The richly complex song of the nightingale is a rare sound in the UK today, yet it's different at this rural location. Previously, a solitary nightingale could be heard at this hidden location in the countryside of Surrey; lately, they were all around. “We were hearing them calling all night, from five different territories,” notes one ecologist, top biologist for the Youngwilders. A band of volunteers were camping out at the location, however the birds were so noisy, “we stayed awake all night,” comments a project coordinator. “We were all worn out the next day, but it was so incredible.” An professional from the Surrey Wildlife Trust came to help them net and ring one of the songbirds the next morning, she remembers: “He’d never touched a songbird in his care before. He was teary.”
Habitat Revival Accelerates at the Surrey Site
Rewilding is by definition a lengthy process, but in this place at Maple Farm, after merely a short period, the results are already visible, and audible. The land previously served as a sanctuary for equines. Today it’s a model for the Youngwilders’ purpose: to hasten nature recovery, in one of the most nature-depleted nations in the world, and to engage young people (18-30-year-olds) with a environment they are often excluded from, and a global warming issue they are often powerless to halt. Rising temperatures continues, tree clearing destroys natural habitats, and one more Cop summit ends with a unsatisfactory outcome in the host country – so who could criticize the younger generation for wanting to initiate change themselves?
Our organisation was founded on the idea that there were people willing to permit a group of youthful amateurs on to their property
“The newer cohort is the best educated ecologically that there’s ever been,” says the Youngwilders’ co-director, Jack Durant. They are also “the highly invested in the issues, and have played the minimal role to their causing, and, then, are also going to experience consequences most as a outcome.”
Revitalization of the Site
Currently, the group is expanding across the UK – and this location planted the seed, in every sense. “It’s where we started, and the place we established our network,” explains a founding member, as she provides a walkthrough of the 30-acre site. “This used to be multiple separate areas,” she states, as we walk through overgrown meadows filled with shrubs, surrounded by established trees. “The primary visible change is that we’ve taken out all the enclosures, 1.2km of it, to create the impression like one area.” In the warmer months, they wore hazmat suits and eradicated masses of giant hogweed, an invasive species that can harm the skin. “We’ve established many of hedgerows,” notes the director. “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 seen what’s emerged.”
Low scrub and shrub lines are a perfect nightingale environment, she comments, however now they’re managing some of the brambles to develop a greater variety of environments and to link up separate areas of the land. Fresh plantings will take a while to grow, but saplings from the surrounding oaks are already growing in the meadows; the team have been placing barriers to safeguard them from animals.
Nature Comes Back in Droves
In addition to the songbirds – animals is returning in large numbers. Recently they’ve spotted grass snakes, legless lizards, bats and insects, notes a team member, as he raises one of their reptile mats (such as a mat over a small hollow in the ground). “You discover snakes and animals sheltering under there, but it’s possibly a bit cold for them now.” Organic homes, built using carved parts of timber and humming with wild bees, are attached to some of the woodland. The absence of grazing horses has allowed small creatures room to flourish in the overgrown areas. When they came to this season, says the director, “I’d never seen so countless insects. There were just clouds of them. We were wondering, ‘What is going on?’”
Inception of the Project
The first Youngwilders – Bennett, Durant, Easton and two others – united as youth, focusing on or expressing an concern in environmental science. In 2019, the climate experts was indicating that the acceptable threshold of one and a half degrees of climate change was seeming impossible, Greta Thunberg was leading the youth protests for climate movement, and campaigner a speaker was addressing the generation feeling “environmental stress”. It was also the period of a writer's book, on rewilding, on how the authors changed the a nearby property from a unsuccessful dairy farm into a thriving wildlife haven. “We were super-inspired by the Knepp story, but what was the function for youth?” asks Molly. “So we made a online presence and contacted numerous of environmental organizations and were saying, ‘Do you sometimes get your estate holders wanting to take action and you don’t have time?’”
Jack explains the account: “Our whole project was fundamentally based on the idea that there were individuals who were willing to allow a bunch of young amateurs on to their land without strict rules, to decide on major choices that would affect land value
