The richly complex melody of the songbird is a scarce occurrence in the UK today, however it's different at the Surrey site. Previously, a single nightingale could be heard at this remote place in rural Surrey; lately, they were everywhere. “We were listening to them chirping all night, from five different territories,” notes Meg Cookson, chief environmental expert for the Youngwilders. A group of volunteers were camping out at the location, however the birds were so boisterous, “we were unable to rest all night,” comments an engagement lead. “We were all knackered the next day, but it was so incredible.” An professional from the Surrey Wildlife Trust came to help them net and ring one of the nightingales the next morning, she states: “He’d never touched a nightingale in his possession before. He was emotional.”
Rewilding Accelerates at the Surrey Site
Ecological restoration is by nature a slow process, but in this place at the farm, after merely four years, the results are already evident, and noticeable. The property previously served as a retirement home for horses. Currently it’s a model for the Youngwilders’ purpose: to hasten ecological restoration, in one of the most nature-depleted regions in the world, and to link young people (18-30-year-olds) with a ecosystem they are often shut out of, and a climate crisis they are often ineffectual to prevent. Global heating persists, habitat loss destroys wildlife homes, and another Cop summit comes to a unsatisfactory outcome in the host country – so what person could fault youth for wanting to act independently?
Our organisation was premised on the notion that there were individuals willing to allow a bunch of youthful enthusiasts on to their estate
“The newer cohort is the best educated in terms of nature that there’s ever been,” says the group's founder, one organizer. They are also “the highly invested in the challenges, and have added the least to their origin, and, then, are also going to be affected the greatest as a consequence.”
Change of the Site
Today, the group is taking root across the UK – and the original site planted the seed, in all respects. “It’s where we started, and where we created our community,” says another co-director, as she offers a walkthrough of the expansive land. “This once consisted of multiple separate areas,” she comments, as we walk through overgrown meadows featuring shrubs, hemmed by mature woodland. “The key noticeable difference is that we’ve removed all the enclosures, over a kilometer of it, to give the sense like a unified environment.” In the warmer months, they wore protective gear and removed significant quantities of giant hogweed, an aggressive flora that can harm the flesh. “We’ve established many of bush lines,” notes she. “But the primary focus is we’ve just given it space for a brief period. We’ve removed a large part of livestock impact and seen what’s emerged.”
Low scrub and shrub lines are a excellent songbird home, she says, however currently they’re cutting back some of the thorny plants to develop a greater range of environments and to join different sections of the land. New trees will take a while to grow, but young trees from the adjacent woodland are already growing in the open areas; the team have been placing barriers to safeguard them from wildlife.
Wildlife Returns in Abundance
It’s not just the nightingales – wildlife is reappearing in large numbers. Lately they’ve observed grass snakes, slowworms, nocturnal mammals and invertebrates, says Noah Bennett, as he lifts up one of their monitoring tools (like a mat over a depression in the soil). “You get snakes and things sheltering under there, but it’s probably a somewhat cold for them now.” Organic beehives, made from carved parts of wood and active with wild bees, are fixed to some of the woodland. The removal of livestock has allowed invertebrates opportunity to prosper in the overgrown areas. When they came to this season, comments Bennett, “I’d not once observed so many lepidoptera. There were just swarms of them. We were saying, ‘What is occurring?’”
Beginnings of the Project
The first founders – Bennett, Jack, Easton and two others – united as students, focusing on or expressing an concern in ecology. In 2019, the IPCC was predicting that the safe limit of one and a half degrees of warming was looking out of reach, a prominent figure was leading the demonstrations for eco-awareness, and activist a speaker was addressing the generation suffering from “eco-worry”. It was also the period of Isabella Tree’s publication, on rewilding, on how she and her husband changed the Knepp Estate from a struggling farm into a flourishing ecosystem. “We were deeply influenced by the case study, but what could be the role for the next generation?” says Molly. “So we created a platform and contacted numerous of wildlife trusts and were asking, ‘Do you ever get your estate holders wishing to do something and you lack time?’”
Durant explains the story: “Our whole project was basically based on the notion that there were landowners who were ready to let a collection of youthful amateurs on to their land indiscriminately, to take significant choices that would affect land value
