The manically melodic call of the nightingale is a rare sound in Britain these days, but it's different at this rural location. Previously, a single bird could be detected at this remote location in the countryside of Surrey; recently, they were all around. “We were listening to them calling all night, from five different territories,” notes one ecologist, chief environmental expert for the youth rewilding group. A team of volunteers were residing temporarily at the location, however the nightingales were so boisterous, “we couldn’t sleep all night,” says Layla Mapemba. “We were all exhausted the next day, but it was so cool.” An specialist from the Surrey Wildlife Trust came to help them trap and mark one of the birds the next morning, Cookson recalls: “He’d never handled a songbird in his hands before. He was crying.”
Rewilding Accelerates at the Surrey Site
Nature recovery is by its very essence a slow business, but at this site at this property, after merely four years, the results are already apparent, and hearable. The farm was once a sanctuary for horses. Currently it’s a showpiece for the Youngwilders’ purpose: to accelerate ecological restoration, in one of the ecologically impoverished countries in the world, and to link young people (18-30-year-olds) with a ecosystem they are often excluded from, and a environmental emergency they are often ineffectual to halt. Climate change persists, tree clearing destroys ecosystems, and one more international meeting draws to a unsatisfactory outcome in the host country – so who could blame youth for wishing to take matters into their own hands?
The initiative was premised on the notion that there were people prepared to permit a group of young amateurs on to their land
“The youth is the most knowledgeable ecologically that there’s historically,” states the Youngwilders’ leader, one organizer. They are also “the highly invested in the problems, and have added the least to their creation, and, then, are also going to be affected most as a result.”
Transformation of the Site
Now, the initiative is taking root across the UK – and the original site planted the seed, in multiple ways. “It’s the initial project, and where we built our community,” notes a founding member, as she provides a walkthrough of the 30-acre property. “This once consisted of multiple separate areas,” she comments, as we stroll through tall vegetation featuring shrubs, bordered by forest. “The main visual transformation is that we’ve eliminated all the fencing, a significant length of it, to give the sense like a single environment.” In the warmer months, they donned hazmat suits and eradicated masses of harmful weeds, an aggressive flora that can irritate the flesh. “We’ve planted loads of bush lines,” says Easton. “But the key action is we’ve just let it breathe for a little bit. We’ve removed a large part of animal feeding and noticed what’s emerged.”
Low scrub and shrub lines are a perfect nightingale home, she comments, but now they’re trimming some of the wild growth to develop a more range of habitats and to link up two parts of the land. Young saplings will take a while to establish, but new growth from the adjacent oaks are already establishing themselves in the open areas; the group have been setting up guards to safeguard them from wildlife.
Animals Returns in Abundance
It’s not just the songbirds – fauna is coming back in droves. Recently they’ve spotted grass snakes, slowworms, flyers and invertebrates, notes a team member, as he uncovers one of their survey equipment (similar to a doormat over a indentation in the ground). “You discover reptiles and wildlife residing under there, but it’s possibly a bit cold for them now.” Wild nests, made from empty parts of wood and active with wild bees, are attached to some of the plants. The removal of animals has provided small creatures space to flourish in the long grass. When they came to this season, says he, “I’d not once observed so countless insects. There were just masses of them. We were wondering, ‘What is occurring?’”
Inception of the Project
The initial founders – Bennett, Jack, Molly and more individuals – formed as youth, studying or sharing an interest in environmental science. In that year, the IPCC was indicating that the safe limit of 1.5C of climate change was appearing unachievable, a prominent figure was spearheading the youth protests for environmental action, and activist another voice was talking about youth feeling “climate anxiety”. It was also the period of Isabella Tree’s work, about nature recovery, on how she and her husband transformed the a Sussex location from a unsuccessful agricultural business into a thriving natural habitat. “We were super-inspired by the Knepp story, but what was the role for young people?” questions Easton. “So we created a platform and rang up many of environmental organizations and were like, ‘Do you sometimes get your estate holders wanting to take action and you are short on resources?’”
Durant adds the story: “Our complete organisation was essentially founded on the idea that there were individuals who were willing to let a collection of young idiots on to their land without strict rules, to take fairly massive actions that would impact land value
