer cohort is the best educated ecologically that there’s historically,” explains the Youngwilders’ founder, Jack Durant. They are also “the most emotionally involved in the problems, and have played the least to their causing, and, then, are also going to suffer the greatest as a outcome.”
Change of the Site
Today, the group is expanding across the Britain – and this location started it all, in every sense. “It’s where we started, and where we created our community,” says another co-director, as she offers a walkthrough of the expansive property. “This used to be multiple separate areas,” she comments, as we move through long grass filled with low scrub, bordered by forest. “The main visual difference is that we’ve taken out all the enclosures, 1.2km of it, to give the sense like one landscape.” In the summer, they donned special clothing and cleared large amounts of invasive plants, an non-native plant that can burn the flesh. “We’ve introduced loads of natural barriers,” explains the director. “But the key action is we’ve just given it space for a brief period. We’ve eliminated a lot of livestock impact and observed what’s emerged.”
Bushes and hedgerows are a excellent nightingale environment, she explains, but currently they’re cutting back some of the brambles to develop a greater range of environments and to join different sections of the property. Fresh plantings will take much more time to take root, but saplings from the adjacent trees are already growing in the fields; the group have been placing protectors to protect them from grazing deer.
Animals Returns in Abundance
It’s not just the songbirds – wildlife is coming back in large numbers. Lately they’ve observed grass snakes, legless lizards, flyers and bugs, says Noah Bennett, as he lifts up one of their survey equipment (similar to a mat over a depression in the soil). “You get creatures and things hiding under there, but it’s likely a slightly cold for them now.” Organic homes, built using empty sections of wood and buzzing with pollinators, are attached to some of the woodland. The absence of animals has given insects opportunity to prosper in the overgrown areas. When they explored this time, says the director, “I’d not once seen so many insects. There were just swarms of them. We were saying, ‘What is going on?’”
Beginnings of the Project
The original Youngwilders – Bennett, Jack, Easton and more individuals – came together as students, pursuing or having an passion in environmental science. In 2019, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was predicting that the safe limit of 1.5C of climate change was looking unachievable, Greta Thunberg was spearheading the youth protests for eco-awareness, and advocate a speaker was talking about the generation feeling “environmental stress”. It was also the time of the author's book, on rewilding, on how she and her husband revitalized the a nearby property from a failing farm into a thriving natural habitat. “We were highly motivated by the Knepp story, but what could be the part for youth?” questions Molly. “So we made a platform and rang up many of environmental organizations and were like, ‘Do you sometimes get your property owners wishing to do something and you lack time?’”
Jack explains the story: “Our whole initiative was basically based on the belief that there were landowners who were willing to let a bunch of young idiots on to their estate without strict rules, to decide on fairly massive decisions that would impact land value
