The manically melodic song of the nightingale is a rare presence in Britain nowadays, yet it's different at Maple Farm. Previously, a single nightingale could be noticed at this hidden spot in rural Surrey; lately, they were everywhere. “We were hearing them singing all night, from several zones,” says a lead scientist, chief environmental expert for the eco-activist organization. A team of volunteers were staying overnight at the location, but the birds were so noisy, “we stayed awake all night,” remarks an engagement lead. “We were all knackered the next day, but it was so amazing.” An professional from the Surrey Wildlife Trust came to help them net and ring one of the birds the next morning, Cookson recalls: “He’d never touched a nightingale in his care before. He was teary.”
Rewilding Accelerates at This Location
Rewilding is by nature a lengthy endeavor, but at this site at this property, after only four years, the outcomes are already evident, and audible. The land was once a retirement home for animals. Now it’s a model for the Youngwilders’ mission: to accelerate habitat revival, in one of the ecologically impoverished countries in the world, and to connect the younger generation (18-30-year-olds) with a natural world they are often excluded from, and a climate crisis they are often ineffectual to stop. Global heating continues, deforestation destroys ecosystems, and yet another Cop summit draws to a unsatisfactory conclusion in Brazil – so who could blame youth for choosing to act independently?
Our organisation was based on the notion that there were people ready to allow a group of young enthusiasts on to their property
“The youth is the most knowledgeable in terms of nature that there’s ever been,” says the Youngwilders’ co-director, Jack Durant. They are also “the most emotionally involved in the issues, and have added the smallest part to their causing, and, then, are also going to experience consequences the worst as a outcome.”
Change of the Site
Today, the initiative is growing across the UK – and this location planted the seed, in every sense. “It’s where we started, and where we built our network,” says another co-director, as she provides a tour of the 12-hectare site. “This used to be multiple separate areas,” she comments, as we walk through overgrown meadows dotted with shrubs, surrounded by mature woodland. “The key noticeable transformation is that we’ve removed all the enclosures, over a kilometer of it, to give the sense like a single landscape.” In the summer, they wore protective gear and removed large amounts of invasive plants, an invasive species that can irritate the body. “We’ve planted many of hedgerows,” says Easton. “But the primary focus is we’ve just allowed it to rest for a little bit. We’ve removed a large part of grazing pressure and seen what’s emerged.”
Low scrub and shrub lines are a ideal nightingale habitat, she says, but today they’re cutting back some of the wild growth to create a greater variety of environments and to connect two parts of the site. New trees will take a while to grow, but new growth from the nearby trees are already growing in the fields; the crew have been placing guards to safeguard them from wildlife.
Nature Reappears in Droves
There's more than the nightingales – fauna is reappearing in droves. This year they’ve observed serpents, creatures, flyers and bugs, notes a team member, as he lifts up one of their reptile mats (like a mat over a small hollow in the ground). “You get snakes and animals residing under there, but it’s likely a slightly chilly for them now.” Organic beehives, built using hollowed-out parts of wood and humming with pollinators, are attached to some of the woodland. The removal of grazing horses has allowed small creatures space to flourish in the meadows. When they visited this season, states he, “I’d never encountered so numerous butterflies. There were just clouds of them. We were saying, ‘What is going on?’”
Inception of the Project
The original participants – Noah, Durant, Easton and additional members – united as youth, focusing on or expressing an interest in nature. In that year, the climate experts was predicting that the safe limit of one and a half degrees of global heating was seeming impossible, a prominent figure was guiding the youth protests for eco-awareness, and advocate a speaker was talking about young people suffering from “environmental stress”. It was also the period of a writer's book, on rewilding, on how they revitalized the Knepp Estate from a unsuccessful farm into a thriving wildlife haven. “We were super-inspired by the Knepp story, but what was the role for the next generation?” asks Easton. “So we created a website and called many of environmental organizations and were like, ‘Do you occasionally get your landowners wanting to make changes and you lack capacity?’”
Jack adds the account: “Our whole organisation was fundamentally based on the belief that there were people who were prepared to permit a collection of young amateurs on to their property indiscriminately, to make fairly massive decisions that would impact land value
