That beautifully intricate song of the nightingale is a rare occurrence in Britain these days, yet it's different at Maple Farm. Back in 2020, a lone nightingale could be detected at this secluded location in the countryside of Surrey; lately, they were in multiple locations. “We were listening to them calling all night, from five different territories,” explains a lead scientist, lead ecologist for the Youngwilders. A team of volunteers were staying overnight at the site, yet the nightingales were so loud, “we were unable to rest all night,” says a project coordinator. “We were all knackered the next day, but it was so cool.” An specialist from the regional nature organization came to help them trap and mark one of the birds the next morning, the ecologist remembers: “He’d never held a nightingale in his possession before. He was crying.”
Rewilding Accelerates at Maple Farm
Nature recovery is by definition a gradual process, but in this place at the farm, after only four years, the outcomes are already evident, and audible. The land previously served as a haven for horses. Today it’s a model for the Youngwilders’ purpose: to speed up nature recovery, in one of the most nature-depleted regions in the world, and to engage young people (18-30-year-olds) with a ecosystem they are often excluded from, and a climate crisis they are often powerless to halt. Climate change continues, tree clearing eliminates natural habitats, and another climate conference ends with a unsatisfactory conclusion in Brazil – so who could fault young people for wanting to take matters into their own hands?
Our project was founded on the belief that there were individuals ready to allow a group of youthful idiots on to their land
“The newer cohort is the most informed ecologically that there’s ever been,” explains the Youngwilders’ co-director, one organizer. They are also “the most emotionally involved in the problems, and have played the smallest part to their causing, and, then, are also going to suffer most as a result.”
Revitalization of the Landscape
Currently, the group is taking root across the United Kingdom – and the original site planted the seed, in every sense. “It’s our origin point, and the place we created our connections,” explains a founding member, as she offers a tour of the 12-hectare site. “This once consisted of six different fields,” she states, as we stroll through long grass filled with bushes, surrounded by forest. “The key visual transformation is that we’ve removed all the enclosures, 1.2km of it, to give the sense like a unified landscape.” In the warmer months, they wore special clothing and removed masses of giant hogweed, an aggressive flora that can burn the body. “We’ve planted many of hedgerows,” notes the director. “But the primary focus is we’ve just given it space for a short time. We’ve eliminated a lot of grazing pressure and observed what’s emerged.”
Bushes and hedgerows are a perfect nightingale home, she comments, however now they’re managing some of the wild growth to develop a increased diversity of environments and to connect two parts of the property. Young saplings will take a while to take root, but young trees from the nearby woodland are already establishing themselves in the fields; the team have been installing barriers to safeguard them from wildlife.
Animals Comes Back in Large Numbers
It’s not just the nightingales – wildlife is returning in droves. Lately they’ve seen serpents, creatures, flyers and invertebrates, explains Noah Bennett, as he lifts up one of their monitoring tools (such as a doormat over a depression in the ground). “You get reptiles and things sheltering under there, but it’s likely a bit cold for them now.” Natural nests, constructed from empty pieces of tree trunk and buzzing with pollinators, are fixed to some of the woodland. The removal of grazing horses has allowed small creatures space to thrive in the long grass. When they came to this season, states the director, “I’d not ever seen so numerous butterflies. There were just masses of them. We were saying, ‘What is going on?’”
Inception of the Movement
The initial founders – Noah, Durant, Molly and two others – formed as students, studying or sharing an concern in environmental science. In the recent past, the IPCC was indicating that the acceptable threshold of one and a half degrees of climate change was appearing out of reach, Greta Thunberg was spearheading the school strikes for eco-awareness, and advocate a speaker was talking about the generation experiencing “climate anxiety”. It was also the period of a writer's publication, on rewilding, on how they revitalized the Knepp Estate from a failing dairy farm into a thriving natural habitat. “We were deeply influenced by the example, but what was the part for young people?” says Easton. “So we made a website and contacted numerous of environmental organizations and were saying, ‘Do you sometimes get your estate holders wishing to do something and you lack time?’”
Jack explains the account: “Our entire project was basically premised on the notion that there were landowners who were willing to allow a group of youthful idiots on to their land without strict rules, to make significant choices that would affect land value
