🔗 Share this article

The manically melodic melody of the nightingale is a scarce sound in the UK today, but it's different at this rural location. Back in 2020, a lone bird could be noticed at this remote spot in the countryside of Surrey; this summer, they were all around. “We were listening to them singing all night, from multiple areas,” explains Meg Cookson, lead ecologist for the youth rewilding group. A group of Youngwilders were residing temporarily at the location, however the nightingales were so noisy, “we were unable to rest all night,” comments Layla Mapemba. “We were all knackered the next day, but it was so incredible.” An specialist from the local conservation group came to help them capture and tag one of the nightingales the next morning, the ecologist remembers: “He’d never touched a nightingale in his care before. He was teary.”

Rewilding Progresses at Maple Farm

Nature recovery is by nature a gradual process, but in this place at Maple Farm, after only several seasons, the changes are already visible, and hearable. The land was once a retirement home for equines. Now it’s a showpiece for the youth-led goal: to speed up habitat revival, in one of the most nature-depleted countries in the world, and to engage the younger generation (18-30-year-olds) with a environment they are often shut out of, and a climate crisis they are often powerless to prevent. Rising temperatures advances, habitat loss destroys ecosystems, and yet another Cop summit draws to a disappointing outcome in Brazil – so what person could criticize young people for wanting to take matters into their own hands?

Our project was based on the notion that there were individuals prepared to allow a group of youthful amateurs on to their land

“The newer cohort is the best educated ecologically that there’s ever been,” explains the group's founder, a key figure. They are also “the deeply concerned in the issues, and have played the least to their causing, and, then, are also going to experience consequences the worst as a consequence.”

Revitalization of the Landscape

Now, the group is growing across the Britain – and this location started it all, in multiple ways. “It’s our origin point, and the place we built our network,” says a founding member, as she offers a overview of the expansive site. “This was previously six different fields,” she says, as we walk through overgrown meadows filled with shrubs, surrounded by established trees. “The key visual change is that we’ve taken out all the fencing, over a kilometer of it, to make it feel like a unified landscape.” In the recent season, they donned hazmat suits and removed large amounts of giant hogweed, an non-native plant that can harm the flesh. “We’ve established loads of natural barriers,” notes she. “But the key action is we’ve just let it breathe for a little bit. We’ve removed a large part of animal feeding and noticed what’s emerged.”

Underbrush and natural fences are a ideal songbird habitat, she says, although currently they’re trimming some of the thorny plants to create a greater variety of ecosystems and to link up two parts of the site. Fresh plantings will take much more time to establish, but new growth from the nearby oaks are already growing in the meadows; the team have been placing protectors to shield them from grazing deer.

Wildlife Reappears in Large Numbers

It’s not just the songbirds – wildlife is returning in droves. This year they’ve spotted serpents, slowworms, flyers and bugs, notes a team member, as he raises one of their monitoring tools (such as a cover over a small hollow in the soil). “You get snakes and wildlife hiding under there, but it’s probably a bit cold for them now.” Organic nests, made from carved sections of tree trunk and buzzing with insects, are strapped to some of the woodland. The lack of livestock has given small creatures opportunity to prosper in the long grass. When they came to this season, states Bennett, “I’d never observed so countless insects. There were just clouds of them. We were like, ‘What is occurring?’”

Beginnings of the Movement

The first Youngwilders – Bennett, Jack, Easton and two others – formed as students, studying or expressing an interest in environmental science. In 2019, the climate experts was predicting that the target of one and a half degrees of global heating was appearing out of reach, the activist was guiding the demonstrations for eco-awareness, and activist a speaker was addressing young people experiencing “environmental stress”. It was also the era of a writer's work, on rewilding, on how the authors revitalized the Knepp Estate from a struggling dairy farm into a thriving natural habitat. “We were super-inspired by the case study, but what could be the function for young people?” says Molly. “So we developed a platform and called loads of conservation groups and were like, ‘Do you sometimes get your property owners wishing to do something and you are short on time?’”

Durant continues the story: “Our entire initiative was essentially founded on the belief that there were landowners who were ready to permit a group of young idiots on to their property without strict rules, to take major choices that would impact land value