That manically melodic melody of the nightingale is a rare sound in the UK nowadays, yet not at Maple Farm. Four years ago, a single bird could be detected at this hidden place in the countryside of Surrey; recently, they were everywhere. “We were listening to them chirping all night, from multiple areas,” explains one ecologist, lead ecologist for the eco-activist organization. A band of volunteers were staying overnight at the location, but the nightingales were so noisy, “we stayed awake all night,” says an engagement lead. “We were all worn out the next day, but it was so amazing.” An expert from the Surrey Wildlife Trust came to help them net and ring one of the songbirds the next morning, the ecologist states: “He’d never touched a songbird in his hands before. He was emotional.”
Rewilding Speeds Up at Maple Farm
Rewilding is by its very essence a slow business, but here at Maple Farm, after only several seasons, the results are already apparent, and audible. The farm used to be a haven for horses. Now it’s a showpiece for the Youngwilders’ mission: to speed up nature recovery, in one of the most nature-depleted countries in the world, and to engage young people (18-30-year-olds) with a natural world they are often denied access to, and a climate crisis they are often unable to halt. Rising temperatures continues, habitat loss destroys natural habitats, and one more climate conference comes to a unsatisfactory conclusion in the host country – so what person could blame the younger generation for wanting to initiate change themselves?
Our project was based on the notion that there were people ready to allow a collection of young idiots on to their land
“The younger generation is the most knowledgeable ecologically that there’s ever been,” says the Youngwilders’ co-director, a key figure. They are also “the most emotionally involved in the problems, and have added the smallest part to their creation, and, then, are also going to be affected most as a consequence.”
Change of the Site
Now, the group is taking root across the UK – and this location was the beginning, in multiple ways. “It’s the initial project, and the place we established our community,” explains a founding member, as she provides a overview of the 30-acre land. “This used to be six different fields,” she comments, as we stroll through overgrown meadows filled with low scrub, hemmed by forest. “The key visual change is that we’ve removed all the barriers, a significant length of it, to make it feel like one area.” In the warmer months, they used special clothing and cleared masses of giant hogweed, an invasive species that can irritate the body. “We’ve planted numerous of hedgerows,” notes Easton. “But the main thing is we’ve just let it breathe for a short time. We’ve eliminated a significant amount of livestock impact and seen what’s come up.”
Bushes and shrub lines are a excellent nightingale home, she says, but today they’re managing some of the brambles to establish a greater variety of ecosystems and to link up separate areas of the site. New trees will take much more time to take root, but new growth from the adjacent woodland are already taking root in the meadows; the team have been installing barriers to safeguard them from grazing deer.
Animals Comes Back in Droves
In addition to the songbirds – wildlife is coming back in large numbers. Recently they’ve observed grass snakes, slowworms, nocturnal mammals and bugs, notes Noah Bennett, as he uncovers one of their survey equipment (such as a doormat over a indentation in the earth). “You get creatures and animals sheltering under there, but it’s probably a slightly chilly for them now.” Wild homes, made from empty pieces of tree trunk and buzzing with pollinators, are strapped to some of the woodland. The absence of grazing horses has given insects opportunity to flourish in the overgrown areas. When they visited this season, comments Bennett, “I’d not once seen so numerous insects. There were just swarms of them. We were wondering, ‘What is happening?’”
Beginnings of the Initiative
The first participants – Bennett, Jack, Molly and additional members – came together as learners, studying or expressing an concern in ecology. In 2019, the climate experts was predicting that the target of one and a half degrees of global heating was looking unachievable, Greta Thunberg was leading the youth protests for environmental action, and campaigner a speaker was discussing youth suffering from “climate anxiety”. It was also the period of the author's book, about nature recovery, on how she and her husband changed the Knepp Estate from a failing agricultural business into a thriving natural habitat. “We were deeply influenced by the case study, but what was the function for the next generation?” says Easton. “So we created a online presence and rang up numerous of conservation groups and were saying, ‘Do you sometimes get your estate holders seeking to do something and you lack resources?’”
Durant explains the narrative: “Our complete organisation was fundamentally based on the belief that there were individuals who were ready to permit a bunch of youthful amateurs on to their land indiscriminately, to take fairly massive choices that would affect land value
