The beautifully intricate call of the nightingale is a scarce occurrence in the UK these days, however not at Maple Farm. Previously, a solitary nightingale could be detected at this hidden place in rural Surrey; this summer, they were in multiple locations. “We were hearing them singing all night, from multiple areas,” notes Meg Cookson, chief environmental expert for the Youngwilders. A group of volunteers were staying overnight at the location, however the birds were so loud, “we couldn’t sleep all night,” comments an engagement lead. “We were all knackered the next day, but it was so cool.” An expert from the Surrey Wildlife Trust came to help them net and ring one of the birds the next morning, she recalls: “He’d never touched a songbird in his possession before. He was crying.”
Ecological Restoration Accelerates at Maple Farm
Rewilding is by nature a gradual business, but in this place at this property, after just four years, the results are already apparent, and noticeable. The property previously served as a retirement home for animals. Now it’s a model for the Youngwilders’ goal: to hasten nature recovery, in one of the ecologically impoverished countries in the planet, and to connect young people (18-30-year-olds) with a natural world they are often excluded from, and a climate crisis they are often powerless to stop. Global heating advances, deforestation damages natural habitats, and another climate conference ends with a frustrating outcome in abroad – so who could fault youth for choosing to take matters into their own hands?
The project was premised on the belief that there were people willing to let a bunch of young enthusiasts on to their property
“The newer cohort is the most knowledgeable ecologically that there’s historically,” states the group's leader, one organizer. They are also “the highly invested in the challenges, and have played the smallest part to their causing, and, then, are also going to experience consequences the greatest as a outcome.”
Change of the Site
Today, the group is expanding across the UK – and the original site was the beginning, in every sense. “It’s our origin point, and where we created our community,” explains a founding member, as she provides a tour of the expansive land. “This was previously six different fields,” she says, as we move through long grass filled with shrubs, surrounded by forest. “The main visible transformation is that we’ve removed all the barriers, over a kilometer of it, to make it feel like a unified landscape.” In the recent season, they used hazmat suits and removed significant quantities of giant hogweed, an invasive species that can harm the skin. “We’ve introduced numerous of hedgerows,” explains she. “But the primary focus is we’ve just given it space for a short time. We’ve reduced a large part of grazing pressure and seen what’s emerged.”
Underbrush and shrub lines are a ideal songbird environment, she says, but today they’re trimming some of the thorny plants to create a greater diversity of environments and to join two parts of the land. Young saplings will take much more time to grow, but young trees from the surrounding trees are already growing in the fields; the team have been setting up guards to safeguard them from animals.
Animals Reappears in Abundance
There's more than the nightingales – wildlife is returning in abundance. Lately they’ve seen serpents, creatures, nocturnal mammals and invertebrates, explains a team member, as he uncovers one of their reptile mats (like a cover over a small hollow in the ground). “You get reptiles and animals sheltering under there, but it’s probably a somewhat cool for them now.” Organic beehives, built using hollowed-out pieces of wood and humming with wild bees, are attached to some of the woodland. The absence of animals has allowed invertebrates space to thrive in the long grass. When they visited this season, says the director, “I’d never seen so many insects. There were just swarms of them. We were like, ‘What is happening?’”
Beginnings of the Initiative
The original Youngwilders – Noah, Jack, Molly and more individuals – came together as students, pursuing or sharing an passion in environmental science. In 2019, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was forecasting that the target of 1.5C of climate change was looking impossible, Greta Thunberg was guiding the school strikes for climate movement, and campaigner a speaker was addressing the generation suffering from “environmental stress”. It was also the era of a writer's book, about nature recovery, on how she and her husband changed the a Sussex location from a failing dairy farm into a successful wildlife haven. “We were deeply influenced by the Knepp story, but what could be the function for the next generation?” asks Molly. “So we created a online presence and contacted loads of conservation groups and were asking, ‘Do you sometimes get your landowners wishing to do something and you are short on resources?’”
Jack explains the narrative: “Our whole project was fundamentally premised on the idea that there were landowners who were willing to allow a group of young amateurs on to their estate indiscriminately, to take major choices that would change land value
