That richly complex song of the songbird is a rare presence in the UK nowadays, yet not at this rural location. Four years ago, a solitary bird could be noticed at this hidden spot in rural Surrey; recently, they were everywhere. “We were hearing them calling all night, from five different territories,” explains one ecologist, lead ecologist for the Youngwilders. A team of Youngwilders were camping out at the location, but the birds were so loud, “we stayed awake all night,” comments a project coordinator. “We were all worn out the next day, but it was so amazing.” An professional from the regional nature organization came to help them capture and tag one of the songbirds the next morning, Cookson remembers: “He’d never handled a nightingale in his hands before. He was crying.”
Ecological Restoration Accelerates at Maple Farm
Rewilding is by definition a gradual business, but in this place at the farm, after just several seasons, the results are already apparent, and hearable. The land used to be a sanctuary for animals. Currently it’s a model for the Youngwilders’ mission: to hasten nature recovery, in one of the most nature-depleted countries in the planet, 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 persists, deforestation eliminates ecosystems, and yet another international meeting comes to a frustrating end in the host country – so what person could blame youth for wanting to initiate change themselves?
The organisation was founded on the idea that there were landowners prepared to allow a group of young amateurs on to their land
“The younger generation is the best educated environmentally that there’s previously,” says the Youngwilders’ leader, one organizer. They are also “the most emotionally involved in the challenges, and have contributed the least to their origin, and, then, are also going to be affected the worst as a outcome.”
Change of the Landscape
Now, the organisation is expanding across the United Kingdom – and Maple Farm was the beginning, in multiple ways. “It’s where we started, and where we built our network,” notes Molly Easton, as she provides a tour of the expansive land. “This once consisted of divided plots,” she comments, as we stroll through tall vegetation dotted with low scrub, surrounded by established trees. “The primary visible difference is that we’ve removed all the barriers, a significant length of it, to give the sense like one landscape.” In the recent season, they wore protective gear and eradicated large amounts of invasive plants, an invasive species that can burn the body. “We’ve introduced loads of natural barriers,” explains the director. “But the primary focus is we’ve just let it breathe for a brief period. We’ve removed a significant amount of animal feeding and observed what’s come up.”
Underbrush and shrub lines are a perfect nightingale environment, she says, but now they’re cutting back some of the brambles to create a more range of habitats and to join separate areas of the site. Fresh plantings will take a while to grow, but new growth from the nearby trees are already establishing themselves in the fields; the group have been setting up guards to protect them from grazing deer.
Nature Reappears in Droves
There's more than the songbirds – animals is coming back in droves. This year they’ve seen grass snakes, legless lizards, bats and bugs, explains another co-director, as he raises one of their survey equipment (similar to a mat over a indentation in the soil). “You discover snakes and animals residing under there, but it’s likely a bit cold for them now.” Natural nests, constructed from empty sections of timber and humming with wild bees, are strapped to some of the trees. The lack of livestock has given small creatures opportunity to prosper in the overgrown areas. When they visited this summer, says the director, “I’d not once observed so countless butterflies. There were just masses of them. We were like, ‘What is occurring?’”
Beginnings of the Project
The original Youngwilders – Bennett, Durant, Easton and more individuals – came together as students, studying or expressing an concern in ecology. In that year, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was predicting that the acceptable threshold of 1.5C of global heating was seeming out of reach, a prominent figure was guiding the youth protests for eco-awareness, and advocate another voice was talking about the generation suffering from “environmental stress”. It was also the era of the author's work, on rewilding, on how the authors changed the Knepp Estate from a struggling agricultural business into a thriving wildlife haven. “We were deeply influenced by the Knepp story, but what was the part for young people?” says Easton. “So we developed a platform and contacted numerous of conservation groups and were asking, ‘Do you occasionally get your landowners wishing to do something and you lack capacity?’”
Jack explains the narrative: “Our whole initiative was essentially founded on the notion that there were landowners who were prepared to allow a group of youthful amateurs on to their property indiscriminately, to make fairly massive decisions that would change land value
