The beautifully intricate song of the songbird is a scarce sound in Britain today, but it's different at Maple Farm. Four years ago, a solitary bird could be noticed at this remote place in rural Surrey; lately, they were everywhere. “We were listening to them singing all night, from several zones,” explains Meg Cookson, lead ecologist for the Youngwilders. A group of volunteers were camping out at the site, however the birds were so loud, “we couldn’t sleep all night,” says a project coordinator. “We were all knackered the next day, but it was so cool.” An expert from the regional nature organization came to help them net and ring one of the songbirds the next morning, the ecologist recalls: “He’d never touched a songbird in his care before. He was crying.”
Rewilding Accelerates at the Surrey Site
Nature recovery is by its very essence a gradual business, but here at this property, after only four years, the results are already evident, and audible. The farm was once a haven for horses. Today it’s a example for the youth-led goal: to speed up habitat revival, in one of the biodiversity-poor countries 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 powerless to prevent. Rising temperatures advances, tree clearing destroys ecosystems, and one more climate conference ends with a frustrating conclusion in the host country – so who could fault youth for wanting to act independently?
The project was premised on the belief that there were people willing to let a group of youthful amateurs on to their land
“The younger generation is the most informed environmentally that there’s ever been,” states the Youngwilders’ leader, Jack Durant. They are also “the most emotionally involved in the challenges, and have contributed the smallest part to their creation, and, then, are also going to suffer most as a consequence.”
Transformation of the Site
Today, the group is taking root across the United Kingdom – and Maple Farm planted the seed, in all respects. “It’s our origin point, and the place we established our connections,” explains another co-director, as she provides a tour of the expansive land. “This was previously divided plots,” she says, as we move through tall vegetation dotted with low scrub, hemmed by established trees. “The main visual transformation is that we’ve removed all the fencing, 1.2km of it, to give the sense like a unified landscape.” In the summer, they donned hazmat suits and cleared significant quantities of harmful weeds, an non-native plant that can irritate the flesh. “We’ve established loads of bush lines,” explains the director. “But the key action is we’ve just allowed it to rest for a little bit. We’ve reduced a large part of livestock impact and noticed what’s emerged.”
Underbrush and hedgerows are a perfect nightingale environment, she comments, however today they’re managing some of the brambles to establish a more range of ecosystems and to link up separate areas of the site. Fresh plantings will take considerably longer to grow, but saplings from the adjacent oaks are already establishing themselves in the meadows; the team have been installing barriers to protect them from grazing deer.
Nature Reappears in Abundance
In addition to the songbirds – fauna is coming back in large numbers. Lately they’ve seen grass snakes, slowworms, flyers and bugs, explains a team member, as he lifts up one of their reptile mats (such as a cover over a small hollow in the earth). “You discover reptiles and wildlife residing under there, but it’s probably a slightly chilly for them now.” Natural nests, built using carved pieces of timber and active with pollinators, are strapped to some of the woodland. The absence of livestock has provided invertebrates opportunity to flourish in the overgrown areas. When they explored this time, states Bennett, “I’d never encountered so countless lepidoptera. There were just swarms of them. We were saying, ‘What is occurring?’”
Beginnings of the Project
The original participants – Noah, Durant, Easton and two others – formed as students, pursuing or having an interest in environmental science. In 2019, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was indicating that the target of one and a half degrees of climate change was looking unachievable, Greta Thunberg was guiding the youth protests for eco-awareness, and activist a speaker was addressing youth suffering from “environmental stress”. It was also the time of the author's publication, Wilding, on how she and her husband revitalized the Knepp Estate from a struggling agricultural business into a thriving wildlife haven. “We were super-inspired by the Knepp story, but what was the function for the next generation?” says Easton. “So we created a online presence and rang up loads of environmental organizations and were saying, ‘Do you occasionally get your property owners wanting to make changes and you lack resources?’”
Durant adds the account: “Our whole project was fundamentally based on the belief that there were people who were ready to let a group of young enthusiasts on to their property indiscriminately, to make significant decisions that would change land value
