The manically melodic call of the nightingale is a rare presence in England these days, yet it's different at the Surrey site. Back in 2020, a single nightingale could be heard at this hidden place in the countryside of Surrey; this summer, they were all around. “We were listening to them chirping all night, from multiple areas,” notes Meg Cookson, lead ecologist for the eco-activist organization. A band of Youngwilders were residing temporarily at the property, but the birds were so loud, “we stayed awake all night,” comments Layla Mapemba. “We were all worn out 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 remembers: “He’d never handled a songbird in his possession before. He was teary.”
Rewilding Accelerates at the Surrey Site
Nature recovery is by its very essence a gradual business, but here at Maple Farm, after just four years, the outcomes are already apparent, and hearable. The land previously served as a retirement home for equines. Today it’s a model for the youth-led purpose: to speed up ecological restoration, in one of the biodiversity-poor countries in the planet, and to connect youth (18-30-year-olds) with a natural world they are often excluded from, and a global warming issue they are often ineffectual to prevent. Global heating continues, habitat loss eliminates ecosystems, and another Cop summit comes to a unsatisfactory conclusion in abroad – so who could fault youth for choosing to take matters into their own hands?
Our project was based on the idea that there were landowners willing to permit a bunch of youthful enthusiasts on to their land
“The younger generation is the most informed in terms of nature that there’s historically,” says the Youngwilders’ co-director, one organizer. They are also “the highly invested in the challenges, and have added the smallest part to their causing, and, then, are also going to suffer the worst as a outcome.”
Revitalization of the Property
Currently, the organisation is growing across the Britain – and Maple Farm planted the seed, in every sense. “It’s the initial project, and the place we created our connections,” notes a founding member, as she provides a tour of the 12-hectare property. “This was previously divided plots,” she comments, as we move through overgrown meadows featuring low scrub, surrounded by mature woodland. “The primary noticeable change is that we’ve removed all the barriers, over a kilometer of it, to create the impression like a unified landscape.” In the recent season, they wore hazmat suits and cleared large amounts of harmful weeds, an aggressive flora that can burn the skin. “We’ve established many of bush lines,” notes Easton. “But the primary focus is we’ve just let it breathe for a short time. We’ve removed a lot of grazing pressure and noticed what’s sprung up.”
Bushes and hedgerows are a excellent songbird environment, she comments, but now they’re trimming some of the wild growth to create a more range of ecosystems and to join different sections of the property. Young saplings will take much more time to take root, but saplings from the adjacent woodland are already growing in the fields; the team have been installing protectors to shield them from animals.
Wildlife Comes Back in Droves
In addition to the nightingales – wildlife is reappearing in large numbers. Lately they’ve seen reptiles, legless lizards, nocturnal mammals and insects, explains another co-director, as he lifts up one of their monitoring tools (similar to a mat over a depression in the ground). “You get snakes and animals hiding under there, but it’s probably a bit chilly for them now.” Natural beehives, built using carved pieces of timber and active with insects, are strapped to some of the trees. The lack of livestock has given invertebrates space to flourish in the long grass. When they visited this time, comments Bennett, “I’d not ever seen so many lepidoptera. There were just masses of them. We were like, ‘What is happening?’”
Origins of the Initiative
The first Youngwilders – Bennett, Jack, Molly and more individuals – formed as learners, focusing on or having an interest in nature. In 2019, the IPCC was forecasting that the acceptable threshold of one and a half degrees of warming was seeming impossible, the activist was leading the demonstrations for environmental action, and advocate another voice was addressing youth experiencing “climate anxiety”. It was also the time of a writer's publication, Wilding, on how the authors revitalized the Knepp Estate from a failing dairy farm into a flourishing ecosystem. “We were highly motivated by the case study, but what could be the part for young people?” says Easton. “So we made a platform and called loads of environmental organizations and were asking, ‘Do you occasionally get your landowners seeking to make changes and you lack capacity?’”
Durant adds the story: “Our entire organisation was basically founded on the notion that there were people who were ready to let a collection of young idiots on to their land without strict rules, to decide on major decisions that would impact land value
