That beautifully intricate melody of the songbird is a scarce occurrence in England nowadays, however not at Maple Farm. Back in 2020, a single nightingale could be heard at this secluded location in rural Surrey; this summer, they were in multiple locations. “We were hearing them chirping all night, from multiple areas,” explains one ecologist, chief environmental expert for the Youngwilders. A group of Youngwilders were staying overnight at the site, but the nightingales were so loud, “we were unable to rest all night,” comments Layla Mapemba. “We were all exhausted the next day, but it was so incredible.” An expert from the Surrey Wildlife Trust came to help them capture and tag one of the birds the next morning, Cookson recalls: “He’d never touched a nightingale in his care before. He was emotional.”
Rewilding Accelerates at the Surrey Site
Nature recovery is by its very essence a slow business, but in this place at the farm, after just four years, the changes are already visible, and hearable. The property previously served as a haven for equines. Today it’s a model for the Youngwilders’ mission: to speed up 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 shut out of, and a climate crisis they are often ineffectual to stop. Global heating continues, tree clearing destroys natural habitats, and one more climate conference ends with a frustrating conclusion in Brazil – so what person could criticize young people for wanting to initiate change themselves?
Our project was based on the notion that there were people prepared to permit a bunch of youthful amateurs on to their estate
“The youth is the best educated in terms of nature that there’s historically,” states the group's founder, one organizer. They are also “the highly invested in the issues, and have contributed the minimal role to their creation, and, then, are also going to suffer most as a result.”
Transformation of the Site
Today, the initiative is taking root across the UK – and the original site was the beginning, in all respects. “It’s where we started, and where we built our connections,” notes Molly Easton, as she provides a walkthrough of the 30-acre property. “This used to be six different fields,” she says, as we walk through long grass featuring low scrub, bordered by mature woodland. “The main visual difference is that we’ve taken out all the barriers, a significant length of it, to make it feel like one environment.” In the warmer months, they wore protective gear and eradicated significant quantities of invasive plants, an aggressive flora that can harm the skin. “We’ve established numerous of bush lines,” says Easton. “But the primary focus is we’ve just let it breathe for a little bit. We’ve eliminated a significant amount of livestock impact and seen what’s come up.”
Low scrub and natural fences are a ideal songbird environment, she explains, but now they’re trimming some of the thorny plants to create a increased variety of habitats and to link up separate areas of the site. Young saplings will take a while to take root, but young trees from the adjacent trees are already taking root in the fields; the group have been setting up guards to protect them from grazing deer.
Nature Reappears in Droves
There's more than the songbirds – fauna is coming back in large numbers. This year they’ve seen grass snakes, legless lizards, nocturnal mammals and bugs, notes a team member, as he uncovers one of their survey equipment (such as a doormat over a indentation in the earth). “You find snakes and wildlife sheltering under there, but it’s possibly a bit cold for them now.” Natural nests, built using hollowed-out pieces of timber and humming with wild bees, are strapped to some of the plants. The removal of grazing horses has provided invertebrates space to flourish in the long grass. When they came to this summer, says the director, “I’d never observed so many butterflies. There were just swarms of them. We were like, ‘What is happening?’”
Beginnings of the Project
The original participants – Bennett, Jack, Molly and two others – came together as students, pursuing or having an interest in environmental science. In the recent past, the climate experts was predicting that the target of one and a half degrees of warming was appearing impossible, Greta Thunberg was leading the youth protests for eco-awareness, and activist Clover Hogan was addressing the generation feeling “environmental stress”. It was also the era of Isabella Tree’s work, about nature recovery, on how the authors transformed the a nearby property from a unsuccessful dairy farm into a flourishing ecosystem. “We were highly motivated by the example, but what could be the role for youth?” asks Easton. “So we developed a online presence and rang up loads of conservation groups and were like, ‘Do you ever get your property owners wishing to take action and you are short on capacity?’”
Durant adds the story: “Our complete project was fundamentally premised on the idea that there were landowners who were prepared to allow a bunch of young amateurs on to their land without strict rules, to take significant choices that would affect land value
