That beautifully intricate song of the nightingale is a uncommon occurrence in the UK these days, but not at the Surrey site. Back in 2020, a single nightingale could be heard at this remote place in rural Surrey; recently, they were in multiple locations. “We were listening to them calling all night, from multiple areas,” says a lead scientist, chief environmental expert for the eco-activist organization. A team of Youngwilders were residing temporarily at the site, but the nightingales were so noisy, “we stayed awake all night,” remarks Layla Mapemba. “We were all exhausted the next day, but it was so cool.” An expert from the local conservation group came to help them capture and tag one of the birds the next morning, Cookson recalls: “He’d never held a nightingale in his hands before. He was crying.”
Ecological Restoration Speeds Up at the Surrey Site
Rewilding is by definition a gradual process, but in this place at Maple Farm, after just several seasons, the changes are already visible, and hearable. The property used to be a retirement home for equines. Now it’s a showpiece for the Youngwilders’ mission: to hasten nature recovery, in one of the most nature-depleted regions in the world, and to engage youth (18-30-year-olds) with a natural world they are often shut out of, and a climate crisis they are often unable to prevent. Rising temperatures persists, deforestation damages wildlife homes, and another Cop summit draws to a disappointing outcome in abroad – so who could fault young people for choosing to initiate change themselves?
The project was premised on the belief that there were people willing to let a collection of young enthusiasts on to their estate
“The younger generation is the most informed environmentally that there’s previously,” states the Youngwilders’ co-director, a key figure. They are also “the deeply concerned in the challenges, and have played the least to their origin, and, then, are also going to suffer most as a result.”
Change of the Landscape
Now, the organisation is expanding across the Britain – and the original site was the beginning, in every sense. “It’s where we started, and the place we created our network,” explains a founding member, as she provides a walkthrough of the expansive property. “This once consisted of six different fields,” she says, as we walk through tall vegetation featuring bushes, surrounded by forest. “The main noticeable change is that we’ve taken out all the enclosures, 1.2km of it, to create the impression like a unified environment.” In the summer, they used hazmat suits and removed masses of giant hogweed, an invasive species that can irritate the skin. “We’ve introduced many of bush lines,” says the director. “But the key action is we’ve just let it breathe for a short time. We’ve eliminated a lot of animal feeding and seen what’s sprung up.”
Underbrush and shrub lines are a excellent songbird home, she explains, but now they’re cutting back some of the brambles to develop a increased variety of ecosystems and to connect separate areas of the site. New trees will take considerably longer to take root, but new growth from the nearby woodland are already taking root in the fields; the team have been setting up protectors to safeguard them from wildlife.
Animals Comes Back in Large Numbers
There's more than the nightingales – animals is reappearing in droves. Recently they’ve seen reptiles, slowworms, flyers and insects, explains Noah Bennett, as he lifts up one of their survey equipment (similar to a cover over a depression in the ground). “You discover reptiles and things residing under there, but it’s possibly a slightly cold for them now.” Natural nests, made from carved sections of timber and active with wild bees, are attached to some of the woodland. The lack of livestock has given small creatures opportunity to prosper in the meadows. When they came to this time, says the director, “I’d not once observed so many lepidoptera. There were just clouds of them. We were wondering, ‘What is occurring?’”
Beginnings of the Project
The first Youngwilders – Noah, Durant, Easton and two others – came together as learners, pursuing or expressing an concern in environmental science. In 2019, the IPCC was forecasting that the safe limit of one and a half degrees of warming was looking out of reach, a prominent figure was guiding the demonstrations for eco-awareness, and campaigner another voice was addressing youth feeling “environmental stress”. It was also the era of Isabella Tree’s work, about nature recovery, on how they transformed the a Sussex location from a unsuccessful agricultural business into a thriving wildlife haven. “We were highly motivated by the example, but what was the part for the next generation?” asks Easton. “So we created a platform and contacted loads of environmental organizations and were saying, ‘Do you occasionally get your landowners wishing to do something and you lack resources?’”
Jack adds the story: “Our whole organisation was essentially founded on the idea that there were landowners who were prepared to let a bunch of youthful idiots on to their land indiscriminately, to decide on fairly massive choices that would impact land value
