That beautifully intricate melody of the songbird is a rare sound in the UK today, but it's different at Maple Farm. Back in 2020, a single nightingale could be noticed at this secluded location in the countryside of Surrey; lately, they were in multiple locations. “We were hearing them calling all night, from multiple areas,” says one ecologist, top biologist for the youth rewilding group. A band of participants were camping out at the site, however the nightingales were so boisterous, “we stayed awake all night,” remarks a project coordinator. “We were all exhausted the next day, but it was so amazing.” An professional from the Surrey Wildlife Trust came to help them capture and tag one of the nightingales the next morning, Cookson remembers: “He’d never held a songbird in his possession before. He was emotional.”
Habitat Revival Progresses at Maple Farm
Rewilding is by nature a slow business, but at this site at the farm, after just four years, the outcomes are already apparent, and hearable. The farm previously served as a sanctuary for animals. Today it’s a showpiece for the youth-led goal: to speed up habitat revival, in one of the most nature-depleted regions in the world, and to connect youth (18-30-year-olds) with a environment they are often denied access to, and a climate crisis they are often ineffectual to halt. Global heating persists, habitat loss destroys wildlife homes, and another climate conference ends with a disappointing outcome in the host country – so what person could blame young people for wishing to act independently?
The organisation was based on the belief that there were individuals willing to permit a bunch of young amateurs on to their property
“The youth is the best educated ecologically that there’s ever been,” states the Youngwilders’ leader, Jack Durant. They are also “the most emotionally involved in the challenges, and have contributed the smallest part to their creation, and, then, are also going to be affected the greatest as a result.”
Revitalization of the Site
Today, the group is expanding across the Britain – and this location planted the seed, in multiple ways. “It’s the initial project, and the place we built our network,” explains Molly Easton, as she provides a tour of the 12-hectare land. “This once consisted of multiple separate areas,” she comments, as we walk through tall vegetation dotted with low scrub, surrounded by forest. “The main noticeable difference is that we’ve taken out all the fencing, 1.2km of it, to give the sense like a single area.” In the summer, they used protective gear and cleared large amounts of giant hogweed, an invasive species that can irritate the flesh. “We’ve planted loads of bush lines,” says she. “But the key action is we’ve just given it space for a brief period. We’ve eliminated a significant amount of livestock impact and observed what’s come up.”
Underbrush and hedgerows are a ideal nightingale environment, she says, however now they’re managing some of the wild growth to create a more variety of habitats and to link up different sections of the property. New trees will take a while to grow, but young trees from the adjacent oaks are already taking root in the fields; the crew have been installing barriers to safeguard them from grazing deer.
Animals Comes Back in Droves
There's more than the nightingales – wildlife is returning in large numbers. Lately they’ve observed serpents, legless lizards, flyers and bugs, explains Noah Bennett, as he lifts up one of their survey equipment (such as a mat over a depression in the ground). “You find snakes and things hiding under there, but it’s probably a bit chilly for them now.” Wild nests, made from carved sections of timber and active with pollinators, are attached to some of the plants. The removal of livestock has provided insects room to prosper in the overgrown areas. When they came to this summer, states he, “I’d not once observed so countless lepidoptera. There were just clouds of them. We were like, ‘What is happening?’”
Beginnings of the Movement
The initial Youngwilders – Bennett, Durant, Easton and two others – came together as youth, pursuing or sharing an concern in environmental science. In the recent past, the IPCC was forecasting that the safe limit of 1.5C of climate change was seeming impossible, a prominent figure was spearheading the school strikes for eco-awareness, and activist a speaker was discussing the generation feeling “environmental stress”. It was also the period of Isabella Tree’s book, about nature recovery, on how she and her husband revitalized the Knepp Estate from a struggling dairy farm into a successful ecosystem. “We were deeply influenced by the case study, but what was the part for young people?” asks Molly. “So we developed a online presence and contacted loads of conservation groups and were asking, ‘Do you occasionally get your property owners seeking to take action and you don’t have time?’”
Durant adds the story: “Our complete initiative was basically premised on the idea that there were people who were ready to let a bunch of young amateurs on to their property freely, to decide on significant decisions that would affect land value
