That richly complex call of the nightingale is a scarce occurrence in Britain today, however it's different at the Surrey site. Back in 2020, a single bird could be heard at this secluded location in the countryside of Surrey; this summer, they were all around. “We were listening to them chirping all night, from several zones,” says one ecologist, top biologist for the youth rewilding group. A team of volunteers were camping out at the site, yet the nightingales were so loud, “we couldn’t sleep all night,” comments an engagement lead. “We were all exhausted the next day, but it was so amazing.” An expert from the Surrey Wildlife Trust came to help them capture and tag one of the birds the next morning, Cookson remembers: “He’d never touched a nightingale in his care before. He was crying.”
Ecological Restoration Progresses at the Surrey Site
Rewilding is by its very essence a gradual business, but in this place at the farm, after merely a short period, the changes are already apparent, and noticeable. The land used to be a retirement home for equines. Now it’s a example for the youth-led mission: to speed up nature recovery, in one of the biodiversity-poor nations in the planet, and to link youth (18-30-year-olds) with a natural world they are often shut out of, and a climate crisis they are often ineffectual to halt. Global heating persists, habitat loss eliminates ecosystems, and yet another climate conference ends with a frustrating conclusion in abroad – so what person could fault youth for choosing to act independently?
Our organisation was founded on the belief that there were individuals ready to let a bunch of youthful enthusiasts on to their property
“The youth is the best educated environmentally that there’s historically,” says the Youngwilders’ co-director, a key figure. They are also “the deeply concerned in the problems, and have contributed the smallest part to their origin, and, then, are also going to suffer the greatest as a consequence.”
Transformation of the Landscape
Today, the organisation is growing across the Britain – and the original site was the beginning, in every sense. “It’s our origin point, and where we created our community,” explains a founding member, as she gives a tour of the 12-hectare land. “This once consisted of six different fields,” she states, as we walk through tall vegetation filled with low scrub, bordered by forest. “The key visual difference is that we’ve eliminated all the enclosures, 1.2km of it, to create the impression like a unified environment.” In the warmer months, they donned special clothing and cleared masses of invasive plants, an invasive species that can burn the skin. “We’ve planted many of natural barriers,” explains she. “But the primary focus is we’ve just let it breathe for a little bit. We’ve removed a large part of grazing pressure and noticed what’s come up.”
Underbrush and hedgerows are a ideal nightingale environment, she explains, although currently they’re trimming some of the brambles to establish a increased diversity of habitats and to link up separate areas of the property. New trees will take much more time to establish, but saplings from the adjacent woodland are already establishing themselves in the open areas; the group have been installing barriers to shield them from grazing deer.
Nature Reappears in Abundance
It’s not just the songbirds – animals is returning in droves. Recently they’ve seen reptiles, slowworms, flyers and bugs, explains a team member, as he raises one of their survey equipment (like a mat over a depression in the earth). “You get reptiles and things hiding under there, but it’s likely a slightly chilly for them now.” Wild beehives, made from hollowed-out sections of wood and active with insects, are strapped to some of the plants. The absence of grazing horses has allowed invertebrates room to prosper in the long grass. When they came to this season, comments Bennett, “I’d never observed so numerous lepidoptera. There were just clouds of them. We were wondering, ‘What is happening?’”
Origins of the Movement
The first Youngwilders – Bennett, Durant, Molly and additional members – formed as students, focusing on or expressing an passion in ecology. In 2019, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was predicting that the safe limit of one and a half degrees of climate change was seeming impossible, Greta Thunberg was guiding the school strikes for climate movement, and advocate a speaker was addressing the generation suffering from “environmental stress”. It was also the time of a writer's publication, about nature recovery, on how they revitalized the a Sussex location from a struggling agricultural business into a thriving wildlife haven. “We were super-inspired by the case study, but what was the function for the next generation?” questions Molly. “So we made a website and rang up loads of wildlife trusts and were like, ‘Do you sometimes get your landowners wanting to do something and you are short on capacity?’”
Durant adds the story: “Our whole initiative was basically founded on the notion that there were individuals who were prepared to allow a collection of youthful amateurs on to their property indiscriminately, to take fairly massive decisions that would affect land value
