That richly complex call of the nightingale is a rare sound in Britain these days, yet not at the Surrey site. Back in 2020, a solitary bird could be detected at this hidden location in rural Surrey; lately, they were in multiple locations. “We were hearing them chirping all night, from multiple areas,” notes a lead scientist, chief environmental expert for the youth rewilding group. A band of volunteers were staying overnight at the site, yet the nightingales were so boisterous, “we stayed awake all night,” says a project coordinator. “We were all worn out the next day, but it was so incredible.” An expert from the regional nature organization came to help them capture and tag one of the songbirds the next morning, she states: “He’d never touched a songbird in his hands before. He was crying.”
Ecological Restoration Progresses at This Location
Nature recovery is by definition a slow business, but at this site at the farm, after just four years, the results are already evident, and noticeable. The property used to be a haven for animals. Today it’s a example for the youth-led purpose: to accelerate habitat revival, in one of the most nature-depleted regions in the planet, and to engage young people (18-30-year-olds) with a ecosystem they are often shut out of, and a environmental emergency they are often unable to prevent. Global heating persists, tree clearing destroys ecosystems, and another Cop summit draws to a frustrating end in Brazil – so who could blame youth for choosing to act independently?
The project was based on the belief that there were individuals willing to allow a collection of youthful idiots on to their land
“The youth is the most informed ecologically that there’s previously,” says the group's founder, a key figure. They are also “the most emotionally involved in the challenges, and have added the minimal role to their causing, and, then, are also going to suffer the worst as a consequence.”
Change of the Property
Now, the organisation is growing across the UK – and Maple Farm was the beginning, in every sense. “It’s where we started, and the place we built our network,” says a founding member, as she offers a overview of the 30-acre property. “This used to be six different fields,” she says, as we walk through long grass filled with bushes, bordered by forest. “The key visual change is that we’ve eliminated all the fencing, 1.2km of it, to make it feel like a single area.” In the warmer months, they wore protective gear and eradicated large amounts of harmful weeds, an invasive species that can harm the body. “We’ve introduced many of natural barriers,” says Easton. “But the main thing is we’ve just let it breathe for a brief period. We’ve eliminated a large part of livestock impact and seen what’s come up.”
Low scrub and shrub lines are a perfect nightingale habitat, she explains, although now they’re cutting back some of the wild growth to create a more diversity of environments and to link up two parts of the property. Fresh plantings will take considerably longer to establish, but young trees from the nearby oaks are already growing in the fields; the group have been placing protectors to shield them from grazing deer.
Animals Reappears in Droves
It’s not just the songbirds – fauna is returning in droves. This year they’ve seen serpents, slowworms, bats and insects, says another co-director, as he raises one of their survey equipment (like a cover over a indentation in the soil). “You discover creatures and animals sheltering under there, but it’s probably a somewhat chilly for them now.” Organic beehives, constructed from carved sections of timber and humming with wild bees, are fixed to some of the woodland. The lack of livestock has provided invertebrates room to flourish in the long grass. When they visited this summer, comments the director, “I’d not once seen so numerous butterflies. There were just clouds of them. We were like, ‘What is going on?’”
Origins of the Initiative
The original Youngwilders – Noah, Jack, Easton and two others – formed as youth, studying or expressing an concern in nature. In the recent past, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was indicating that the acceptable threshold of one and a half degrees of climate change was seeming impossible, Greta Thunberg was leading the demonstrations for environmental action, and campaigner a speaker was discussing young people feeling “eco-worry”. It was also the time of the author's publication, about nature recovery, on how the authors revitalized the a nearby property from a unsuccessful farm into a successful wildlife haven. “We were deeply influenced by the Knepp story, but what was the part for young people?” says Easton. “So we created a website and rang up many of wildlife trusts and were like, ‘Do you occasionally get your estate holders wishing to take action and you lack capacity?’”
Jack adds the account: “Our complete organisation was fundamentally founded on the idea that there were landowners who were prepared to allow a group of young amateurs on to their property freely, to make fairly massive choices that would affect land value
