That beautifully intricate song of the songbird is a rare occurrence in the UK today, however not at this rural location. Back in 2020, a single nightingale could be noticed at this secluded location in rural Surrey; this summer, they were in multiple locations. “We were listening to them chirping all night, from multiple areas,” says a lead scientist, top biologist for the Youngwilders. A team of participants were residing temporarily at the property, however the nightingales were so boisterous, “we couldn’t sleep all night,” remarks a project coordinator. “We were all knackered the next day, but it was so amazing.” An professional from the Surrey Wildlife Trust came to help them net and ring one of the nightingales the next morning, the ecologist recalls: “He’d never touched a songbird in his possession before. He was crying.”
Rewilding Accelerates at This Location
Nature recovery is by definition a gradual business, but at this site at Maple Farm, after only a short period, the outcomes are already evident, and audible. The land was once a sanctuary for equines. Currently it’s a model for the youth-led goal: to accelerate ecological restoration, in one of the most nature-depleted nations in the world, and to link youth (18-30-year-olds) with a natural world they are often excluded from, and a environmental emergency they are often powerless to stop. Climate change persists, tree clearing eliminates ecosystems, and one more climate conference ends with a frustrating outcome in the host country – so who could criticize young people for wanting to initiate change themselves?
Our organisation was founded on the notion that there were landowners willing to permit a bunch of youthful idiots on to their estate
“The younger generation is the most informed in terms of nature that there’s historically,” explains the Youngwilders’ founder, Jack Durant. They are also “the most emotionally involved in the challenges, and have contributed the smallest part to their origin, and, then, are also going to be affected the worst as a outcome.”
Revitalization of the Site
Today, the initiative is taking root across the UK – and Maple Farm started it all, in multiple ways. “It’s the initial project, and where we built our community,” explains a founding member, as she provides a walkthrough of the 30-acre site. “This used to be six different fields,” she says, as we move through long grass featuring bushes, hemmed by mature woodland. “The primary noticeable change is that we’ve taken out all the fencing, a significant length of it, to create the impression like a unified landscape.” In the summer, they wore special clothing and removed large amounts of invasive plants, an invasive species that can irritate the skin. “We’ve established loads of bush lines,” notes the director. “But the primary focus is we’ve just allowed it to rest for a short time. We’ve reduced a significant amount of livestock impact and noticed what’s emerged.”
Underbrush and natural fences are a excellent nightingale habitat, she explains, but now they’re cutting back some of the thorny plants to develop a greater range of environments and to link up different sections of the land. Young saplings will take considerably longer to establish, but young trees from the adjacent trees are already taking root in the meadows; the group have been setting up barriers to protect them from grazing deer.
Nature Returns in Abundance
There's more than the nightingales – wildlife is reappearing in large numbers. Recently they’ve spotted serpents, legless lizards, nocturnal mammals and invertebrates, says another co-director, as he uncovers one of their monitoring tools (like a doormat over a indentation in the soil). “You find snakes and wildlife hiding under there, but it’s possibly a somewhat cool for them now.” Organic homes, constructed from hollowed-out pieces of tree trunk and active with insects, are attached to some of the woodland. The absence of animals has given insects space to thrive in the meadows. When they visited this time, comments he, “I’d not once seen so many lepidoptera. There were just clouds of them. We were saying, ‘What is occurring?’”
Inception of the Initiative
The original participants – Bennett, Durant, Molly and more individuals – formed as youth, studying or having an passion in environmental science. In that year, the IPCC was forecasting that the target of one and a half degrees of warming was appearing impossible, a prominent figure was guiding the demonstrations for environmental action, and advocate Clover Hogan was addressing youth feeling “climate anxiety”. It was also the time of Isabella Tree’s book, Wilding, on how they changed the a nearby property from a struggling dairy farm into a flourishing wildlife haven. “We were highly motivated by the Knepp story, but what was the part for the next generation?” asks Molly. “So we made a online presence and contacted loads of wildlife trusts and were like, ‘Do you ever get your property owners wanting to do something and you are short on resources?’”
Durant adds the account: “Our entire organisation was essentially founded on the belief that there were individuals who were ready to allow a group of young amateurs on to their property freely, to decide on significant decisions that would impact land value
