That beautifully intricate melody of the songbird is a rare sound in the UK these days, but not at the Surrey site. Back in 2020, a single bird could be detected at this remote place in rural Surrey; lately, they were in multiple locations. “We were hearing them singing all night, from several zones,” notes one ecologist, top biologist for the youth rewilding group. A group of Youngwilders were camping out at the location, yet the birds were so loud, “we stayed awake all night,” comments a project coordinator. “We were all exhausted the next day, but it was so cool.” An expert from the regional nature organization came to help them trap and mark one of the nightingales the next morning, Cookson recalls: “He’d never held a songbird in his possession before. He was crying.”
Rewilding Accelerates at Maple Farm
Ecological restoration is by definition a slow process, but here at Maple Farm, after only four years, the changes are already apparent, and audible. The land used to be a sanctuary for horses. Now it’s a model for the youth-led mission: to hasten ecological restoration, in one of the ecologically impoverished countries in the planet, and to link the younger generation (18-30-year-olds) with a natural world they are often excluded from, and a climate crisis they are often powerless to prevent. Climate change continues, habitat loss eliminates wildlife homes, and yet another international meeting comes to a unsatisfactory end in Brazil – so what person could criticize youth for wanting to act independently?
The organisation was based on the belief that there were individuals prepared to permit a bunch of young amateurs on to their estate
“The newer cohort is the most informed in terms of nature that there’s ever been,” explains the Youngwilders’ founder, Jack Durant. They are also “the deeply concerned in the problems, and have contributed the smallest part to their creation, and, then, are also going to experience consequences the greatest as a result.”
Revitalization of the Property
Today, the organisation is expanding across the United Kingdom – and Maple Farm planted the seed, in all respects. “It’s the initial project, and the place we built our community,” explains a founding member, as she offers a tour of the 12-hectare land. “This once consisted of divided plots,” she says, as we move through overgrown meadows featuring bushes, surrounded by mature woodland. “The primary visual change is that we’ve eliminated all the enclosures, a significant length of it, to make it feel like one area.” In the warmer months, they used special clothing and removed large amounts of giant hogweed, an invasive species that can irritate the flesh. “We’ve established many of bush lines,” notes the director. “But the primary focus is we’ve just allowed it to rest for a brief period. We’ve reduced a lot of grazing pressure and noticed what’s come up.”
Underbrush and shrub lines are a ideal nightingale habitat, she explains, however now they’re trimming some of the thorny plants to establish a greater range of habitats and to link up different sections of the land. Young saplings will take considerably longer to take root, but young trees from the nearby trees are already taking root in the fields; the crew have been placing guards to safeguard them from wildlife.
Wildlife Reappears in Abundance
In addition to the songbirds – wildlife is reappearing in abundance. This year they’ve seen grass snakes, legless lizards, bats and insects, notes another co-director, as he uncovers one of their monitoring tools (like a doormat over a depression in the ground). “You discover snakes and animals residing under there, but it’s probably a bit cool for them now.” Wild homes, constructed from carved pieces of tree trunk and active with insects, are attached to some of the plants. The absence of grazing horses has given small creatures room to flourish in the long grass. When they visited this summer, states Bennett, “I’d not ever observed so numerous butterflies. There were just clouds of them. We were like, ‘What is going on?’”
Beginnings of the Movement
The first participants – Noah, Durant, Easton and two others – came together as youth, focusing on or expressing an concern in environmental science. In that year, the IPCC was indicating that the acceptable threshold of 1.5C of climate change was seeming unachievable, the activist was leading the school strikes for environmental action, and advocate another voice was talking about the generation feeling “climate anxiety”. It was also the era of a writer's work, on rewilding, on how she and her husband transformed the a Sussex location from a struggling farm into a flourishing wildlife haven. “We were highly motivated by the Knepp story, but what was the part for youth?” says Easton. “So we developed a platform and contacted loads of environmental organizations and were like, ‘Do you sometimes get your landowners wishing to do something and you don’t have capacity?’”
Durant adds the narrative: “Our whole initiative was basically based on the belief that there were individuals who were ready to allow a group of young idiots on to their property freely, to decide on significant decisions that would impact land value
