The beautifully intricate melody of the songbird is a uncommon sound in the UK today, however it's different at this rural location. Previously, a solitary nightingale could be detected at this secluded location in rural Surrey; recently, they were in multiple locations. “We were hearing them chirping all night, from multiple areas,” notes a lead scientist, lead ecologist for the youth rewilding group. A group of Youngwilders were residing temporarily at the property, however the nightingales were so boisterous, “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 local conservation group came to help them trap and mark one of the nightingales the next morning, she recalls: “He’d never handled a nightingale in his care before. He was crying.”
Ecological Restoration Progresses at Maple Farm
Rewilding is by nature a gradual process, but in this place at Maple Farm, after just a short period, the outcomes are already apparent, and audible. The property used to be a haven for horses. Currently it’s a model for the Youngwilders’ mission: to hasten ecological restoration, in one of the biodiversity-poor nations in the globe, and to link young people (18-30-year-olds) with a environment they are often shut out of, and a global warming issue they are often unable to prevent. Global heating persists, deforestation eliminates wildlife homes, and another climate conference ends with a unsatisfactory end in Brazil – so who could fault youth for wanting to initiate change themselves?
Our project was founded on the idea that there were individuals willing to let a collection of young enthusiasts on to their land
“The youth is the most knowledgeable in terms of nature that there’s historically,” explains the group's leader, one organizer. They are also “the most emotionally involved in the issues, and have played the minimal role to their creation, and, then, are also going to be affected the greatest as a outcome.”
Change of the Property
Now, the initiative is taking root across the UK – and Maple Farm was the beginning, in multiple ways. “It’s where we started, and the place we built our network,” explains another co-director, as she gives a walkthrough of the 30-acre site. “This once consisted of multiple separate areas,” she says, as we walk through overgrown meadows dotted with shrubs, bordered by established trees. “The key noticeable transformation is that we’ve removed all the barriers, a significant length of it, to create the impression like a single landscape.” In the summer, they wore special clothing and removed large amounts of giant hogweed, an invasive species that can burn the skin. “We’ve established loads of natural barriers,” notes the director. “But the main thing is we’ve just let it breathe for a short time. We’ve eliminated a lot of grazing pressure and noticed what’s emerged.”
Low scrub and natural fences are a ideal songbird habitat, she comments, however currently they’re trimming some of the wild growth to create a more diversity of environments and to link up different sections of the land. Fresh plantings will take a while to take root, but new growth from the adjacent oaks are already establishing themselves in the fields; the team have been installing guards to protect them from wildlife.
Animals Returns in Large Numbers
It’s not just the songbirds – animals is coming back in large numbers. Lately they’ve observed grass snakes, legless lizards, flyers and invertebrates, says a team member, as he lifts up one of their monitoring tools (similar to a mat over a depression in the ground). “You find reptiles and things hiding under there, but it’s probably a slightly cold for them now.” Natural nests, built using hollowed-out sections of timber and active with wild bees, are fixed to some of the plants. The absence of grazing horses has given invertebrates space to thrive in the meadows. When they visited this time, comments the director, “I’d never encountered so numerous butterflies. There were just clouds of them. We were saying, ‘What is happening?’”
Inception of the Project
The original Youngwilders – Noah, Jack, Molly and more individuals – united as youth, studying or sharing an passion in nature. In 2019, the IPCC was forecasting that the target of 1.5C of climate change was looking impossible, Greta Thunberg was guiding the demonstrations for eco-awareness, and activist Clover Hogan was talking about the generation experiencing “eco-worry”. It was also the period of the author's publication, Wilding, on how she and her husband changed the a Sussex location from a failing dairy farm into a flourishing natural habitat. “We were super-inspired by the example, but what could be the role for youth?” questions Molly. “So we created a website and rang up loads of wildlife trusts and were like, ‘Do you occasionally get your estate holders wanting to do something and you are short on time?’”
Durant continues the account: “Our whole project was fundamentally founded on the idea that there were people who were willing to permit a collection of young amateurs on to their estate without strict rules, to take significant decisions that would change land value
