That manically melodic call of the nightingale is a scarce occurrence in Britain these days, but it's different at Maple Farm. Previously, a lone bird could be detected at this secluded location in the countryside of Surrey; lately, they were in multiple locations. “We were hearing them calling all night, from five different territories,” notes one ecologist, lead ecologist for the youth rewilding group. A band of participants were camping out at the property, but the birds were so noisy, “we couldn’t sleep all night,” remarks an engagement lead. “We were all worn out the next day, but it was so cool.” An professional from the local conservation group came to help them net and ring one of the nightingales the next morning, Cookson remembers: “He’d never touched a songbird in his possession before. He was teary.”
Ecological Restoration Progresses at This Location
Rewilding is by nature a lengthy process, but in this place at this property, after just a short period, the outcomes are already visible, and hearable. The property was once a sanctuary for equines. Today it’s a showpiece for the youth-led purpose: to accelerate nature recovery, in one of the most nature-depleted countries in the world, and to engage young people (18-30-year-olds) with a natural world they are often shut out of, and a global warming issue they are often unable to prevent. Rising temperatures continues, habitat loss eliminates wildlife homes, and yet another Cop summit comes to a unsatisfactory outcome in the host country – so who could fault youth for wishing to take matters into their own hands?
The organisation was based on the belief that there were landowners willing to let a collection of youthful idiots on to their estate
“The newer cohort is the most knowledgeable environmentally that there’s historically,” explains the Youngwilders’ leader, Jack Durant. They are also “the most emotionally involved in the challenges, and have contributed the least to their creation, and, then, are also going to suffer the greatest as a result.”
Revitalization of the Landscape
Currently, the group is expanding across the United Kingdom – and Maple Farm started it all, in every sense. “It’s our origin point, and the place we built our network,” says a founding member, as she gives a tour of the expansive site. “This once consisted of six different fields,” she states, as we walk through overgrown meadows filled with low scrub, bordered by mature woodland. “The primary visible change is that we’ve taken out all the barriers, 1.2km of it, to make it feel like one landscape.” In the warmer months, they donned special clothing and cleared masses of harmful weeds, an non-native plant that can irritate the skin. “We’ve introduced many of hedgerows,” says Easton. “But the key action is we’ve just given it space for a brief period. We’ve removed a lot of livestock impact and observed what’s emerged.”
Underbrush and natural fences are a excellent songbird home, she comments, but now they’re managing some of the wild growth to establish a increased diversity of environments and to join separate areas of the property. New trees will take much more time to grow, but new growth from the adjacent woodland are already growing in the open areas; the group have been placing protectors to shield them from animals.
Animals Comes Back in Abundance
It’s not just the songbirds – fauna is reappearing in large numbers. Lately they’ve spotted reptiles, slowworms, nocturnal mammals and invertebrates, notes another co-director, as he raises one of their survey equipment (similar to a mat over a depression in the earth). “You get creatures and animals residing under there, but it’s probably a somewhat chilly for them now.” Wild homes, constructed from carved sections of timber and buzzing with wild bees, are attached to some of the trees. The absence of grazing horses has provided invertebrates room to thrive in the overgrown areas. When they visited this season, comments Bennett, “I’d not once encountered so countless butterflies. There were just masses of them. We were like, ‘What is going on?’”
Origins of the Project
The original founders – Noah, Jack, Molly and two others – united as youth, studying or having an passion in nature. In 2019, the IPCC was predicting that the acceptable threshold of one and a half degrees of global heating was looking unachievable, Greta Thunberg was guiding the school strikes for environmental action, and advocate Clover Hogan was discussing youth feeling “environmental stress”. It was also the time of a writer's work, about nature recovery, on how they changed the a Sussex location from a struggling agricultural business into a thriving wildlife haven. “We were deeply influenced by the case study, but what could be the part for young people?” says Easton. “So we created a platform and called loads of conservation groups and were asking, ‘Do you sometimes get your estate holders wishing to make changes and you are short on resources?’”
Jack explains the story: “Our whole project was fundamentally premised on the idea that there were individuals who were ready to let a collection of young idiots on to their land indiscriminately, to decide on major decisions that would impact land value
