That richly complex song of the nightingale is a scarce occurrence in the UK nowadays, but it's different at the Surrey site. Back in 2020, a lone bird could be heard at this hidden place in rural Surrey; lately, they were in multiple locations. “We were hearing them calling all night, from several zones,” explains Meg Cookson, top biologist for the Youngwilders. A band of participants were camping out at the site, however the nightingales were so noisy, “we couldn’t sleep all night,” comments an engagement lead. “We were all knackered the next day, but it was so incredible.” An professional from the regional nature organization came to help them trap and mark one of the songbirds the next morning, she recalls: “He’d never touched a nightingale in his care before. He was teary.”
Rewilding Accelerates at This Location
Rewilding is by its very essence a gradual process, but at this site at Maple Farm, after only four years, the outcomes are already apparent, and audible. The land previously served as a retirement home for animals. Currently it’s a showpiece for the Youngwilders’ mission: to accelerate ecological restoration, in one of the ecologically impoverished nations in the world, and to engage youth (18-30-year-olds) with a natural world they are often excluded from, and a environmental emergency they are often powerless to prevent. Climate change persists, tree clearing eliminates wildlife homes, and yet another climate conference draws to a disappointing outcome in the host country – so who could criticize youth for choosing to initiate change themselves?
Our organisation was founded on the idea that there were individuals ready to let a group of youthful amateurs on to their land
“The younger generation is the most knowledgeable environmentally that there’s historically,” says the group's leader, Jack Durant. They are also “the highly invested in the issues, and have contributed the least to their origin, and, then, are also going to be affected the greatest as a result.”
Change of the Landscape
Now, the group is growing across the Britain – and this location started it all, in multiple ways. “It’s where we started, and where we created our network,” says another co-director, as she gives a walkthrough of the expansive land. “This was previously six different fields,” she says, as we walk through tall vegetation dotted with shrubs, surrounded by forest. “The primary visual change is that we’ve removed all the enclosures, 1.2km of it, to make it feel like a single area.” In the recent season, they donned protective gear and removed large amounts of invasive plants, an aggressive flora that can burn the skin. “We’ve planted loads of natural barriers,” says Easton. “But the main thing is we’ve just let it breathe for a short time. We’ve removed a significant amount of livestock impact and observed what’s emerged.”
Bushes and shrub lines are a perfect nightingale habitat, she comments, although currently they’re cutting back some of the wild growth to create a more range of habitats and to join two parts of the site. Young saplings will take considerably longer to establish, but new growth from the adjacent oaks are already growing in the meadows; the team have been placing barriers to shield them from animals.
Animals Returns in Abundance
In addition to the songbirds – animals is returning in large numbers. This year they’ve observed reptiles, creatures, nocturnal mammals and bugs, notes another co-director, as he raises one of their monitoring tools (like a cover over a indentation in the earth). “You find snakes and wildlife residing under there, but it’s probably a somewhat chilly for them now.” Wild homes, built using carved pieces of timber and active with insects, are strapped to some of the trees. The lack of grazing horses has given small creatures room to flourish in the long grass. When they explored this season, says he, “I’d not once encountered so many lepidoptera. There were just swarms of them. We were wondering, ‘What is going on?’”
Beginnings of the Initiative
The first participants – Noah, Durant, Molly and two others – formed as students, focusing on or expressing an concern in environmental science. In the recent past, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was predicting that the acceptable threshold of 1.5C of global heating was seeming out of reach, Greta Thunberg was spearheading the youth protests for eco-awareness, and activist another voice was talking about the generation experiencing “environmental stress”. It was also the time of a writer's work, about nature recovery, on how they changed the a Sussex location from a struggling dairy farm into a thriving natural habitat. “We were deeply influenced by the case study, but what was the part for youth?” says Easton. “So we made a website and rang up loads of wildlife trusts and were saying, ‘Do you occasionally get your property owners wishing to make changes and you are short on resources?’”
Durant explains the story: “Our whole initiative was essentially founded on the notion that there were people who were willing to let a collection of youthful idiots on to their land indiscriminately, to make significant actions that would affect land value
