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The richly complex melody of the nightingale is a rare occurrence in the UK these days, however it's different at Maple Farm. Four years ago, a single nightingale could be heard at this hidden location in rural Surrey; lately, they were in multiple locations. “We were hearing them singing all night, from several zones,” explains a lead scientist, lead ecologist for the Youngwilders. A band of Youngwilders were staying overnight at the site, but the nightingales were so noisy, “we were unable to rest all night,” comments a project coordinator. “We were all knackered the next day, but it was so cool.” An professional from the Surrey Wildlife Trust came to help them trap and mark one of the songbirds the next morning, the ecologist recalls: “He’d never held a nightingale in his hands before. He was crying.”

Habitat Revival Accelerates at the Surrey Site

Rewilding is by its very essence a gradual process, but at this site at Maple Farm, after merely a short period, the results are already visible, and audible. The farm used to be a sanctuary for equines. Today it’s a model for the youth-led mission: to speed up ecological restoration, in one of the ecologically impoverished nations in the planet, and to link young people (18-30-year-olds) with a natural world they are often denied access to, and a global warming issue they are often ineffectual to stop. Rising temperatures advances, tree clearing eliminates natural habitats, and yet another climate conference ends with a frustrating outcome in the host country – so who could fault the younger generation for wanting to act independently?

The organisation was premised on the notion that there were individuals prepared to let a collection of young idiots on to their land

“The newer cohort is the best educated environmentally that there’s historically,” says the Youngwilders’ founder, a key figure. They are also “the most emotionally involved in the challenges, and have added the minimal role to their origin, and, then, are also going to suffer most as a result.”

Change of the Landscape

Now, the group is expanding across the United Kingdom – and this location was the beginning, in every sense. “It’s where we started, and the place we established our network,” notes another co-director, as she gives a tour of the 30-acre land. “This was previously divided plots,” she comments, as we stroll through tall vegetation dotted with bushes, bordered by forest. “The main visible difference is that we’ve removed all the barriers, a significant length of it, to create the impression like one area.” In the summer, they wore special clothing and eradicated significant quantities of invasive plants, an non-native plant that can irritate the skin. “We’ve established numerous of hedgerows,” explains Easton. “But the main thing is we’ve just given it space for a short time. We’ve eliminated a lot of livestock impact and observed what’s sprung up.”

Bushes and hedgerows are a ideal songbird habitat, she says, however today they’re cutting back some of the brambles to develop a greater range of ecosystems and to link up separate areas of the property. Young saplings will take much more time to establish, but saplings from the surrounding oaks are already growing in the open areas; the team have been setting up barriers to shield them from grazing deer.

Animals Reappears in Droves

It’s not just the songbirds – animals is returning in droves. Recently they’ve seen serpents, creatures, flyers and insects, notes another co-director, as he raises one of their monitoring tools (similar to a mat over a indentation in the soil). “You discover snakes and wildlife residing under there, but it’s probably a bit cold for them now.” Wild beehives, built using hollowed-out sections of wood and humming with pollinators, are strapped to some of the plants. The lack of livestock has provided insects space to thrive in the overgrown areas. When they explored this summer, says Bennett, “I’d never observed so countless lepidoptera. There were just swarms of them. We were saying, ‘What is going on?’”

Inception of the Movement

The original founders – Noah, Jack, Molly and additional members – formed as youth, focusing on or sharing an interest in ecology. In the recent past, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was forecasting that the safe limit of one and a half degrees of global heating was seeming out of reach, a prominent figure was spearheading the school strikes for environmental action, and advocate a speaker was discussing the generation experiencing “climate anxiety”. It was also the time of a writer's publication, Wilding, on how she and her husband transformed the a nearby property from a failing farm into a thriving ecosystem. “We were super-inspired by the case study, but what was the role for the next generation?” says Molly. “So we developed a platform and called loads of environmental organizations and were saying, ‘Do you occasionally get your landowners wanting to make changes and you are short on time?’”

Jack adds the account: “Our entire organisation was essentially founded on the notion that there were people who were prepared to allow a collection of youthful amateurs on to their property indiscriminately, to take fairly massive actions that would affect land value