The beautifully intricate call of the songbird is a scarce sound in Britain today, however it's different at Maple Farm. Previously, a single nightingale could be detected at this remote location in the countryside of Surrey; recently, they were all around. “We were hearing them calling all night, from multiple areas,” notes a lead scientist, lead ecologist for the youth rewilding group. A band of Youngwilders were staying overnight at the property, yet the nightingales were so loud, “we were unable to rest all night,” remarks Layla Mapemba. “We were all exhausted the next day, but it was so amazing.” An specialist from the Surrey Wildlife Trust came to help them capture and tag one of the birds the next morning, Cookson recalls: “He’d never held a nightingale in his possession before. He was emotional.”
Ecological Restoration Accelerates at Maple Farm
Rewilding is by definition a slow process, but here at the farm, after just a short period, the outcomes are already visible, and audible. The land previously served as a haven for animals. Today it’s a showpiece for the youth-led purpose: to speed up ecological restoration, in one of the ecologically impoverished nations in the world, and to connect the younger generation (18-30-year-olds) with a natural world they are often denied access to, and a global warming issue they are often powerless to halt. Rising temperatures persists, habitat loss destroys ecosystems, and another climate conference ends with a disappointing end in Brazil – so who could fault young people for wishing to take matters into their own hands?
Our project was founded on the idea that there were landowners willing to let a collection of young amateurs on to their estate
“The younger generation is the most informed ecologically that there’s historically,” explains the Youngwilders’ co-director, a key figure. They are also “the most emotionally involved in the problems, and have added the least to their origin, and, then, are also going to experience consequences most as a outcome.”
Revitalization of the Site
Currently, the group is growing across the United Kingdom – and Maple Farm planted the seed, in multiple ways. “It’s our origin point, and where we built our network,” notes another co-director, as she provides a tour of the expansive property. “This used to be multiple separate areas,” she comments, as we stroll through overgrown meadows filled with low scrub, surrounded by established trees. “The key visual transformation is that we’ve eliminated all the enclosures, over a kilometer of it, to create the impression like a unified landscape.” In the warmer months, they donned protective gear and removed significant quantities of giant hogweed, an aggressive flora that can irritate the skin. “We’ve established many of bush lines,” notes Easton. “But the key action is we’ve just allowed it to rest for a brief period. We’ve reduced a lot of grazing pressure and observed what’s emerged.”
Low scrub and shrub lines are a ideal nightingale environment, she explains, however now they’re trimming some of the wild growth to establish a more variety of environments and to join different sections of the site. New trees will take considerably longer to establish, but young trees from the surrounding oaks are already growing in the meadows; the crew have been installing guards to protect them from animals.
Animals Comes Back in Large Numbers
There's more than the nightingales – fauna is coming back in droves. Recently they’ve observed grass snakes, slowworms, nocturnal mammals and bugs, says Noah Bennett, as he raises one of their survey equipment (like a doormat over a depression in the soil). “You discover creatures and animals hiding under there, but it’s likely a slightly cold for them now.” Natural homes, constructed from hollowed-out pieces of tree trunk and humming with insects, are fixed to some of the plants. The lack of grazing horses has provided small creatures space to thrive in the overgrown areas. When they visited this time, says the director, “I’d not once seen so countless insects. There were just clouds of them. We were saying, ‘What is occurring?’”
Inception of the Movement
The first participants – Bennett, Jack, Molly and more individuals – formed as students, pursuing or sharing an passion in nature. In 2019, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was forecasting that the safe limit of one and a half degrees of climate change was looking out of reach, the activist was guiding the demonstrations for climate movement, and advocate another voice was talking about young people experiencing “environmental stress”. It was also the period of a writer's book, on rewilding, on how she and her husband changed the a nearby property from a unsuccessful agricultural business into a flourishing natural habitat. “We were super-inspired by the Knepp story, but what could be the role for young people?” asks Molly. “So we created a online presence and rang up many of environmental organizations and were asking, ‘Do you sometimes get your estate holders wanting to make changes and you don’t have resources?’”
Jack adds the account: “Our whole initiative was fundamentally founded on the notion that there were people who were prepared to let a group of young enthusiasts on to their estate indiscriminately, to make fairly massive choices that would change land value
