The beautifully intricate song of the songbird is a uncommon sound in the UK nowadays, but not at this rural location. Previously, a single nightingale could be noticed at this hidden location in the countryside of Surrey; this summer, they were all around. “We were listening to them calling all night, from several zones,” notes one ecologist, top biologist for the youth rewilding group. A group of Youngwilders were residing temporarily at the location, however the nightingales were so loud, “we stayed awake all night,” comments Layla Mapemba. “We were all knackered the next day, but it was so incredible.” An professional from the regional nature organization came to help them capture and tag one of the songbirds the next morning, she remembers: “He’d never held a nightingale in his hands before. He was emotional.”
Rewilding Accelerates at the Surrey Site
Rewilding is by its very essence a gradual business, but at this site at Maple Farm, after merely four years, the changes are already apparent, and noticeable. The property was once a retirement home for equines. Today it’s a showpiece for the Youngwilders’ mission: to speed up ecological restoration, in one of the ecologically impoverished countries in the world, and to engage the younger generation (18-30-year-olds) with a natural world they are often shut out of, and a global warming issue they are often powerless to halt. Rising temperatures advances, tree clearing destroys ecosystems, and another Cop summit draws to a unsatisfactory end in abroad – so what person could criticize young people for choosing to initiate change themselves?
Our initiative was based on the notion that there were individuals prepared to allow a collection of young idiots on to their property
“The younger generation is the most informed in terms of nature that there’s historically,” states the Youngwilders’ founder, Jack Durant. They are also “the highly invested in the issues, and have contributed the smallest part to their causing, and, then, are also going to experience consequences the greatest as a result.”
Revitalization of the Site
Now, the organisation is expanding across the UK – and the original site was the beginning, in all respects. “It’s the initial project, and where we built our community,” notes Molly Easton, as she offers a tour of the 30-acre land. “This was previously six different fields,” she says, as we move through tall vegetation featuring bushes, bordered by forest. “The main visible difference is that we’ve removed all the barriers, over a kilometer of it, to create the impression like one environment.” In the summer, they donned protective gear and removed masses of invasive plants, an invasive species that can burn the skin. “We’ve introduced loads of natural barriers,” explains she. “But the key action is we’ve just allowed it to rest for a brief period. We’ve removed a lot of animal feeding and noticed what’s emerged.”
Low scrub and hedgerows are a ideal songbird environment, she comments, although now they’re cutting back some of the brambles to create a greater range of ecosystems and to connect different sections of the land. Young saplings will take much more time to take root, but new growth from the nearby woodland are already establishing themselves in the fields; the group have been installing barriers to safeguard them from grazing deer.
Nature Comes Back in Large Numbers
There's more than the songbirds – animals is coming back in large numbers. Recently they’ve spotted serpents, slowworms, bats and invertebrates, explains a team member, as he lifts up one of their monitoring tools (similar to a cover over a small hollow in the soil). “You discover reptiles and wildlife hiding under there, but it’s probably a slightly cool for them now.” Natural beehives, constructed from empty sections of tree trunk and humming with pollinators, are attached to some of the plants. The removal of livestock has given insects space to thrive in the overgrown areas. When they came to this time, states the director, “I’d never observed so numerous insects. There were just masses of them. We were saying, ‘What is going on?’”
Inception of the Initiative
The first Youngwilders – Bennett, Jack, Easton and two others – united as learners, studying or expressing an concern in nature. In 2019, the climate experts was forecasting that the acceptable threshold of 1.5C of warming was looking unachievable, Greta Thunberg was guiding the demonstrations for climate movement, and activist Clover Hogan was talking about young people experiencing “environmental stress”. It was also the period of the author's work, Wilding, on how they revitalized the a Sussex location from a struggling dairy farm into a successful ecosystem. “We were deeply influenced by the Knepp story, but what was the role for the next generation?” says Molly. “So we created a platform and rang up many of conservation groups and were like, ‘Do you occasionally get your landowners wishing to do something and you don’t have resources?’”
Durant continues the narrative: “Our whole project was fundamentally based on the idea that there were individuals who were ready to allow a bunch of youthful amateurs on to their estate freely, to make significant actions that would affect land value
