The beautifully intricate song of the nightingale is a rare sound in the UK today, yet not at the Surrey site. Previously, a single nightingale could be heard at this hidden place in the countryside of Surrey; lately, they were everywhere. “We were listening to them chirping all night, from five different territories,” notes a lead scientist, chief environmental expert for the youth rewilding group. A band of volunteers were camping out at the location, yet the birds were so loud, “we stayed awake all night,” comments Layla Mapemba. “We were all knackered the next day, but it was so incredible.” An expert from the Surrey Wildlife Trust came to help them capture and tag one of the birds the next morning, the ecologist remembers: “He’d never touched a nightingale in his hands before. He was teary.”
Rewilding Accelerates at Maple Farm
Ecological restoration is by nature a slow business, but here at the farm, after merely a short period, the results are already apparent, and noticeable. The farm was once a sanctuary for equines. Now it’s a model for the Youngwilders’ purpose: to hasten nature recovery, in one of the biodiversity-poor regions in the globe, and to connect young people (18-30-year-olds) with a ecosystem they are often denied access to, and a environmental emergency they are often powerless to stop. Rising temperatures persists, deforestation damages ecosystems, and yet another Cop summit ends with a disappointing end in abroad – so what person could criticize young people for choosing to initiate change themselves?
Our organisation was based on the idea that there were landowners ready to allow a collection of youthful enthusiasts on to their estate
“The newer cohort is the best educated environmentally that there’s historically,” states the Youngwilders’ founder, a key figure. They are also “the deeply concerned in the challenges, and have played the minimal role to their causing, and, then, are also going to experience consequences the worst as a result.”
Change of the Site
Now, the group is growing across the Britain – and the original site started it all, in every sense. “It’s our origin point, and the place we built our community,” says another co-director, as she offers a walkthrough of the 30-acre property. “This used to be multiple separate areas,” she says, as we stroll through long grass featuring low scrub, bordered by forest. “The main visual transformation is that we’ve eliminated all the enclosures, 1.2km of it, to create the impression like a unified landscape.” In the summer, they used protective gear and eradicated significant quantities of invasive plants, an non-native plant that can irritate the body. “We’ve established loads of bush lines,” explains she. “But the primary focus is we’ve just allowed it to rest for a little bit. We’ve eliminated a significant amount of animal feeding and noticed what’s emerged.”
Low scrub and natural fences are a perfect songbird habitat, she explains, however today they’re managing some of the thorny plants to develop a more range of habitats and to link up different sections of the site. Fresh plantings will take much more time to take root, but saplings from the surrounding trees are already growing in the open areas; the group have been installing guards to protect them from grazing deer.
Animals Comes Back in Abundance
It’s not just the nightingales – animals is returning in abundance. This year they’ve observed reptiles, creatures, nocturnal mammals and insects, says Noah Bennett, as he uncovers one of their survey equipment (similar to a doormat over a small hollow in the earth). “You get creatures and wildlife sheltering under there, but it’s likely a bit chilly for them now.” Organic nests, made from empty sections of timber and humming with insects, are fixed to some of the trees. The absence of livestock has allowed insects room to flourish in the meadows. When they came to this season, comments the director, “I’d not once observed so numerous insects. There were just masses of them. We were wondering, ‘What is happening?’”
Beginnings of the Movement
The first founders – Noah, Durant, Molly and two others – came together as learners, studying or expressing an concern in environmental science. In that year, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was indicating that the target of one and a half degrees of global heating was seeming impossible, Greta Thunberg was spearheading the youth protests for environmental action, and campaigner Clover Hogan was addressing the generation suffering from “eco-worry”. It was also the era of Isabella Tree’s work, about nature recovery, on how she and her husband transformed the a nearby property from a unsuccessful dairy farm into a flourishing wildlife haven. “We were deeply influenced by the Knepp story, but what could be the role for youth?” says Molly. “So we developed a platform and contacted loads of conservation groups and were saying, ‘Do you sometimes get your estate holders wishing to take action and you don’t have time?’”
Durant explains the narrative: “Our entire organisation was essentially founded on the notion that there were people who were ready to permit a collection of youthful idiots on to their estate without strict rules, to make significant choices that would change land value
