🔗 Share this article

The beautifully intricate melody of the nightingale is a rare presence in England these days, however not at this rural location. Four years ago, a single bird could be noticed at this remote place in rural Surrey; recently, they were everywhere. “We were listening to them chirping all night, from several zones,” notes a lead scientist, top biologist for the Youngwilders. A team of volunteers were staying overnight at the location, but the nightingales were so loud, “we stayed awake all night,” comments a project coordinator. “We were all knackered the next day, but it was so cool.” An expert from the Surrey Wildlife Trust came to help them trap and mark one of the birds the next morning, she recalls: “He’d never held a songbird in his possession before. He was crying.”

Ecological Restoration Accelerates at the Surrey Site

Nature recovery is by its very essence a gradual process, but in this place at Maple Farm, after just several seasons, the results are already evident, and hearable. The farm previously served as a haven for horses. Currently it’s a example for the Youngwilders’ mission: to speed up ecological restoration, in one of the ecologically impoverished countries in the globe, and to engage young people (18-30-year-olds) with a natural world they are often denied access to, and a global warming issue they are often unable to stop. Rising temperatures continues, habitat loss damages ecosystems, and yet another international meeting ends with a unsatisfactory outcome in the host country – so who could fault young people for choosing to initiate change themselves?

Our project was premised on the belief that there were landowners willing to let a bunch of youthful enthusiasts on to their property

“The newer cohort is the most knowledgeable environmentally that there’s historically,” explains the Youngwilders’ leader, Jack Durant. They are also “the deeply concerned in the problems, and have played the minimal role to their causing, and, then, are also going to experience consequences the greatest as a result.”

Change of the Property

Now, the group is expanding across the UK – and the original site planted the seed, in all respects. “It’s the initial project, and where we created our network,” explains a founding member, as she provides a tour of the expansive property. “This was previously six different fields,” she says, as we move through overgrown meadows filled with low scrub, surrounded by established trees. “The main visible change is that we’ve taken out all the enclosures, a significant length of it, to give the sense like a unified landscape.” In the warmer months, they wore hazmat suits and eradicated significant quantities of giant hogweed, an non-native plant that can irritate the flesh. “We’ve introduced loads of natural barriers,” says Easton. “But the key action is we’ve just let it breathe for a short time. We’ve removed a lot of livestock impact and seen what’s sprung up.”

Low scrub and natural fences are a perfect nightingale environment, she comments, but currently they’re cutting back some of the thorny plants to create a more range of ecosystems and to link up separate areas of the land. Fresh plantings will take much more time to grow, but young trees from the surrounding woodland are already growing in the open areas; the group have been placing barriers to protect them from wildlife.

Wildlife Returns in Large Numbers

In addition to the nightingales – fauna is reappearing in large numbers. Lately they’ve seen grass snakes, slowworms, bats and insects, says a team member, as he uncovers one of their reptile mats (such as a cover over a depression in the soil). “You discover creatures and things residing under there, but it’s possibly a somewhat chilly for them now.” Organic beehives, made from empty pieces of tree trunk and buzzing with wild bees, are attached to some of the plants. The absence of livestock has allowed invertebrates opportunity to prosper in the overgrown areas. When they came to this season, comments he, “I’d not ever seen so countless insects. There were just masses of them. We were like, ‘What is going on?’”

Beginnings of the Project

The initial Youngwilders – Noah, Durant, Easton and two others – united as youth, pursuing or sharing an passion in nature. In that year, the climate experts was forecasting that the acceptable threshold of one and a half degrees of warming was looking impossible, a prominent figure was leading the youth protests for environmental action, and activist a speaker was addressing young people feeling “environmental stress”. It was also the period of a writer's book, on rewilding, on how she and her husband changed the a nearby property from a unsuccessful agricultural business into a successful natural habitat. “We were super-inspired by the example, but what was the part for young people?” asks Easton. “So we created a platform and contacted many of wildlife trusts and were asking, ‘Do you occasionally get your landowners seeking to do something and you lack capacity?’”

Jack adds the story: “Our entire initiative was essentially premised on the idea that there were landowners who were willing to permit a collection of young idiots on to their land indiscriminately, to make significant decisions that would change land value