The beautifully intricate song of the nightingale is a scarce sound in the UK today, yet not at this rural location. Previously, a solitary bird could be heard at this hidden spot in rural Surrey; this summer, they were all around. “We were hearing them calling all night, from multiple areas,” says Meg Cookson, chief environmental expert for the youth rewilding group. A group of volunteers were staying overnight at the site, however the nightingales were so noisy, “we couldn’t sleep all night,” remarks a project coordinator. “We were all worn out the next day, but it was so amazing.” An professional from the local conservation group came to help them trap and mark one of the nightingales the next morning, the ecologist recalls: “He’d never held a songbird in his hands before. He was emotional.”
Habitat Revival Accelerates at the Surrey Site
Nature recovery is by nature a gradual business, but in this place at this property, after only four years, the outcomes are already evident, and hearable. The property was once a haven for equines. Currently it’s a model for the Youngwilders’ goal: to hasten nature recovery, in one of the ecologically impoverished regions in the globe, and to engage youth (18-30-year-olds) with a natural world they are often denied access to, and a environmental emergency they are often ineffectual to halt. Climate change advances, deforestation destroys natural habitats, and yet another international meeting ends with a unsatisfactory conclusion in Brazil – so who could fault young people for wanting to take matters into their own hands?
The organisation was premised on the idea that there were landowners prepared to permit a bunch of youthful idiots on to their property
“The newer cohort is the best educated in terms of nature that there’s ever been,” states the group's founder, a key figure. They are also “the highly invested in the issues, and have added the minimal role to their origin, and, then, are also going to be affected the worst as a result.”
Revitalization of the Site
Now, the initiative is growing across the UK – and Maple Farm was the beginning, in all respects. “It’s our origin point, and where we created our network,” explains a founding member, as she provides a overview of the 12-hectare property. “This used to be multiple separate areas,” she comments, as we walk through long grass dotted with shrubs, bordered by established trees. “The key visible difference is that we’ve taken out all the barriers, 1.2km of it, to give the sense like a single landscape.” In the summer, they donned hazmat suits and eradicated large amounts of invasive plants, an invasive species that can burn the skin. “We’ve established loads of bush lines,” says 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 livestock impact and noticed what’s emerged.”
Low scrub and shrub lines are a ideal songbird home, she says, but currently they’re cutting back some of the brambles to create a more variety of habitats and to link up separate areas of the site. Young saplings will take a while to grow, but new growth from the adjacent oaks are already growing in the open areas; the group have been setting up barriers to safeguard them from grazing deer.
Wildlife Comes Back in Large Numbers
It’s not just the songbirds – fauna is coming back in abundance. Recently they’ve seen serpents, legless lizards, flyers and bugs, explains another co-director, as he uncovers one of their monitoring tools (similar to a mat over a indentation in the soil). “You discover snakes and animals residing under there, but it’s possibly a slightly cool for them now.” Natural beehives, built using carved parts of timber and active with insects, are attached to some of the woodland. The lack of grazing horses has allowed small creatures opportunity to prosper in the long grass. When they came to this summer, states the director, “I’d not ever observed so numerous butterflies. There were just swarms of them. We were wondering, ‘What is happening?’”
Origins of the Initiative
The initial founders – Noah, Durant, Molly and two others – united as youth, focusing on or expressing an interest in environmental science. In 2019, the climate experts was indicating that the acceptable threshold of one and a half degrees of warming was looking impossible, Greta Thunberg was spearheading the school strikes for environmental action, and activist another voice was discussing young people suffering from “climate anxiety”. It was also the era of the author's book, about nature recovery, on how the authors revitalized the Knepp Estate from a failing dairy farm into a thriving wildlife haven. “We were super-inspired by the example, but what was the role for youth?” asks Easton. “So we made a platform and rang up numerous of conservation groups and were saying, ‘Do you occasionally get your landowners wanting to do something and you don’t have capacity?’”
Jack explains the story: “Our entire initiative was basically premised on the belief that there were individuals who were ready to allow a bunch of youthful enthusiasts on to their property indiscriminately, to take significant decisions that would affect land value
