The richly complex song of the nightingale is a rare sound in the UK today, but not at Maple Farm. Four years ago, a solitary nightingale could be detected at this hidden location in rural Surrey; recently, they were all around. “We were hearing them singing all night, from several zones,” says Meg Cookson, top biologist for the Youngwilders. A band of Youngwilders were residing temporarily at the property, yet the birds were so boisterous, “we stayed awake all night,” says a project coordinator. “We were all worn out the next day, but it was so incredible.” An specialist from the Surrey Wildlife Trust came to help them trap and mark one of the songbirds the next morning, she remembers: “He’d never handled a songbird in his hands before. He was teary.”
Habitat Revival Progresses at This Location
Rewilding is by definition a gradual business, but in this place at Maple Farm, after merely a short period, the results are already evident, and hearable. The farm used to be a haven for equines. Now it’s a example for the Youngwilders’ mission: to speed up ecological restoration, in one of the ecologically impoverished regions in the globe, and to engage youth (18-30-year-olds) with a natural world they are often shut out of, and a global warming issue they are often powerless to halt. Rising temperatures continues, habitat loss eliminates ecosystems, and another Cop summit ends with a frustrating outcome in Brazil – so who could blame youth for wishing to initiate change themselves?
The project was based on the belief that there were landowners ready to let a bunch of youthful amateurs on to their property
“The youth is the best educated environmentally that there’s ever been,” states the group's leader, one organizer. They are also “the most emotionally involved in the issues, and have played the minimal role to their origin, and, then, are also going to be affected the worst as a consequence.”
Change of the Landscape
Today, the group is growing across the United Kingdom – and this location started it all, in all respects. “It’s our origin point, and where we built our network,” notes Molly Easton, as she gives a tour of the expansive site. “This once consisted of six different fields,” she says, as we walk through overgrown meadows dotted with low scrub, bordered by forest. “The primary visual transformation is that we’ve removed all the fencing, a significant length of it, to create the impression like a single area.” In the warmer months, they used hazmat suits and removed large amounts of invasive plants, an aggressive flora that can irritate the flesh. “We’ve introduced numerous of bush lines,” explains the director. “But the primary focus is we’ve just given it space for a short time. We’ve removed a large part of livestock impact and noticed what’s sprung up.”
Low scrub and hedgerows are a perfect songbird habitat, she explains, however today they’re trimming some of the wild growth to create a more diversity of ecosystems and to join separate areas of the site. New trees will take much more time to establish, but saplings from the adjacent trees are already taking root in the fields; the crew have been installing guards to shield them from animals.
Animals Reappears in Large Numbers
In addition to the nightingales – fauna is coming back in large numbers. Lately they’ve spotted reptiles, creatures, flyers and invertebrates, explains a team member, as he raises one of their reptile mats (such as a doormat over a depression in the soil). “You get creatures and animals residing under there, but it’s possibly a slightly cool for them now.” Natural nests, built using carved pieces of tree trunk and humming with wild bees, are fixed to some of the plants. The lack of grazing horses has given insects space to thrive in the overgrown areas. When they explored this summer, says he, “I’d not once seen so numerous insects. There were just masses of them. We were like, ‘What is occurring?’”
Inception of the Project
The original Youngwilders – Bennett, Jack, Molly and additional members – formed as youth, pursuing or sharing an interest in ecology. In 2019, the IPCC was predicting that the acceptable threshold of one and a half degrees of global heating was looking impossible, a prominent figure was spearheading the school strikes for eco-awareness, and activist another voice was addressing the generation feeling “eco-worry”. It was also the time of a writer's work, Wilding, on how the authors changed the a Sussex location from a failing dairy farm into a thriving ecosystem. “We were super-inspired by the Knepp story, but what could be the part for young people?” says Easton. “So we created a website and called loads of wildlife trusts and were like, ‘Do you ever get your property owners seeking to do something and you lack time?’”
Jack continues the account: “Our whole project was basically premised on the belief that there were landowners who were prepared to let a bunch of youthful enthusiasts on to their property freely, to take major decisions that would impact land value
