The beautifully intricate call of the songbird is a scarce sound in the UK nowadays, yet it's different at the Surrey site. Previously, a lone bird could be heard at this hidden location in the countryside of Surrey; this summer, they were all around. “We were listening to them chirping all night, from five different territories,” says Meg Cookson, lead ecologist for the youth rewilding group. A group of volunteers were camping out at the property, but the nightingales were so noisy, “we stayed awake all night,” remarks Layla Mapemba. “We were all exhausted the next day, but it was so cool.” An expert from the regional nature organization came to help them trap and mark one of the songbirds the next morning, Cookson remembers: “He’d never touched a nightingale in his possession before. He was crying.”
Rewilding Accelerates at This Location
Nature recovery is by definition a slow process, but here at Maple Farm, after only several seasons, the results are already visible, and audible. The land used to be a retirement home for equines. Today it’s a example for the Youngwilders’ mission: to hasten ecological restoration, in one of the most nature-depleted regions in the planet, and to connect young people (18-30-year-olds) with a environment they are often shut out of, and a environmental emergency they are often unable to prevent. Rising temperatures continues, deforestation eliminates wildlife homes, and yet another international meeting draws to a unsatisfactory outcome in abroad – so who could blame young people for wishing to act independently?
The project was based on the belief that there were landowners prepared to let a collection of youthful idiots on to their land
“The newer cohort is the most knowledgeable in terms of nature that there’s previously,” states the Youngwilders’ co-director, a key figure. They are also “the deeply concerned in the problems, and have added the smallest part to their origin, and, then, are also going to be affected most as a result.”
Revitalization of the Site
Today, the organisation is taking root across the UK – and Maple Farm was the beginning, in every sense. “It’s our origin point, and where we built our network,” explains a founding member, as she gives a walkthrough of the expansive land. “This once consisted of divided plots,” she states, as we stroll through long grass featuring shrubs, bordered by mature woodland. “The primary noticeable transformation is that we’ve removed all the fencing, 1.2km of it, to give the sense like a unified landscape.” In the warmer months, they wore protective gear and cleared significant quantities of giant hogweed, an non-native plant that can irritate the skin. “We’ve established loads of hedgerows,” says the director. “But the main thing is we’ve just allowed it to rest for a short time. We’ve reduced a large part of livestock impact and seen what’s come up.”
Low scrub and hedgerows are a excellent songbird home, she comments, but now they’re trimming some of the thorny plants to establish a greater diversity of ecosystems and to link up two parts of the land. Young saplings will take a while to grow, but new growth from the adjacent trees are already taking root in the meadows; the crew have been setting up barriers to shield them from animals.
Wildlife Returns in Droves
There's more than the nightingales – wildlife is reappearing in droves. This year they’ve spotted reptiles, creatures, flyers and insects, explains Noah Bennett, as he raises one of their monitoring tools (similar to a mat over a small hollow in the earth). “You discover creatures and things sheltering under there, but it’s probably a bit cool for them now.” Natural nests, made from hollowed-out pieces of wood and buzzing with pollinators, are fixed to some of the trees. The removal of grazing horses has allowed invertebrates space to thrive in the overgrown areas. When they explored this time, comments the director, “I’d not once observed so numerous lepidoptera. There were just swarms of them. We were saying, ‘What is happening?’”
Beginnings of the Initiative
The first Youngwilders – Noah, Jack, Molly and more individuals – united as students, focusing on or sharing an passion in environmental science. In 2019, the climate experts was indicating that the acceptable threshold of 1.5C of climate change was appearing unachievable, the activist was leading the school strikes for climate movement, and campaigner Clover Hogan was discussing young people feeling “environmental stress”. It was also the period of a writer's work, on rewilding, on how she and her husband revitalized the a nearby property from a unsuccessful agricultural business into a flourishing natural habitat. “We were highly motivated by the Knepp story, but what was the part for youth?” asks Easton. “So we made a website and rang up loads of conservation groups and were asking, ‘Do you ever get your estate holders seeking to take action and you lack capacity?’”
Durant adds the story: “Our entire project was basically premised on the belief that there were people who were prepared to let a group of young amateurs on to their estate freely, to take significant decisions that would affect land value
