The manically melodic call of the songbird is a scarce occurrence in the UK these days, yet it's different at the Surrey site. Four years ago, a lone bird could be noticed at this hidden location in rural Surrey; lately, they were in multiple locations. “We were hearing them singing all night, from multiple areas,” explains Meg Cookson, lead ecologist for the youth rewilding group. A team of volunteers were residing temporarily at the property, but the birds were so loud, “we were unable to rest all night,” comments a project coordinator. “We were all exhausted 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 nightingales the next morning, she recalls: “He’d never touched a nightingale in his care before. He was emotional.”
Rewilding Accelerates at Maple Farm
Nature recovery is by definition a lengthy process, but at this site at this property, after merely a short period, the changes are already evident, and noticeable. The land previously served as a sanctuary for equines. Now it’s a model for the youth-led goal: to speed up ecological restoration, in one of the most nature-depleted nations in the world, and to link youth (18-30-year-olds) with a environment they are often denied access to, and a environmental emergency they are often powerless to prevent. Climate change continues, habitat loss damages natural habitats, and another international meeting ends with a frustrating outcome in abroad – so who could blame young people for wanting to take matters into their own hands?
Our project was founded on the idea that there were people ready to allow a group of youthful amateurs on to their land
“The newer cohort is the most informed in terms of nature that there’s ever been,” states the Youngwilders’ leader, Jack Durant. They are also “the highly invested in the issues, and have contributed the least to their creation, and, then, are also going to experience consequences the greatest as a outcome.”
Transformation of the Property
Now, the organisation is taking root across the UK – and Maple Farm started it all, in every sense. “It’s where we started, and where we created our community,” explains a founding member, as she offers a walkthrough of the expansive property. “This once consisted of six different fields,” she comments, as we move through long grass filled with low scrub, surrounded by established trees. “The main visual transformation is that we’ve taken out all the barriers, 1.2km of it, to make it feel like a single landscape.” In the recent season, they used special clothing and removed large amounts of harmful weeds, an non-native plant that can burn the skin. “We’ve established numerous of natural barriers,” explains she. “But the main thing is we’ve just given it space for a little bit. We’ve reduced a large part of grazing pressure and seen what’s emerged.”
Low scrub and shrub lines are a excellent songbird environment, she says, but now they’re cutting back some of the thorny plants to create a more variety of ecosystems and to join two parts of the site. Fresh plantings will take considerably longer to take root, but young trees from the nearby trees are already growing in the fields; the crew have been installing protectors to safeguard them from animals.
Animals Comes Back in Droves
It’s not just the nightingales – animals is coming back in abundance. Recently they’ve observed grass snakes, legless lizards, nocturnal mammals and insects, notes another co-director, as he raises one of their monitoring tools (similar to a cover over a small hollow in the ground). “You discover snakes and wildlife residing under there, but it’s probably a somewhat cool for them now.” Wild homes, constructed from hollowed-out parts of wood and humming with insects, are attached to some of the plants. The lack of livestock has given invertebrates space to prosper in the meadows. When they explored this summer, states Bennett, “I’d not ever observed so many insects. There were just swarms of them. We were saying, ‘What is happening?’”
Beginnings of the Initiative
The initial participants – Noah, Durant, Easton and two others – came together as youth, studying or having an concern in ecology. In 2019, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was predicting that the safe limit of 1.5C of warming was looking out of reach, the activist was leading the school strikes for climate movement, and campaigner a speaker was talking about the generation feeling “climate anxiety”. It was also the period of a writer's work, on rewilding, on how they revitalized the Knepp Estate from a unsuccessful farm into a successful ecosystem. “We were highly motivated by the case study, but what was the part for youth?” asks Easton. “So we made a website and called numerous of wildlife trusts and were like, ‘Do you ever get your estate holders seeking to take action and you don’t have capacity?’”
Jack continues the account: “Our whole project was basically premised on the belief that there were landowners who were ready to let a bunch of youthful enthusiasts on to their land indiscriminately, to take fairly massive choices that would change land value
