‘It Totally Altered My World!’ How Youthful Rewilders Revitalized a Agricultural Property – and Began a Campaign

The manically melodic call of the nightingale is a rare sound in the UK today, but not at Maple Farm. Four years ago, a lone nightingale could be heard at this secluded spot in the countryside of Surrey; this summer, they were everywhere. “We were listening to them singing all night, from several zones,” explains a lead scientist, chief environmental expert for the Youngwilders. A band of volunteers were staying overnight at the site, however the birds were so boisterous, “we couldn’t sleep all night,” says Layla Mapemba. “We were all worn out the next day, but it was so amazing.” An professional from the Surrey Wildlife Trust came to help them trap and mark one of the nightingales the next morning, the ecologist remembers: “He’d never held a nightingale in his possession before. He was teary.”

Habitat Revival Accelerates at This Location

Rewilding is by definition a slow business, but in this place at Maple Farm, after merely a short period, the changes are already apparent, and noticeable. The farm was once a sanctuary for animals. Today it’s a model for the youth-led purpose: to speed up ecological restoration, in one of the ecologically impoverished regions in the world, and to engage young people (18-30-year-olds) with a environment they are often denied access to, and a climate crisis they are often unable to halt. Climate change persists, deforestation destroys wildlife homes, and yet another climate conference comes to a unsatisfactory end in abroad – so who could criticize the younger generation for wanting to take matters into their own hands?

The project was premised on the belief that there were landowners prepared to allow a group of youthful amateurs on to their land

“The youth is the most knowledgeable in terms of nature that there’s ever been,” says the group's co-director, Jack Durant. They are also “the highly invested in the challenges, and have added the smallest part to their causing, and, then, are also going to suffer the greatest as a result.”

Transformation of the Property

Today, the initiative is taking root across the UK – and Maple Farm was the beginning, in every sense. “It’s our origin point, and where we established our community,” notes a founding member, as she gives a tour of the 12-hectare property. “This was previously multiple separate areas,” she comments, as we stroll through tall vegetation dotted with low scrub, hemmed by mature woodland. “The primary noticeable transformation is that we’ve removed all the enclosures, 1.2km of it, to make it feel like one area.” In the warmer months, they donned protective gear and cleared masses of invasive plants, an non-native plant that can harm the body. “We’ve introduced numerous of hedgerows,” says she. “But the main thing is we’ve just allowed it to rest for a brief period. We’ve reduced a lot of livestock impact and noticed what’s come up.”

Underbrush and hedgerows are a excellent nightingale habitat, she says, however today they’re cutting back some of the thorny plants to create a greater diversity of habitats and to connect two parts of the site. New trees will take considerably longer to grow, but saplings from the adjacent trees are already establishing themselves in the meadows; the crew have been installing protectors to shield them from grazing deer.

Wildlife Reappears in Abundance

In addition to the songbirds – fauna is returning in large numbers. This year they’ve spotted serpents, slowworms, nocturnal mammals and bugs, notes a team member, as he raises one of their reptile mats (like a cover over a depression in the soil). “You discover reptiles and wildlife sheltering under there, but it’s likely a bit cold for them now.” Wild nests, made from hollowed-out sections of timber and buzzing with pollinators, are attached to some of the trees. The lack of grazing horses has given insects space to prosper in the meadows. When they visited this time, states Bennett, “I’d not once observed so countless insects. There were just clouds of them. We were saying, ‘What is going on?’”

Inception of the Movement

The initial Youngwilders – Bennett, Jack, Molly and more individuals – came together as learners, studying or sharing an passion in nature. In that year, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was indicating that the safe limit of one and a half degrees of warming was seeming unachievable, Greta Thunberg was leading the school strikes for climate movement, and campaigner another voice was discussing youth suffering from “environmental stress”. It was also the era of a writer's work, about nature recovery, on how the authors transformed the Knepp Estate from a struggling dairy farm into a flourishing natural habitat. “We were highly motivated by the example, but what was the function for young people?” asks Easton. “So we made a platform and called many of conservation groups and were like, ‘Do you sometimes get your property owners wishing to take action and you lack capacity?’”

Durant explains the narrative: “Our entire organisation was essentially based on the notion that there were people who were ready to allow a bunch of young amateurs on to their property freely, to take major actions that would impact land value