🔗 Share this article

That richly complex melody of the nightingale is a uncommon sound in Britain today, but not at this rural location. Four years ago, a solitary bird could be detected at this secluded location in rural Surrey; recently, they were all around. “We were listening to them calling all night, from several zones,” notes Meg Cookson, top biologist for the Youngwilders. A band of volunteers were residing temporarily at the property, but the birds were so loud, “we were unable to rest all night,” says a project coordinator. “We were all exhausted the next day, but it was so amazing.” An expert from the Surrey Wildlife Trust came to help them net and ring one of the birds the next morning, Cookson recalls: “He’d never touched a nightingale in his possession before. He was crying.”

Habitat Revival Progresses at Maple Farm

Rewilding is by definition a lengthy business, but in this place at the farm, after merely a short period, the results are already evident, and audible. The land used to be a sanctuary for animals. Currently it’s a showpiece for the youth-led goal: to hasten habitat revival, in one of the ecologically impoverished countries in the globe, and to engage young people (18-30-year-olds) with a ecosystem they are often denied access to, and a climate crisis they are often ineffectual to halt. Global heating continues, deforestation destroys natural habitats, and one more climate conference comes to a frustrating outcome in Brazil – so who could blame the younger generation for choosing to act independently?

The project was founded on the notion that there were landowners ready to let a group of youthful amateurs on to their property

“The younger generation is the best educated in terms of nature that there’s ever been,” says the group's co-director, 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 be affected the worst as a consequence.”

Transformation of the Property

Now, the initiative is growing across the United Kingdom – and the original site started it all, in all respects. “It’s our origin point, and the place we established our community,” notes another co-director, as she gives a tour of the 30-acre property. “This once consisted of six different fields,” she says, as we stroll through long grass dotted with low scrub, bordered by established trees. “The primary visible transformation is that we’ve eliminated all the fencing, a significant length of it, to create the impression like a single landscape.” In the summer, they donned protective gear and eradicated significant quantities of invasive plants, an aggressive flora that can burn the flesh. “We’ve established loads of bush lines,” says Easton. “But the primary focus is we’ve just given it space for a short time. We’ve eliminated a large part of animal feeding and noticed what’s come up.”

Underbrush and natural fences are a perfect songbird habitat, she says, however today they’re managing some of the brambles to create a more diversity of ecosystems and to join separate areas of the land. New trees will take a while to grow, but new growth from the adjacent woodland are already growing in the meadows; the team have been placing protectors to protect them from animals.

Nature Returns in Droves

It’s not just the songbirds – fauna is reappearing in droves. Recently they’ve spotted serpents, legless lizards, bats and insects, says another co-director, as he lifts up one of their survey equipment (like a mat over a small hollow in the soil). “You find reptiles and things residing under there, but it’s probably a bit cool for them now.” Organic nests, built using empty sections of tree trunk and buzzing with insects, are fixed to some of the woodland. The lack of animals has given small creatures room to thrive in the overgrown areas. When they explored this season, comments the director, “I’d not once seen so many insects. There were just clouds of them. We were saying, ‘What is happening?’”

Inception of the Movement

The original participants – Noah, Jack, Molly and two others – formed as students, studying or sharing an passion in nature. In that year, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was indicating that the safe limit of one and a half degrees of climate change was looking unachievable, the activist was leading the youth protests for eco-awareness, and activist a speaker was addressing youth experiencing “eco-worry”. It was also the period of Isabella Tree’s work, on rewilding, on how she and her husband revitalized the Knepp Estate from a struggling farm into a flourishing natural habitat. “We were highly motivated by the Knepp story, but what could be the role for the next generation?” says Molly. “So we created a online presence and contacted many of conservation groups and were like, ‘Do you sometimes get your property owners wanting to make changes and you lack resources?’”

Jack continues the story: “Our whole organisation was basically based on the idea that there were individuals who were willing to permit a bunch of young idiots on to their land without strict rules, to make fairly massive actions that would impact land value