The beautifully intricate call of the nightingale is a scarce presence in England today, but it's different at Maple Farm. Four years ago, a single bird could be heard at this hidden spot in the countryside of Surrey; recently, they were all around. “We were hearing them singing all night, from several zones,” says Meg Cookson, lead ecologist for the youth rewilding group. A team of volunteers were staying overnight at the property, however the nightingales were so noisy, “we stayed awake all night,” comments a project coordinator. “We were all knackered the next day, but it was so amazing.” An professional from the local conservation group came to help them net and ring one of the nightingales the next morning, she remembers: “He’d never touched a nightingale in his hands before. He was crying.”
Rewilding Accelerates at This Location
Ecological restoration is by nature a slow business, but in this place at the farm, after just several seasons, the results are already evident, and hearable. The land previously served as a sanctuary for animals. Currently it’s a model for the Youngwilders’ mission: to hasten ecological restoration, in one of the biodiversity-poor regions in the world, and to link young people (18-30-year-olds) with a ecosystem they are often denied access to, and a environmental emergency they are often ineffectual to prevent. Rising temperatures continues, deforestation destroys natural habitats, and another Cop summit draws to a disappointing end in Brazil – so what person could blame youth for choosing to act independently?
The organisation was premised on the belief that there were people ready to let a group of young idiots on to their estate
“The newer cohort is the most knowledgeable ecologically that there’s historically,” states the group's leader, a key figure. They are also “the most emotionally involved in the issues, and have contributed the minimal role to their creation, and, then, are also going to experience consequences the worst as a result.”
Change of the Landscape
Currently, the group is taking root across the United Kingdom – and this location started it all, in all respects. “It’s where we started, and the place we created our network,” explains another co-director, as she offers a walkthrough of the expansive land. “This used to be multiple separate areas,” she says, as we stroll through overgrown meadows filled with shrubs, bordered by mature woodland. “The main visible difference is that we’ve taken out all the fencing, 1.2km of it, to make it feel like a single area.” In the warmer months, they used protective gear and removed significant quantities of giant hogweed, an invasive species that can irritate the body. “We’ve planted numerous of bush lines,” says the director. “But the key action is we’ve just let it breathe for a short time. We’ve reduced a lot of animal feeding and observed what’s sprung up.”
Bushes and shrub lines are a excellent songbird environment, she comments, however currently they’re managing some of the brambles to develop a more variety of environments and to link up separate areas of the site. New trees will take a while to grow, but new growth from the adjacent oaks are already growing in the fields; the team have been placing guards to shield them from grazing deer.
Wildlife Reappears in Abundance
In addition to the songbirds – fauna is returning in large numbers. Recently they’ve observed reptiles, slowworms, bats and bugs, says another co-director, as he raises one of their reptile mats (like a doormat over a small hollow in the earth). “You find snakes and wildlife residing under there, but it’s possibly a somewhat cool for them now.” Natural homes, built using empty sections of timber and humming with pollinators, are strapped to some of the woodland. The lack of livestock has given insects room to thrive in the overgrown areas. When they came to this time, states the director, “I’d not ever encountered so countless lepidoptera. There were just masses of them. We were like, ‘What is happening?’”
Origins of the Initiative
The first founders – Noah, Jack, Molly and two others – came together as youth, studying or expressing an interest in ecology. In that year, the climate experts was forecasting that the safe limit of one and a half degrees of global heating was seeming impossible, the activist was leading the school strikes for eco-awareness, and activist a speaker was discussing youth feeling “eco-worry”. It was also the period of the author's publication, about nature recovery, on how she and her husband revitalized the Knepp Estate from a struggling dairy farm into a thriving ecosystem. “We were deeply influenced by the Knepp story, but what was the function for youth?” questions Molly. “So we made a website and contacted loads of wildlife trusts and were asking, ‘Do you occasionally get your property owners wanting to take action and you don’t have time?’”
Jack continues the narrative: “Our complete initiative was fundamentally founded on the idea that there were people who were willing to permit a bunch of young amateurs on to their estate indiscriminately, to decide on major decisions that would impact land value
