That manically melodic call of the songbird is a scarce presence in the UK today, yet it's different at the Surrey site. Previously, a lone nightingale could be noticed at this remote spot in the countryside of Surrey; lately, they were all around. “We were hearing them singing all night, from multiple areas,” notes one ecologist, top biologist for the Youngwilders. A team of volunteers were residing temporarily at the location, but the nightingales were so boisterous, “we couldn’t sleep all night,” comments a project coordinator. “We were all exhausted the next day, but it was so incredible.” An expert from the local conservation group came to help them trap and mark one of the songbirds the next morning, Cookson remembers: “He’d never held a songbird in his care before. He was crying.”
Rewilding Progresses at Maple Farm
Nature recovery is by its very essence a slow business, but here at Maple Farm, after merely four years, the changes are already visible, and noticeable. The property used to be a sanctuary for animals. Today it’s a showpiece for the Youngwilders’ mission: to speed up ecological restoration, in one of the most nature-depleted regions in the globe, and to connect the younger generation (18-30-year-olds) with a natural world they are often denied access to, and a climate crisis they are often ineffectual to stop. Rising temperatures continues, habitat loss eliminates wildlife homes, and yet another international meeting ends with a unsatisfactory outcome in abroad – so who could criticize youth for choosing to take matters into their own hands?
The organisation was founded on the belief that there were landowners willing to allow a group of youthful enthusiasts on to their estate
“The youth is the best educated in terms of nature that there’s previously,” explains the group's co-director, Jack Durant. They are also “the highly invested in the challenges, and have added the minimal role to their causing, and, then, are also going to suffer most as a consequence.”
Change of the Site
Now, the organisation is expanding across the Britain – and Maple Farm was the beginning, in multiple ways. “It’s the initial project, and where we established our connections,” says another co-director, as she gives a walkthrough of the 30-acre site. “This was previously six different fields,” she says, as we stroll through overgrown meadows dotted with shrubs, bordered by established trees. “The main visible difference is that we’ve taken out all the enclosures, over a kilometer of it, to create the impression like a unified area.” In the summer, they wore special clothing and cleared significant quantities of invasive plants, an non-native plant that can irritate the body. “We’ve established many of bush lines,” notes Easton. “But the key action is we’ve just let it breathe for a short time. We’ve removed a significant amount of grazing pressure and noticed what’s come up.”
Underbrush and shrub lines are a perfect songbird habitat, she says, however currently they’re trimming some of the brambles to develop a more diversity of habitats and to connect two parts of the site. Fresh plantings will take considerably longer to take root, but saplings from the nearby woodland are already taking root in the meadows; the crew have been setting up barriers to protect them from wildlife.
Wildlife Reappears in Large Numbers
In addition to the songbirds – fauna is reappearing in large numbers. Recently they’ve spotted reptiles, legless lizards, nocturnal mammals and invertebrates, says another co-director, as he uncovers one of their monitoring tools (similar to a cover over a indentation in the soil). “You discover reptiles and things residing under there, but it’s likely a somewhat cool for them now.” Wild beehives, made from hollowed-out sections of wood and buzzing with pollinators, are fixed to some of the woodland. The absence of grazing horses has allowed small creatures room to prosper in the long grass. When they explored this season, comments he, “I’d never observed so countless lepidoptera. There were just clouds of them. We were wondering, ‘What is happening?’”
Beginnings of the Project
The first Youngwilders – Bennett, Jack, Molly and additional members – came together as students, studying or expressing an passion in environmental science. In 2019, the IPCC was indicating that the acceptable threshold of one and a half degrees of climate change was looking unachievable, Greta Thunberg was guiding the youth protests for environmental action, and activist another voice was talking about young people experiencing “environmental stress”. It was also the time of Isabella Tree’s book, Wilding, on how the authors changed the Knepp Estate from a unsuccessful farm into a successful wildlife haven. “We were deeply influenced by the Knepp story, but what was the part for youth?” says Easton. “So we developed a online presence and contacted numerous of wildlife trusts and were saying, ‘Do you occasionally get your estate holders seeking to do something and you are short on resources?’”
Jack explains the narrative: “Our complete project was fundamentally premised on the idea that there were landowners who were prepared to let a collection of youthful amateurs on to their estate freely, to take fairly massive actions that would impact land value
