That manically melodic song of the songbird is a scarce presence in the UK nowadays, yet not at Maple Farm. Previously, a single nightingale could be heard at this remote location in rural Surrey; recently, they were all around. “We were listening to them singing all night, from several zones,” explains Meg Cookson, lead ecologist for the youth rewilding group. A band of participants were staying overnight at the location, but the nightingales were so loud, “we were unable to rest all night,” says a project coordinator. “We were all knackered the next day, but it was so amazing.” An expert from the Surrey Wildlife Trust came to help them trap and mark one of the nightingales the next morning, she recalls: “He’d never handled a nightingale in his hands before. He was emotional.”
Habitat Revival Accelerates at This Location
Ecological restoration is by definition a slow business, but here at the farm, after only several seasons, the outcomes are already apparent, and audible. The farm previously served as a retirement home for horses. Today it’s a model for the youth-led goal: to accelerate habitat revival, in one of the most nature-depleted regions in the planet, and to engage youth (18-30-year-olds) with a ecosystem they are often excluded from, and a global warming issue they are often ineffectual to halt. Climate change persists, tree clearing destroys natural habitats, and one more international meeting ends with a frustrating conclusion in Brazil – so what person could fault young people for choosing to initiate change themselves?
The initiative was based on the notion that there were individuals ready to let a group of youthful amateurs on to their property
“The youth is the best educated environmentally that there’s previously,” states the group's leader, a key figure. They are also “the deeply concerned in the problems, and have played the smallest part to their creation, and, then, are also going to experience consequences the greatest as a result.”
Change of the Property
Currently, the initiative is growing across the United Kingdom – and Maple Farm was the beginning, in all respects. “It’s our origin point, and where we built our community,” explains a founding member, as she offers a walkthrough of the 12-hectare property. “This once consisted of multiple separate areas,” she states, as we walk through long grass dotted with bushes, bordered by established trees. “The key visible transformation is that we’ve taken out all the fencing, 1.2km of it, to make it feel like a single area.” In the warmer months, they used protective gear and eradicated masses of giant hogweed, an invasive species that can harm the body. “We’ve introduced loads of natural barriers,” notes she. “But the main thing is we’ve just let it breathe for a brief period. We’ve eliminated a lot of grazing pressure and seen what’s emerged.”
Bushes and shrub lines are a excellent songbird environment, she explains, but now they’re managing some of the thorny plants to develop a more variety of habitats and to link up two parts of the site. Young saplings will take considerably longer to take root, but new growth from the surrounding trees are already taking root in the fields; the crew have been installing barriers to safeguard them from animals.
Animals Comes Back in Abundance
There's more than the nightingales – fauna is coming back in droves. Lately they’ve spotted reptiles, slowworms, nocturnal mammals and bugs, notes another co-director, as he lifts up one of their survey equipment (similar to a mat over a small hollow in the ground). “You find creatures and animals residing under there, but it’s possibly a somewhat cold for them now.” Organic nests, built using empty parts of wood and buzzing with pollinators, are attached to some of the trees. The removal of livestock has allowed invertebrates opportunity to prosper in the long grass. When they explored this summer, comments the director, “I’d not ever seen so many lepidoptera. There were just swarms of them. We were wondering, ‘What is happening?’”
Origins of the Project
The original Youngwilders – Bennett, Durant, Molly and additional members – came together as youth, studying or sharing an concern in nature. In 2019, the climate experts was predicting that the safe limit of one and a half degrees of global heating was appearing out of reach, the activist was leading the demonstrations for climate movement, and advocate a speaker was addressing young people suffering from “environmental stress”. It was also the era of Isabella Tree’s book, about nature recovery, on how the authors transformed the a nearby property from a struggling agricultural business into a flourishing natural habitat. “We were super-inspired by the example, but what was the part for young people?” says Molly. “So we made a online presence and contacted numerous of conservation groups and were asking, ‘Do you sometimes get your landowners wishing to take action and you are short on capacity?’”
Durant continues the story: “Our whole project was essentially founded on the notion that there were people who were willing to permit a group of young enthusiasts on to their land freely, to take major choices that would affect land value
