The beautifully intricate call of the songbird is a scarce presence in Britain these days, yet not at Maple Farm. Previously, a solitary bird could be heard at this remote location in rural Surrey; lately, they were all around. “We were listening to them chirping all night, from several zones,” notes Meg Cookson, chief environmental expert for the eco-activist organization. A group of volunteers were residing temporarily at the property, but the nightingales were so loud, “we stayed awake all night,” says Layla Mapemba. “We were all exhausted the next day, but it was so amazing.” An professional from the local conservation group came to help them trap and mark one of the nightingales the next morning, the ecologist remembers: “He’d never touched a nightingale in his care before. He was crying.”
Habitat Revival Progresses at Maple Farm
Rewilding is by nature a slow business, but in this place at the farm, after only a short period, the outcomes are already apparent, and noticeable. The property previously served as a retirement home for horses. Today it’s a showpiece for the youth-led mission: to accelerate ecological restoration, in one of the most nature-depleted regions in the planet, and to engage the younger generation (18-30-year-olds) with a environment they are often denied access to, and a global warming issue they are often powerless to stop. Rising temperatures continues, deforestation destroys wildlife homes, and yet another international meeting draws to a unsatisfactory conclusion in the host country – so who could criticize young people for wanting to take matters into their own hands?
The project was based on the belief that there were people willing to let a bunch of youthful idiots on to their property
“The newer cohort is the most informed ecologically that there’s previously,” explains the Youngwilders’ co-director, Jack Durant. They are also “the highly invested in the challenges, and have played the least to their causing, and, then, are also going to experience consequences the worst as a consequence.”
Transformation of the Property
Today, the group is expanding across the UK – and the original site started it all, in every sense. “It’s our origin point, and where we established our connections,” explains a founding member, as she gives a overview of the 12-hectare land. “This was previously multiple separate areas,” she comments, as we walk through long grass dotted with bushes, bordered by mature woodland. “The main visible transformation is that we’ve taken out all the barriers, a significant length of it, to create the impression like a unified area.” In the recent season, they wore protective gear and cleared significant quantities of harmful weeds, an invasive species that can harm the skin. “We’ve established many of hedgerows,” says Easton. “But the main thing is we’ve just let it breathe for a little bit. We’ve eliminated a large part of grazing pressure and seen what’s sprung up.”
Underbrush and natural fences are a excellent nightingale habitat, she says, but now they’re managing some of the wild growth to establish a more range of ecosystems and to connect different sections of the land. Young saplings will take considerably longer to establish, but young trees from the nearby oaks are already growing in the open areas; the team have been installing barriers to safeguard them from grazing deer.
Animals Returns in Large Numbers
There's more than the nightingales – fauna is returning in abundance. Lately they’ve seen grass snakes, legless lizards, bats and insects, notes another co-director, as he uncovers one of their reptile mats (like a doormat over a depression in the ground). “You discover creatures and things hiding under there, but it’s possibly a bit chilly for them now.” Organic homes, constructed from carved sections of wood and humming with pollinators, are strapped to some of the trees. The removal of animals has given insects opportunity to flourish in the meadows. When they visited this season, states he, “I’d not ever encountered so numerous butterflies. There were just swarms of them. We were wondering, ‘What is happening?’”
Beginnings of the Project
The original founders – Bennett, Durant, Easton and more individuals – formed as youth, studying or having an concern in nature. In that year, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was predicting that the safe limit of one and a half degrees of climate change was looking out of reach, a prominent figure was spearheading the school strikes for environmental action, and campaigner Clover Hogan was talking about youth experiencing “environmental stress”. It was also the time of the author's book, on rewilding, on how they transformed the Knepp Estate from a struggling dairy farm into a thriving wildlife haven. “We were highly motivated by the Knepp story, but what was the role for young people?” says Easton. “So we created a online presence and contacted numerous of environmental organizations and were saying, ‘Do you occasionally get your landowners wanting to take action and you don’t have resources?’”
Durant explains the story: “Our entire organisation was basically premised on the notion that there were people who were willing to allow a collection of youthful amateurs on to their land freely, to take significant actions that would change land value
