The beautifully intricate song of the nightingale is a rare sound in England these days, yet it's different at the Surrey site. Previously, a solitary nightingale could be noticed at this remote place in the countryside of Surrey; this summer, they were in multiple locations. “We were listening to them calling all night, from multiple areas,” says Meg Cookson, top biologist for the youth rewilding group. A group of Youngwilders were camping out at the site, however the birds were so boisterous, “we were unable to rest all night,” comments a project coordinator. “We were all worn out the next day, but it was so incredible.” An professional from the regional nature organization came to help them trap and mark one of the birds the next morning, the ecologist recalls: “He’d never touched a nightingale in his hands before. He was crying.”
Habitat Revival Progresses at This Location
Rewilding is by definition a slow business, but at this site at Maple Farm, after merely several seasons, the outcomes are already apparent, and audible. The farm was once a sanctuary for horses. Today it’s a showpiece for the youth-led mission: to accelerate habitat revival, in one of the ecologically impoverished nations in the globe, and to connect the younger generation (18-30-year-olds) with a natural world they are often shut out of, and a global warming issue they are often unable to halt. Rising temperatures continues, tree clearing damages ecosystems, and yet another international meeting ends with a unsatisfactory end in abroad – so what person could fault youth for choosing to act independently?
Our organisation was based on the notion that there were individuals willing to let a bunch of youthful enthusiasts on to their estate
“The youth is the best educated environmentally that there’s previously,” explains the Youngwilders’ leader, a key figure. They are also “the highly invested in the challenges, and have added the smallest part to their creation, and, then, are also going to experience consequences most as a consequence.”
Transformation of the Landscape
Today, the organisation is taking root across the United Kingdom – and this location planted the seed, in multiple ways. “It’s our origin point, and the place we established our network,” notes a founding member, as she provides a walkthrough of the 12-hectare site. “This used to be multiple separate areas,” she comments, as we walk through overgrown meadows featuring shrubs, bordered by forest. “The primary noticeable change is that we’ve taken out all the fencing, a significant length of it, to create the impression like one landscape.” In the warmer months, they donned protective gear and removed large amounts of giant hogweed, an non-native plant that can burn the body. “We’ve established many of hedgerows,” says Easton. “But the key action is we’ve just let it breathe for a little bit. We’ve eliminated a large part of livestock impact and noticed what’s sprung up.”
Underbrush and natural fences are a perfect songbird habitat, she says, however today they’re trimming some of the thorny plants to establish a more variety of habitats and to link up separate areas of the land. Young saplings will take a while to establish, but new growth from the adjacent oaks are already establishing themselves in the open areas; the crew have been installing protectors to protect them from wildlife.
Nature Comes Back in Droves
In addition to the nightingales – wildlife is coming back in droves. This year they’ve spotted grass snakes, slowworms, flyers and insects, says a team member, as he uncovers one of their survey equipment (such as a mat over a small hollow in the soil). “You get creatures and things hiding under there, but it’s probably a bit chilly for them now.” Organic nests, constructed from empty parts of timber and humming with wild bees, are fixed to some of the woodland. The removal of grazing horses has allowed small creatures space to thrive in the meadows. When they explored this time, says he, “I’d not ever seen so countless lepidoptera. There were just masses of them. We were wondering, ‘What is going on?’”
Inception of the Project
The first participants – Bennett, Jack, Molly and more individuals – came together as youth, pursuing or having an concern in environmental science. In that year, the IPCC was predicting that the safe limit of one and a half degrees of climate change was appearing unachievable, Greta Thunberg was spearheading the school strikes for eco-awareness, and advocate a speaker was addressing youth feeling “environmental stress”. It was also the period of the author's book, Wilding, on how they changed the Knepp Estate from a struggling farm into a flourishing ecosystem. “We were deeply influenced by the case study, but what could be the part for youth?” asks Easton. “So we created a website and called loads of environmental organizations and were asking, ‘Do you occasionally get your property owners seeking to do something and you don’t have time?’”
Durant continues the story: “Our complete project was fundamentally based on the idea that there were individuals who were ready to permit a bunch of youthful amateurs on to their property freely, to take major actions that would affect land value
