The beautifully intricate melody of the nightingale is a scarce sound in England today, but it's different at this rural location. Back in 2020, a lone nightingale could be heard at this secluded place in rural Surrey; lately, they were everywhere. “We were listening to them calling all night, from five different territories,” explains Meg Cookson, lead ecologist for the eco-activist organization. A band of volunteers were camping out at the site, but the nightingales were so boisterous, “we stayed awake all night,” says an engagement lead. “We were all exhausted the next day, but it was so cool.” An professional from the local conservation group came to help them capture and tag one of the nightingales the next morning, Cookson states: “He’d never handled a songbird in his hands before. He was emotional.”
Rewilding Accelerates at This Location
Ecological restoration is by nature a gradual process, but in this place at the farm, after just several seasons, the results are already evident, and noticeable. The farm previously served as a sanctuary for horses. Today it’s a showpiece for the Youngwilders’ mission: to accelerate ecological restoration, in one of the biodiversity-poor regions in the globe, and to engage young people (18-30-year-olds) with a environment they are often excluded from, and a climate crisis they are often unable to halt. Global heating persists, deforestation destroys wildlife homes, and yet another climate conference draws to a frustrating outcome in Brazil – so who could criticize the younger generation for wanting to initiate change themselves?
Our organisation was based on the idea that there were individuals willing to allow a bunch of youthful idiots on to their property
“The younger generation is the most knowledgeable ecologically that there’s historically,” says the Youngwilders’ founder, Jack Durant. They are also “the most emotionally involved in the challenges, and have played the minimal role to their causing, and, then, are also going to be affected the worst as a result.”
Change of the Property
Today, the organisation is expanding across the United Kingdom – and Maple Farm was the beginning, in every sense. “It’s our origin point, and where we built our network,” says Molly Easton, as she offers a walkthrough of the 12-hectare site. “This once consisted of six different fields,” she says, as we stroll through tall vegetation dotted with shrubs, bordered by established trees. “The primary visual difference is that we’ve removed all the barriers, over a kilometer of it, to make it feel like one landscape.” In the recent season, they donned protective gear and cleared masses of invasive plants, an aggressive flora that can harm the flesh. “We’ve introduced many of natural barriers,” says she. “But the primary focus is we’ve just allowed it to rest for a brief period. We’ve eliminated a large part of grazing pressure and seen what’s come up.”
Low scrub and hedgerows are a excellent songbird habitat, she explains, although currently they’re managing some of the thorny plants to establish a more diversity of environments and to join separate areas of the site. Fresh plantings will take a while to take root, but young trees from the adjacent woodland are already establishing themselves in the open areas; the team have been setting up guards to shield them from animals.
Animals Returns in Abundance
It’s not just the nightingales – wildlife is coming back in droves. Lately they’ve spotted reptiles, slowworms, bats and invertebrates, explains Noah Bennett, as he lifts up one of their reptile mats (similar to a mat over a small hollow in the soil). “You get reptiles and things sheltering under there, but it’s possibly a slightly chilly for them now.” Natural beehives, built using carved sections of tree trunk and buzzing with wild bees, are attached to some of the trees. The lack of livestock has allowed insects opportunity to prosper in the meadows. When they came to this time, states the director, “I’d never observed so many insects. There were just clouds of them. We were like, ‘What is happening?’”
Origins of the Initiative
The original participants – Bennett, Durant, Easton and two others – formed as students, studying or expressing an interest in ecology. In 2019, the IPCC was predicting that the target of one and a half degrees of climate change was seeming out of reach, a prominent figure was guiding the demonstrations for eco-awareness, and campaigner Clover Hogan was addressing the generation experiencing “climate anxiety”. It was also the era of Isabella Tree’s book, Wilding, on how she and her husband changed the a Sussex location from a failing farm into a thriving ecosystem. “We were deeply influenced by the Knepp story, but what was the part for young people?” asks Molly. “So we developed a website and contacted loads of conservation groups and were like, ‘Do you ever get your landowners wanting to do something and you don’t have capacity?’”
Durant continues the account: “Our complete organisation was essentially premised on the belief that there were individuals who were ready to permit a collection of youthful amateurs on to their property indiscriminately, to make major actions that would impact land value
