That beautifully intricate song of the songbird is a uncommon presence in England today, yet not at Maple Farm. Back in 2020, a solitary nightingale could be noticed at this remote place in the countryside of Surrey; recently, they were all around. “We were listening to them singing all night, from several zones,” says Meg Cookson, top biologist for the youth rewilding group. A team of Youngwilders were residing temporarily at the property, yet the nightingales were so loud, “we couldn’t sleep all night,” comments Layla Mapemba. “We were all exhausted the next day, but it was so cool.” An expert from the local conservation group came to help them capture and tag one of the songbirds the next morning, she states: “He’d never held a songbird in his care before. He was teary.”
Habitat Revival Accelerates at Maple Farm
Rewilding is by nature a lengthy process, but at this site at this property, after only several seasons, the results are already evident, and audible. The property used to be a sanctuary for horses. Currently it’s a example for the Youngwilders’ mission: to accelerate nature recovery, in one of the biodiversity-poor countries in the world, and to link youth (18-30-year-olds) with a environment they are often excluded from, and a environmental emergency they are often powerless to halt. Climate change advances, deforestation damages natural habitats, and another climate conference draws to a unsatisfactory outcome in Brazil – so what person could criticize the younger generation for choosing to take matters into their own hands?
The initiative was founded on the idea that there were landowners prepared to permit a group of young idiots on to their land
“The youth is the most informed ecologically that there’s historically,” explains the group's leader, Jack Durant. They are also “the highly invested in the issues, and have played the smallest part to their creation, and, then, are also going to suffer the greatest as a result.”
Revitalization of the Property
Now, the group is growing across the United Kingdom – and Maple Farm planted the seed, in multiple ways. “It’s the initial project, and where we built our community,” says another co-director, as she offers a tour of the 12-hectare site. “This once consisted of divided plots,” she states, as we walk through overgrown meadows featuring shrubs, bordered by mature woodland. “The key visual difference is that we’ve removed all the enclosures, over a kilometer of it, to make it feel like a unified landscape.” In the recent season, they donned protective gear and cleared masses of invasive plants, an aggressive flora that can harm the flesh. “We’ve introduced loads of hedgerows,” notes the director. “But the key action is we’ve just allowed it to rest for a brief period. We’ve eliminated a lot of animal feeding and seen what’s come up.”
Bushes and shrub lines are a ideal nightingale habitat, she says, but now they’re managing some of the thorny plants to develop a more variety of habitats and to connect separate areas of the land. New trees will take much more time to grow, but young trees from the surrounding woodland are already growing in the fields; the team have been setting up barriers to shield them from grazing deer.
Wildlife Reappears in Droves
There's more than the songbirds – fauna is coming back in droves. This year they’ve seen reptiles, slowworms, bats and insects, notes Noah Bennett, as he lifts up one of their reptile mats (such as a doormat over a small hollow in the earth). “You get snakes and things sheltering under there, but it’s probably a bit chilly for them now.” Natural beehives, built using carved parts of wood and active with wild bees, are strapped to some of the woodland. The lack of animals has allowed invertebrates room to prosper in the meadows. When they visited this season, comments he, “I’d never observed so numerous insects. There were just clouds of them. We were saying, ‘What is happening?’”
Origins of the Movement
The initial founders – Bennett, Jack, Molly and more individuals – formed as learners, studying or expressing an interest in ecology. In that year, the climate experts was predicting that the safe limit of 1.5C of climate change was seeming unachievable, Greta Thunberg was spearheading the school strikes for eco-awareness, and activist a speaker was talking about young people experiencing “environmental stress”. It was also the time of a writer's work, about nature recovery, on how the authors transformed the a Sussex location from a failing agricultural business into a successful wildlife haven. “We were highly motivated by the Knepp story, but what was the role for youth?” questions Molly. “So we created a website and rang up loads of environmental organizations and were like, ‘Do you ever get your property owners wanting to take action and you lack capacity?’”
Durant adds the account: “Our entire organisation was fundamentally premised on the notion that there were landowners who were ready to let a bunch of young amateurs on to their land without strict rules, to decide on fairly massive actions that would impact land value
