That manically melodic call of the nightingale is a rare presence in Britain these days, but it's different at the Surrey site. Back in 2020, a single nightingale could be noticed at this hidden place in rural Surrey; this summer, they were everywhere. “We were listening to them calling all night, from multiple areas,” says a lead scientist, top biologist for the youth rewilding group. A band of participants were residing temporarily at the location, however the nightingales were so noisy, “we were unable to rest all night,” remarks Layla Mapemba. “We were all knackered the next day, but it was so amazing.” An specialist from the local conservation group came to help them net and ring one of the birds the next morning, she recalls: “He’d never held a songbird in his care before. He was emotional.”
Ecological Restoration Accelerates at Maple Farm
Nature recovery is by nature a gradual business, but in this place at this property, after just a short period, the outcomes are already apparent, and noticeable. The farm was once a sanctuary for horses. Now it’s a showpiece for the Youngwilders’ mission: to accelerate ecological restoration, in one of the ecologically impoverished regions in the planet, and to engage young people (18-30-year-olds) with a environment they are often shut out of, and a climate crisis they are often powerless to stop. Climate change continues, tree clearing destroys natural habitats, and another Cop summit draws to a disappointing conclusion in Brazil – so who could criticize young people for wanting to initiate change themselves?
Our initiative was founded on the notion that there were landowners ready to permit a collection of young enthusiasts on to their property
“The youth is the best educated ecologically that there’s historically,” explains the group's co-director, a key figure. They are also “the most emotionally involved in the issues, and have played the least to their causing, and, then, are also going to suffer most as a consequence.”
Change of the Property
Now, the organisation is taking root across the United Kingdom – and Maple Farm started it all, in multiple ways. “It’s our origin point, and the place we created our network,” notes Molly Easton, as she offers a tour of the 12-hectare land. “This was previously divided plots,” she says, as we move through overgrown meadows filled with low scrub, surrounded by forest. “The primary visible transformation is that we’ve removed all the enclosures, 1.2km of it, to make it feel like a unified landscape.” In the recent season, they used protective gear and removed large amounts of invasive plants, an aggressive flora that can burn the body. “We’ve established numerous of hedgerows,” says Easton. “But the key action is we’ve just given it space for a brief period. We’ve eliminated a significant amount of animal feeding and noticed what’s come up.”
Low scrub and shrub lines are a ideal songbird home, she comments, although currently they’re trimming some of the wild growth to develop a greater range of ecosystems and to link up two parts of the property. Fresh plantings will take much more time to grow, but new growth from the adjacent trees are already establishing themselves in the fields; the team have been setting up protectors to shield them from wildlife.
Animals Comes Back in Abundance
It’s not just the nightingales – animals is reappearing in droves. Recently they’ve observed grass snakes, creatures, bats and bugs, explains a team member, as he raises one of their survey equipment (similar to a doormat over a small hollow in the ground). “You get snakes and animals sheltering under there, but it’s possibly a somewhat cool for them now.” Wild homes, constructed from hollowed-out parts of tree trunk and active with pollinators, are fixed to some of the plants. The lack of grazing horses has provided small creatures opportunity to prosper in the meadows. When they visited this summer, states the director, “I’d not ever seen so many lepidoptera. There were just swarms of them. We were like, ‘What is going on?’”
Origins of the Project
The initial founders – Bennett, Durant, Easton and additional members – united as students, focusing on or having an passion in environmental science. In that year, the climate experts was forecasting that the safe limit of one and a half degrees of warming was seeming out of reach, the activist was guiding the demonstrations for eco-awareness, and campaigner a speaker was discussing young people suffering from “climate anxiety”. It was also the time of a writer's work, Wilding, on how she and her husband changed the Knepp Estate from a unsuccessful farm into a flourishing ecosystem. “We were deeply influenced by the case study, but what was the role for young people?” questions Easton. “So we developed a online presence and called loads of conservation groups and were like, ‘Do you occasionally get your property owners wishing to make changes and you are short on time?’”
Jack adds the narrative: “Our entire organisation was basically premised on the idea that there were landowners who were prepared to let a collection of young amateurs on to their property without strict rules, to decide on major actions that would affect land value
