The richly complex call of the nightingale is a scarce presence in England nowadays, however not at the Surrey site. Four years ago, a lone nightingale could be detected at this remote place in rural Surrey; recently, they were in multiple locations. “We were listening to them chirping all night, from multiple areas,” says Meg Cookson, lead ecologist for the youth rewilding group. A group of Youngwilders were camping out at the location, yet the nightingales were so loud, “we stayed awake all night,” comments an engagement lead. “We were all exhausted the next day, but it was so amazing.” An specialist from the regional nature organization came to help them trap and mark one of the birds the next morning, she recalls: “He’d never touched a songbird in his hands before. He was teary.”
Ecological Restoration Progresses at the Surrey Site
Nature recovery is by nature a slow process, but at this site at this property, after only four years, the results are already apparent, and audible. The property was once a haven for horses. Now it’s a showpiece for the Youngwilders’ purpose: to hasten ecological restoration, in one of the ecologically impoverished countries in the planet, and to engage youth (18-30-year-olds) with a environment they are often excluded from, and a environmental emergency they are often powerless to stop. Rising temperatures advances, deforestation destroys natural habitats, and yet another international meeting comes to a frustrating end in Brazil – so what person could criticize the younger generation for wanting to act independently?
Our organisation was premised on the idea that there were people ready to let a bunch of youthful enthusiasts on to their property
“The youth is the most informed in terms of nature that there’s historically,” explains the Youngwilders’ founder, one organizer. They are also “the most emotionally involved in the challenges, and have added the least to their origin, and, then, are also going to experience consequences the greatest as a consequence.”
Change of the Landscape
Today, the initiative is expanding across the United Kingdom – and this location was the beginning, in all respects. “It’s where we started, and where we created our community,” explains a founding member, as she offers a tour of the 30-acre land. “This used to be divided plots,” she states, as we walk through tall vegetation dotted with low scrub, hemmed by established trees. “The primary visual change is that we’ve eliminated all the barriers, over a kilometer of it, to give the sense like a unified landscape.” In the summer, they used hazmat suits and removed large amounts of harmful weeds, an non-native plant that can burn the flesh. “We’ve planted many of hedgerows,” says Easton. “But the main thing is we’ve just allowed it to rest for a short time. We’ve removed a lot of grazing pressure and seen what’s sprung up.”
Underbrush and hedgerows are a ideal songbird home, she comments, however currently they’re trimming some of the wild growth to develop a greater variety of environments and to link up separate areas of the site. Fresh plantings will take a while to take root, but young trees from the nearby woodland are already growing in the meadows; the crew have been installing barriers to protect them from grazing deer.
Wildlife Returns in Droves
It’s not just the songbirds – fauna is coming back in droves. Recently they’ve seen reptiles, legless lizards, flyers and invertebrates, notes another co-director, as he lifts up one of their survey equipment (like a cover over a small hollow in the soil). “You discover creatures and things hiding under there, but it’s probably a slightly cool for them now.” Natural nests, built using empty pieces of tree trunk and humming with wild bees, are fixed to some of the trees. The lack of grazing horses has given small creatures room to flourish in the meadows. When they came to this time, comments Bennett, “I’d never seen so numerous insects. There were just clouds of them. We were wondering, ‘What is occurring?’”
Inception of the Movement
The first founders – Bennett, Durant, Molly and two others – formed as learners, focusing on or sharing an interest in nature. In 2019, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was indicating that the target of one and a half degrees of global heating was looking out of reach, Greta Thunberg was guiding the demonstrations for eco-awareness, and activist Clover Hogan was talking about the generation suffering from “environmental stress”. It was also the period of a writer's publication, on rewilding, on how they transformed the Knepp Estate from a unsuccessful agricultural business into a thriving wildlife haven. “We were highly motivated by the example, but what was the part for young people?” questions Molly. “So we developed a platform and contacted many of wildlife trusts and were like, ‘Do you occasionally get your property owners seeking to take action and you lack capacity?’”
Durant explains the story: “Our entire organisation was fundamentally premised on the belief that there were people who were willing to permit a collection of youthful idiots on to their estate freely, to make major actions that would affect land value
