The manically melodic song of the nightingale is a rare presence in the UK today, but it's different at this rural location. Back in 2020, a lone bird could be noticed at this secluded location in the countryside of Surrey; this summer, they were everywhere. “We were listening to them singing all night, from several zones,” explains Meg Cookson, top biologist for the Youngwilders. A team of Youngwilders were camping out at the site, but the birds were so loud, “we stayed awake all night,” comments a project coordinator. “We were all worn out 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, Cookson recalls: “He’d never handled a songbird in his hands before. He was teary.”
Ecological Restoration Progresses at This Location
Rewilding is by its very essence a gradual business, but here at this property, after merely a short period, the changes are already visible, and hearable. The land was once a retirement home for equines. Currently it’s a example for the youth-led mission: to speed up habitat revival, in one of the biodiversity-poor regions in the planet, and to connect 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 halt. Rising temperatures persists, deforestation eliminates wildlife homes, and yet another Cop summit ends with a disappointing end in abroad – so what person could fault the younger generation for choosing to act independently?
The initiative was based on the notion that there were landowners ready to permit a group of young amateurs on to their property
“The youth is the most knowledgeable in terms of nature that there’s historically,” states the group's leader, Jack Durant. They are also “the most emotionally involved in the issues, and have played the smallest part to their causing, and, then, are also going to be affected the worst as a consequence.”
Transformation of the Landscape
Currently, the group is expanding across the UK – and the original site was the beginning, in multiple ways. “It’s the initial project, and the place we established our network,” explains a founding member, as she offers a tour of the 12-hectare site. “This used to be multiple separate areas,” she comments, as we walk through long grass dotted with bushes, surrounded by established trees. “The key visible difference is that we’ve taken out all the fencing, a significant length of it, to create the impression like a single landscape.” In the recent season, they used special clothing and cleared significant quantities of invasive plants, an invasive species that can irritate the flesh. “We’ve planted numerous of hedgerows,” notes the director. “But the main thing is we’ve just allowed it to rest for a little bit. We’ve reduced a significant amount of animal feeding and noticed what’s sprung up.”
Bushes and natural fences are a perfect songbird environment, she explains, although currently they’re managing some of the brambles to develop a more variety of habitats and to link up separate areas of the land. New trees will take much more time to establish, but young trees from the surrounding oaks are already growing in the fields; the group have been placing guards to shield them from wildlife.
Nature Comes Back in Large Numbers
It’s not just the songbirds – wildlife is returning in droves. Lately they’ve spotted grass snakes, slowworms, flyers and bugs, explains another co-director, as he lifts up one of their survey equipment (similar to a doormat over a depression in the soil). “You discover creatures and animals sheltering under there, but it’s likely a bit chilly for them now.” Natural beehives, made from empty pieces of timber and active with wild bees, are strapped to some of the plants. The removal of livestock has given invertebrates space to thrive in the overgrown areas. When they visited this time, comments the director, “I’d not ever observed so numerous lepidoptera. There were just masses of them. We were wondering, ‘What is occurring?’”
Origins of the Project
The first participants – Bennett, Durant, Easton and two others – came together as learners, studying or sharing an interest in nature. In 2019, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was forecasting that the safe limit of one and a half degrees of global heating was seeming out of reach, the activist was leading the school strikes for eco-awareness, and advocate a speaker was talking about young people suffering from “eco-worry”. It was also the time of the author's work, about nature recovery, on how they revitalized the a nearby property from a struggling dairy farm into a flourishing wildlife haven. “We were deeply influenced by the Knepp story, but what was the function for the next generation?” asks Easton. “So we created a website and called loads of wildlife trusts and were asking, ‘Do you sometimes get your property owners wanting to do something and you don’t have time?’”
Durant adds the story: “Our whole initiative was fundamentally premised on the notion that there were individuals who were willing to let a group of young idiots on to their land freely, to make major decisions that would impact land value
