The beautifully intricate song of the songbird is a rare occurrence in the UK nowadays, however not at the Surrey site. Previously, a lone bird could be detected at this hidden place in the countryside of Surrey; lately, they were everywhere. “We were hearing them calling all night, from five different territories,” explains one ecologist, lead ecologist for the youth rewilding group. A team of participants were residing temporarily at the location, yet the nightingales were so boisterous, “we couldn’t sleep all night,” says Layla Mapemba. “We were all exhausted the next day, but it was so amazing.” An professional from the Surrey Wildlife Trust came to help them trap and mark one of the nightingales the next morning, Cookson recalls: “He’d never touched a nightingale in his care before. He was emotional.”
Ecological Restoration Speeds Up at This Location
Rewilding is by nature a gradual business, but here at Maple Farm, after only four years, the outcomes are already apparent, and noticeable. The farm previously served as a sanctuary for equines. Today it’s a model for the Youngwilders’ mission: to hasten nature recovery, in one of the ecologically impoverished countries in the world, and to engage young people (18-30-year-olds) with a natural world they are often excluded from, and a global warming issue they are often unable to prevent. Rising temperatures persists, tree clearing damages wildlife homes, and yet another international meeting ends with a disappointing outcome in Brazil – so who could blame young people for wishing to initiate change themselves?
Our project was based on the belief that there were people willing to let a group of young enthusiasts on to their land
“The younger generation is the best educated ecologically that there’s ever been,” says the group's leader, one organizer. They are also “the highly invested in the problems, and have contributed the minimal role to their causing, and, then, are also going to experience consequences the greatest as a outcome.”
Change of the Landscape
Today, the organisation is taking root across the UK – and the original site was the beginning, in every sense. “It’s where we started, and the place we built our connections,” explains a founding member, as she gives a walkthrough of the 30-acre site. “This once consisted of divided plots,” she states, as we walk through tall vegetation dotted with low scrub, surrounded by established trees. “The primary visual difference is that we’ve taken out all the barriers, over a kilometer of it, to give the sense like a unified area.” In the recent season, they donned special clothing and eradicated significant quantities of invasive plants, an aggressive flora that can burn the body. “We’ve planted numerous of bush lines,” notes Easton. “But the main thing is we’ve just given it space for a brief period. We’ve reduced a large part of livestock impact and observed what’s emerged.”
Underbrush and shrub lines are a excellent songbird home, she explains, but currently they’re managing some of the wild growth to create a more variety of ecosystems and to link up separate areas of the property. New trees will take much more time to take root, but new growth from the surrounding oaks are already taking root in the fields; the crew have been setting up guards to shield them from animals.
Nature Comes Back in Abundance
In addition to the songbirds – wildlife is returning in large numbers. Lately they’ve observed grass snakes, creatures, bats and insects, notes a team member, as he uncovers one of their survey equipment (similar to a doormat over a small hollow in the earth). “You get creatures and things sheltering under there, but it’s probably a bit cold for them now.” Natural homes, built using empty sections of timber and buzzing with pollinators, are strapped to some of the trees. The lack of animals has allowed invertebrates room to prosper in the overgrown areas. When they explored this time, comments Bennett, “I’d never seen so many lepidoptera. There were just swarms of them. We were saying, ‘What is going on?’”
Inception of the Initiative
The initial Youngwilders – Bennett, Jack, Molly and additional members – united as learners, pursuing or expressing an interest in ecology. In the recent past, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was forecasting that the acceptable threshold of one and a half degrees of global heating was appearing out of reach, a prominent figure was guiding the school strikes for environmental action, and campaigner Clover Hogan was discussing young people suffering from “environmental stress”. It was also the time of Isabella Tree’s publication, on rewilding, on how they transformed the Knepp Estate from a struggling agricultural business into a successful wildlife haven. “We were deeply influenced by the example, but what was the function for youth?” questions Easton. “So we created a platform and called many of wildlife trusts and were saying, ‘Do you ever get your estate holders seeking to take action and you lack resources?’”
Durant continues the story: “Our whole initiative was fundamentally founded on the notion that there were individuals who were prepared to allow a group of young enthusiasts on to their land without strict rules, to make fairly massive actions that would affect land value
