The beautifully intricate song of the nightingale is a uncommon sound in the UK these days, but not at the Surrey site. Back in 2020, a lone nightingale could be heard at this remote location in the countryside of Surrey; this summer, they were all around. “We were hearing them chirping all night, from five different territories,” notes a lead scientist, lead ecologist for the youth rewilding group. A group of volunteers were camping out at the location, however the birds were so boisterous, “we stayed awake all night,” comments Layla Mapemba. “We were all knackered the next day, but it was so cool.” An expert from the Surrey Wildlife Trust came to help them capture and tag one of the birds the next morning, she remembers: “He’d never handled a nightingale in his possession before. He was crying.”
Habitat Revival Accelerates at Maple Farm
Rewilding is by definition a gradual process, but here at the farm, after only a short period, the results are already visible, and hearable. The land used to be a retirement home for equines. Now it’s a model for the youth-led purpose: to hasten nature recovery, in one of the biodiversity-poor nations in the planet, and to engage youth (18-30-year-olds) with a natural world they are often denied access to, and a climate crisis they are often ineffectual to prevent. Global heating persists, habitat loss destroys natural habitats, and one more international meeting ends with a frustrating conclusion in the host country – so who could criticize young people for wishing to act independently?
Our organisation was premised on the idea that there were people willing to let a collection of young amateurs on to their property
“The newer cohort is the most informed in terms of nature that there’s previously,” says the group's founder, Jack Durant. They are also “the deeply concerned in the challenges, and have added the minimal role to their causing, and, then, are also going to suffer the worst as a result.”
Change of the Property
Currently, the organisation is taking root across the UK – and the original site was the beginning, in all respects. “It’s the initial project, and where we established our connections,” notes Molly Easton, as she offers a tour of the expansive property. “This was previously multiple separate areas,” she says, as we stroll through overgrown meadows filled with low scrub, surrounded by mature woodland. “The key visible transformation is that we’ve removed all the fencing, over a kilometer of it, to make it feel like a unified environment.” In the summer, they donned protective gear and removed large amounts of harmful weeds, an non-native plant that can irritate the flesh. “We’ve established many of natural barriers,” says the director. “But the primary focus is we’ve just given it space for a brief period. We’ve reduced a large part of livestock impact and observed what’s sprung up.”
Underbrush and shrub lines are a excellent nightingale habitat, she explains, but today they’re cutting back some of the wild growth to create a greater range of environments and to connect separate areas of the land. Fresh plantings will take a while to take root, but new growth from the adjacent oaks are already taking root in the fields; the team have been placing guards to shield them from grazing deer.
Animals Comes Back in Droves
In addition to the nightingales – wildlife is reappearing in droves. Lately they’ve seen grass snakes, legless lizards, flyers and invertebrates, says Noah Bennett, as he lifts up one of their reptile mats (such as a doormat over a indentation in the earth). “You discover reptiles and animals sheltering under there, but it’s likely a bit chilly for them now.” Natural beehives, constructed from empty parts of timber and active with pollinators, are fixed to some of the trees. The removal of livestock has allowed invertebrates room to flourish in the meadows. When they explored this time, says he, “I’d not once encountered so countless insects. There were just swarms of them. We were wondering, ‘What is occurring?’”
Inception of the Movement
The first founders – Bennett, Durant, Molly and two others – came together as learners, pursuing or expressing an interest in nature. In 2019, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was indicating that the safe limit of one and a half degrees of climate change was appearing out of reach, a prominent figure was spearheading the school strikes for climate movement, and advocate a speaker was addressing youth suffering from “eco-worry”. It was also the time of the author's book, Wilding, on how she and her husband changed the a nearby property from a struggling agricultural business into a flourishing natural habitat. “We were super-inspired by the case study, but what could be the role for young people?” says Easton. “So we developed a online presence and called numerous of conservation groups and were asking, ‘Do you ever get your estate holders wanting to take action and you are short on resources?’”
Durant explains the account: “Our whole organisation was fundamentally based on the belief that there were landowners who were prepared to let a group of youthful amateurs on to their property indiscriminately, to decide on significant decisions that would impact land value
