That beautifully intricate song of the nightingale is a rare presence in England nowadays, yet it's different at Maple Farm. Previously, a lone nightingale could be heard at this secluded place in rural Surrey; recently, they were all around. “We were listening to them singing all night, from several zones,” notes one ecologist, top biologist for the Youngwilders. A team of Youngwilders were staying overnight at the property, however the birds were so boisterous, “we were unable to rest all night,” comments Layla Mapemba. “We were all knackered the next day, but it was so amazing.” An professional from the Surrey Wildlife Trust came to help them capture and tag one of the songbirds the next morning, Cookson states: “He’d never held a nightingale in his possession before. He was crying.”
Habitat Revival Accelerates at Maple Farm
Rewilding is by definition a gradual business, but here at the farm, after merely four years, the results are already apparent, and hearable. The farm was once a haven for horses. Currently it’s a showpiece for the Youngwilders’ goal: to hasten habitat revival, in one of the biodiversity-poor regions in the planet, and to connect young people (18-30-year-olds) with a natural world they are often excluded from, and a global warming issue they are often unable to halt. Climate change persists, deforestation destroys wildlife homes, and another Cop summit ends with a unsatisfactory outcome in the host country – so what person could blame youth for wishing to act independently?
The project was founded on the notion that there were landowners willing to let a bunch of youthful amateurs on to their land
“The youth is the most informed environmentally that there’s historically,” says the group's founder, Jack Durant. They are also “the most emotionally involved in the challenges, and have played the least to their creation, and, then, are also going to be affected the worst as a result.”
Change of the Property
Now, the group is growing across the UK – and Maple Farm planted the seed, in every sense. “It’s our origin point, and the place we created our network,” says another co-director, as she provides a overview of the 12-hectare site. “This used to be six different fields,” she comments, as we move through long grass filled with bushes, bordered by established trees. “The key visual difference is that we’ve removed all the barriers, a significant length of it, to make it feel like one area.” In the summer, they used special clothing and removed masses of invasive plants, an non-native plant that can irritate the body. “We’ve introduced numerous of hedgerows,” says Easton. “But the primary focus is we’ve just allowed it to rest for a brief period. We’ve eliminated a large part of grazing pressure and noticed what’s come up.”
Low scrub and shrub lines are a excellent nightingale habitat, she comments, although today they’re cutting back some of the brambles to develop a greater range 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 trees are already taking root in the fields; the crew have been setting up barriers to protect them from wildlife.
Nature Reappears in Large Numbers
There's more than the songbirds – wildlife is returning in abundance. Lately they’ve spotted reptiles, slowworms, bats and insects, says Noah Bennett, as he uncovers one of their reptile mats (like a mat over a depression in the soil). “You find creatures and things sheltering under there, but it’s likely a slightly cold for them now.” Organic beehives, built using hollowed-out sections of wood and buzzing with pollinators, are fixed to some of the plants. The lack of livestock has allowed invertebrates opportunity to prosper in the meadows. When they explored this summer, says Bennett, “I’d not once encountered so many insects. There were just swarms of them. We were saying, ‘What is occurring?’”
Origins of the Movement
The initial Youngwilders – Bennett, Durant, Easton and additional members – came together as learners, studying or having an passion in ecology. In the recent past, the climate experts was indicating that the target of one and a half degrees of global heating was appearing unachievable, a prominent figure was spearheading the youth protests for environmental action, and advocate another voice was addressing youth feeling “environmental stress”. It was also the period of Isabella Tree’s book, on rewilding, on how the authors changed the a nearby property from a failing dairy farm into a thriving wildlife haven. “We were highly motivated by the case study, but what was the part for youth?” questions Easton. “So we developed a online presence and rang up loads of wildlife trusts and were saying, ‘Do you sometimes get your landowners wishing to do something and you don’t have capacity?’”
Durant adds the story: “Our entire project was essentially premised on the notion that there were people who were ready to let a collection of young amateurs on to their property freely, to take significant decisions that would impact land value
