That richly complex call of the nightingale is a rare occurrence in England these days, yet not at the Surrey site. Previously, a lone bird could be detected at this remote place in rural Surrey; recently, they were all around. “We were listening to them calling all night, from several zones,” notes Meg Cookson, lead ecologist for the youth rewilding group. A team of Youngwilders were camping out at the location, however the nightingales were so loud, “we couldn’t sleep all night,” comments 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 trap and mark one of the songbirds the next morning, the ecologist recalls: “He’d never touched a songbird in his hands before. He was emotional.”
Ecological Restoration Progresses at Maple Farm
Rewilding is by nature a gradual business, but here at Maple Farm, after just four years, the outcomes are already visible, and hearable. The land previously served as a haven for equines. Today it’s a example for the Youngwilders’ mission: to speed up nature recovery, in one of the most nature-depleted nations in the globe, and to engage young people (18-30-year-olds) with a natural world they are often shut out of, and a climate crisis they are often ineffectual to halt. Global heating continues, deforestation eliminates natural habitats, and another international meeting ends with a frustrating conclusion in Brazil – so what person could fault young people for choosing to initiate change themselves?
Our organisation was premised on the notion that there were landowners prepared to let a group of young enthusiasts on to their property
“The younger generation is the best educated environmentally that there’s historically,” explains the group's founder, a key figure. They are also “the most emotionally involved in the problems, and have played the minimal role to their origin, and, then, are also going to experience consequences the worst as a result.”
Revitalization of the Site
Currently, the initiative is taking root across the UK – and Maple Farm planted the seed, in multiple ways. “It’s our origin point, and where we created our network,” notes Molly Easton, as she gives a walkthrough of the expansive site. “This used to be six different fields,” she states, as we move through long grass filled with shrubs, surrounded by established trees. “The primary visible difference is that we’ve eliminated all the barriers, 1.2km of it, to give the sense like a single landscape.” In the warmer months, they donned special clothing and eradicated large amounts of invasive plants, an invasive species that can harm the skin. “We’ve established numerous of natural barriers,” notes the director. “But the main thing is we’ve just let it breathe for a brief period. We’ve eliminated a lot of animal feeding and observed what’s sprung up.”
Bushes and natural fences are a ideal songbird habitat, she comments, although currently they’re cutting back some of the thorny plants to establish a greater range of environments and to join different sections of the land. Fresh plantings will take a while to establish, but new growth from the adjacent trees are already taking root in the meadows; the group have been setting up barriers to protect them from grazing deer.
Animals Comes Back in Large Numbers
There's more than the songbirds – animals is reappearing in large numbers. Recently they’ve observed reptiles, legless lizards, nocturnal mammals and bugs, explains a team member, as he lifts up one of their monitoring tools (similar to a doormat over a depression in the soil). “You get snakes and animals residing under there, but it’s probably a slightly cool for them now.” Organic beehives, constructed from hollowed-out pieces of tree trunk and active with wild bees, are fixed to some of the plants. The removal of livestock has given insects space to prosper in the long grass. When they came to this summer, says the director, “I’d never seen so countless butterflies. There were just masses of them. We were saying, ‘What is occurring?’”
Inception of the Project
The original Youngwilders – Noah, Durant, Easton and additional members – came together as youth, studying or sharing an passion in ecology. In 2019, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was indicating that the acceptable threshold of 1.5C of warming was seeming out of reach, a prominent figure was guiding the demonstrations for environmental action, and activist Clover Hogan was addressing youth feeling “climate anxiety”. It was also the period of Isabella Tree’s publication, Wilding, on how the authors transformed the a Sussex location from a unsuccessful dairy farm into a flourishing natural habitat. “We were super-inspired by the Knepp story, but what was the function for the next generation?” asks Molly. “So we made a platform and rang up many of wildlife trusts and were saying, ‘Do you sometimes get your estate holders wanting to do something and you don’t have time?’”
Durant adds the narrative: “Our entire initiative was basically premised on the notion that there were individuals who were prepared to let a group of youthful idiots on to their property indiscriminately, to make significant choices that would impact land value
