The beautifully intricate melody of the songbird is a scarce occurrence in the UK today, but not at this rural location. Back in 2020, a lone nightingale could be noticed at this secluded place in the countryside of Surrey; lately, they were everywhere. “We were listening to them singing all night, from multiple areas,” explains Meg Cookson, lead ecologist for the eco-activist organization. A band of Youngwilders were residing temporarily at the location, but the birds were so loud, “we couldn’t sleep all night,” remarks Layla Mapemba. “We were all knackered the next day, but it was so cool.” An specialist from the Surrey Wildlife Trust came to help them net and ring one of the songbirds the next morning, she recalls: “He’d never handled a nightingale in his possession before. He was crying.”
Rewilding Accelerates at the Surrey Site
Rewilding is by definition a lengthy process, but at this site at this property, after just four years, the changes are already evident, and noticeable. The land used to be a sanctuary for animals. Currently it’s a model for the youth-led goal: to accelerate ecological restoration, in one of the most nature-depleted nations in the planet, and to engage the younger generation (18-30-year-olds) with a natural world they are often excluded from, and a climate crisis they are often ineffectual to prevent. Global heating persists, tree clearing destroys ecosystems, and one more climate conference comes to a unsatisfactory conclusion in the host country – so what person could blame young people for choosing to take matters into their own hands?
Our initiative was premised on the notion that there were people prepared to allow a bunch of young idiots on to their estate
“The youth is the most informed in terms of nature that there’s ever been,” states the Youngwilders’ leader, Jack Durant. They are also “the deeply concerned in the challenges, and have contributed the minimal role to their causing, and, then, are also going to suffer the greatest as a consequence.”
Transformation of the Landscape
Currently, the organisation is growing across the Britain – and the original site was the beginning, in multiple ways. “It’s the initial project, and the place we created our community,” says Molly Easton, as she gives a tour of the 12-hectare site. “This was previously multiple separate areas,” she states, as we stroll through tall vegetation dotted with bushes, surrounded by established trees. “The key visible change is that we’ve taken out all the fencing, a significant length of it, to create the impression like one landscape.” In the warmer months, they used hazmat suits and eradicated significant quantities of invasive plants, an non-native plant that can harm the body. “We’ve established numerous of hedgerows,” explains she. “But the primary focus is we’ve just let it breathe for a little bit. We’ve removed a significant amount of grazing pressure and noticed what’s come up.”
Bushes and hedgerows are a perfect nightingale environment, she comments, although now they’re managing some of the wild growth to establish a more range of environments and to join different sections of the property. New trees will take a while to establish, but young trees from the adjacent trees are already growing in the fields; the team have been installing barriers to shield them from grazing deer.
Wildlife Returns in Droves
There's more than the nightingales – fauna is returning in droves. Recently they’ve spotted grass snakes, creatures, bats and insects, explains another co-director, as he raises one of their reptile mats (such as a doormat over a small hollow in the soil). “You find reptiles and things residing under there, but it’s possibly a somewhat chilly for them now.” Natural beehives, constructed from carved sections of tree trunk and buzzing with pollinators, are fixed to some of the woodland. The lack of grazing horses has given small creatures opportunity to flourish in the overgrown areas. When they came to this season, comments Bennett, “I’d never encountered so countless lepidoptera. There were just masses of them. We were saying, ‘What is occurring?’”
Beginnings of the Initiative
The first participants – Noah, Durant, Molly and two others – came together as learners, pursuing or expressing an concern in environmental science. In that year, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was indicating that the safe limit of one and a half degrees of global heating was looking impossible, Greta Thunberg was leading the youth protests for eco-awareness, and activist Clover Hogan was talking about the generation feeling “eco-worry”. It was also the time of a writer's work, on rewilding, on how they changed the a Sussex location from a unsuccessful agricultural business into a successful ecosystem. “We were deeply influenced by the Knepp story, but what could be the function for youth?” says Molly. “So we developed a website and contacted numerous of wildlife trusts and were saying, ‘Do you sometimes get your landowners seeking to make changes and you are short on resources?’”
Durant continues the story: “Our entire organisation was fundamentally premised on the notion that there were individuals who were willing to allow a bunch of young enthusiasts on to their land freely, to decide on significant actions that would impact land value
