The beautifully intricate call of the nightingale is a rare occurrence in the UK these days, but it's different at Maple Farm. Four years ago, a single bird could be heard at this secluded location in the countryside of Surrey; this summer, they were all around. “We were hearing them chirping all night, from several zones,” says Meg Cookson, lead ecologist for the Youngwilders. A team of participants were camping out at the site, however the birds were so loud, “we were unable to rest all night,” comments a project coordinator. “We were all exhausted the next day, but it was so cool.” An expert from the Surrey Wildlife Trust came to help them net and ring one of the nightingales the next morning, she states: “He’d never handled a nightingale in his care before. He was teary.”
Ecological Restoration Speeds Up at the Surrey Site
Ecological restoration is by its very essence a slow business, but in this place at this property, after just four years, the results are already visible, and hearable. The property was once a retirement home for horses. Currently it’s a model for the Youngwilders’ mission: to accelerate ecological restoration, in one of the ecologically impoverished countries in the globe, and to connect young people (18-30-year-olds) with a natural world they are often denied access to, and a environmental emergency they are often unable to stop. Rising temperatures continues, deforestation eliminates ecosystems, and yet another Cop summit comes to a frustrating conclusion in Brazil – so who could blame the younger generation for wanting to take matters into their own hands?
Our project was founded on the notion that there were individuals willing to allow a group of young amateurs on to their property
“The newer cohort is the most informed in terms of nature that there’s ever been,” explains the group's co-director, a key figure. They are also “the highly invested in the issues, and have played the minimal role to their origin, and, then, are also going to suffer the greatest as a consequence.”
Transformation of the Landscape
Currently, the group is taking root across the Britain – and Maple Farm started it all, in multiple ways. “It’s where we started, and where we established our connections,” notes another co-director, as she gives a tour of the 30-acre site. “This once consisted of multiple separate areas,” she says, as we move through long grass filled with shrubs, surrounded by established trees. “The primary noticeable transformation is that we’ve eliminated all the fencing, 1.2km of it, to make it feel like a single area.” In the recent season, they donned special clothing and eradicated masses of invasive plants, an invasive species that can irritate the flesh. “We’ve planted numerous of hedgerows,” notes Easton. “But the key action is we’ve just let it breathe for a short time. We’ve removed a significant amount of livestock impact and seen what’s come up.”
Low scrub and natural fences are a ideal nightingale home, she explains, although currently they’re managing some of the thorny plants to establish a greater diversity of habitats and to link up separate areas of the property. Fresh plantings will take much more time to establish, but young trees from the nearby trees are already growing in the meadows; the crew have been installing guards to safeguard them from wildlife.
Wildlife Returns in Droves
There's more than the nightingales – fauna is reappearing in abundance. This year they’ve spotted serpents, slowworms, nocturnal mammals and invertebrates, says another co-director, as he lifts up 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 probably a bit chilly for them now.” Wild beehives, constructed from empty sections of timber and buzzing with wild bees, are attached to some of the woodland. The lack of grazing horses has allowed insects space to flourish in the long grass. When they visited this summer, comments Bennett, “I’d never seen so many insects. There were just masses of them. We were saying, ‘What is happening?’”
Beginnings of the Movement
The first founders – Bennett, Durant, Easton and additional members – united as youth, studying or sharing an interest in nature. In that year, the climate experts was forecasting that the acceptable threshold of one and a half degrees of climate change was appearing unachievable, a prominent figure was leading the youth protests for environmental action, and activist a speaker was addressing young people feeling “environmental stress”. It was also the era of Isabella Tree’s work, about nature recovery, on how they transformed the a Sussex location from a struggling dairy farm into a thriving ecosystem. “We were deeply influenced by the case study, but what was the part for the next generation?” asks Easton. “So we made a platform and rang up numerous of conservation groups and were asking, ‘Do you ever get your landowners wanting to take action and you are short on resources?’”
Durant explains the narrative: “Our complete organisation was basically premised on the idea that there were individuals who were prepared to let a collection of youthful idiots on to their estate without strict rules, to take significant choices that would impact land value
