The richly complex melody of the nightingale is a scarce presence in the UK these days, but not at this rural location. Four years ago, a single bird could be heard at this secluded place in rural Surrey; this summer, they were all around. “We were listening to them singing all night, from several zones,” notes one ecologist, lead ecologist for the youth rewilding group. A band of participants were residing temporarily at the property, but the birds were so loud, “we were unable to rest all night,” comments a project coordinator. “We were all exhausted the next day, but it was so incredible.” An specialist from the Surrey Wildlife Trust came to help them net and ring one of the nightingales the next morning, she remembers: “He’d never touched a nightingale in his possession before. He was crying.”
Habitat Revival Accelerates at This Location
Rewilding is by nature a lengthy endeavor, but in this place at the farm, after merely four years, the changes are already visible, and audible. The land used to be a sanctuary for animals. Now it’s a example for the youth-led mission: to accelerate habitat revival, in one of the most nature-depleted regions in the globe, and to link youth (18-30-year-olds) with a natural world they are often denied access to, and a climate crisis they are often powerless to prevent. Climate change continues, habitat loss damages ecosystems, and yet another international meeting comes to a unsatisfactory conclusion in the host country – so who could fault young people for wishing to act independently?
Our initiative was based on the notion that there were individuals prepared to permit a group of young enthusiasts on to their property
“The newer cohort is the most informed ecologically that there’s ever been,” says the group's co-director, Jack Durant. They are also “the most emotionally involved in the challenges, and have contributed the smallest part to their causing, and, then, are also going to experience consequences most as a consequence.”
Transformation of the Site
Currently, the organisation is expanding across the United Kingdom – and Maple Farm started it all, in all respects. “It’s where we started, and the place we created our network,” explains Molly Easton, as she offers a tour of the expansive property. “This used to be multiple separate areas,” she states, as we move through tall vegetation filled with bushes, hemmed by established trees. “The main visual transformation is that we’ve taken out all the barriers, over a kilometer of it, to make it feel like one area.” In the summer, they wore special clothing and cleared significant quantities of harmful weeds, an invasive species that can burn the body. “We’ve planted many of natural barriers,” says she. “But the primary focus is we’ve just let it breathe for a short time. We’ve removed a large part of grazing pressure and observed what’s come up.”
Low scrub and hedgerows are a ideal nightingale habitat, she explains, but now they’re cutting back some of the brambles to establish a increased range of habitats and to connect two parts of the property. New trees will take a while to grow, but young trees from the surrounding trees are already taking root in the fields; the crew have been installing guards to protect them from animals.
Animals Comes Back in Droves
It’s not just the songbirds – fauna is reappearing in droves. Recently they’ve seen reptiles, creatures, flyers and invertebrates, notes Noah Bennett, as he lifts up one of their monitoring tools (similar to a mat over a indentation in the soil). “You find snakes and wildlife hiding under there, but it’s possibly a somewhat cool for them now.” Wild nests, made from empty pieces of wood and buzzing with pollinators, are fixed to some of the woodland. The lack of livestock has provided insects space to thrive in the long grass. When they came to this summer, says Bennett, “I’d not ever encountered so countless lepidoptera. There were just clouds of them. We were saying, ‘What is going on?’”
Inception of the Project
The first Youngwilders – Bennett, Durant, Easton and two others – formed as youth, studying or expressing an interest in ecology. In that year, the IPCC was forecasting that the acceptable threshold of 1.5C of climate change was seeming unachievable, a prominent figure was leading the youth protests for environmental action, and campaigner another voice was addressing the generation suffering from “eco-worry”. It was also the period of Isabella Tree’s book, on rewilding, on how she and her husband changed the Knepp Estate from a struggling farm into a thriving wildlife haven. “We were deeply influenced by the Knepp story, but what was the function for the next generation?” says Molly. “So we developed a website and contacted loads of conservation groups and were saying, ‘Do you sometimes get your landowners wishing to do something and you lack time?’”
Jack adds the story: “Our entire initiative was essentially founded on the notion that there were landowners who were prepared to permit a collection of youthful amateurs on to their land indiscriminately, to take fairly massive actions that would change land value
