The manically melodic call of the songbird is a rare occurrence in Britain nowadays, but it's different at the Surrey site. Previously, a single bird could be heard at this secluded location in the countryside of Surrey; this summer, they were everywhere. “We were hearing them calling all night, from several zones,” notes one ecologist, lead ecologist for the Youngwilders. A band of participants were staying overnight at the site, but the nightingales were so noisy, “we couldn’t sleep all night,” remarks a project coordinator. “We were all exhausted the next day, but it was so cool.” An expert from the local conservation group came to help them net and ring one of the nightingales the next morning, the ecologist states: “He’d never touched a nightingale in his care before. He was emotional.”
Rewilding Progresses at Maple Farm
Nature recovery is by nature a lengthy process, but here at Maple Farm, after merely several seasons, the changes are already visible, and noticeable. The land previously served as a sanctuary for equines. Currently it’s a model for the Youngwilders’ purpose: to accelerate habitat revival, in one of the most nature-depleted regions in the world, and to engage youth (18-30-year-olds) with a environment they are often denied access to, and a climate crisis they are often ineffectual to prevent. Global heating continues, deforestation eliminates ecosystems, and another climate conference ends with a unsatisfactory end in Brazil – so who could blame young people for wishing to take matters into their own hands?
The initiative was based on the belief that there were people prepared to permit a bunch of young amateurs on to their land
“The youth is the best educated environmentally that there’s previously,” states the Youngwilders’ leader, a key figure. They are also “the deeply concerned in the issues, and have played the smallest part to their causing, and, then, are also going to suffer most as a result.”
Change of the Landscape
Now, the group is expanding across the United Kingdom – and the original site was the beginning, in all respects. “It’s where we started, and the place we built our network,” notes a founding member, as she offers a tour of the expansive site. “This used to be divided plots,” she says, as we move through tall vegetation filled with low scrub, surrounded by established trees. “The key visual difference is that we’ve eliminated all the barriers, a significant length of it, to give the sense like one landscape.” In the warmer months, they wore protective gear and removed masses of giant hogweed, an aggressive flora that can burn the body. “We’ve planted many of bush lines,” notes the director. “But the primary focus is we’ve just given it space for a brief period. We’ve removed a lot of animal feeding and seen what’s emerged.”
Bushes and shrub lines are a excellent songbird home, she comments, but currently they’re managing some of the thorny plants to create a more range of habitats and to connect different sections of the property. New trees will take considerably longer to establish, but saplings from the adjacent woodland are already taking root in the fields; the team have been setting up guards to protect them from grazing deer.
Nature Comes Back in Large Numbers
It’s not just the nightingales – wildlife is returning in large numbers. Recently they’ve seen reptiles, creatures, bats and insects, notes Noah Bennett, as he uncovers one of their monitoring tools (similar to a cover over a small hollow in the earth). “You discover creatures and things sheltering under there, but it’s likely a bit chilly for them now.” Wild nests, constructed from carved pieces of tree trunk and active with insects, are fixed to some of the trees. The absence of grazing horses has provided small creatures opportunity to prosper in the long grass. When they explored this time, says the director, “I’d not ever observed so numerous butterflies. There were just swarms of them. We were saying, ‘What is happening?’”
Origins of the Movement
The original founders – Bennett, Jack, Easton and two others – united 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 safe limit of 1.5C of climate change was seeming impossible, Greta Thunberg was guiding the school strikes for eco-awareness, and advocate Clover Hogan was discussing young people suffering from “climate anxiety”. It was also the period of the author's work, on rewilding, on how the authors changed the a Sussex location from a struggling dairy farm into a successful wildlife haven. “We were super-inspired by the Knepp story, but what was the part for youth?” asks Molly. “So we created a website and contacted numerous of environmental organizations and were asking, ‘Do you sometimes get your estate holders seeking to make changes and you don’t have capacity?’”
Jack adds the story: “Our whole organisation was basically founded on the notion that there were landowners who were prepared to let a collection of young enthusiasts on to their land freely, to make fairly massive choices that would affect land value
