That beautifully intricate melody of the songbird is a rare sound in the UK these days, but it's different at the Surrey site. Four years ago, a solitary bird could be heard at this secluded spot in the countryside of Surrey; recently, they were in multiple locations. “We were hearing them calling all night, from several zones,” explains Meg Cookson, chief environmental expert for the youth rewilding group. A band of Youngwilders were residing temporarily at the property, yet the birds were so loud, “we were unable to rest all night,” says Layla Mapemba. “We were all knackered the next day, but it was so amazing.” An expert from the local conservation group came to help them capture and tag one of the birds the next morning, Cookson recalls: “He’d never held a songbird in his care before. He was teary.”
Ecological Restoration Speeds Up at the Surrey Site
Rewilding is by definition a gradual business, but in this place at the farm, after only four years, the changes are already apparent, and noticeable. The land previously served as a haven for equines. Today it’s a model for the Youngwilders’ purpose: to speed up ecological restoration, in one of the ecologically impoverished countries in the planet, and to engage youth (18-30-year-olds) with a ecosystem they are often denied access to, and a environmental emergency they are often ineffectual to stop. Rising temperatures advances, tree clearing eliminates ecosystems, and yet another Cop summit ends with a frustrating outcome in Brazil – so what person could criticize young people for wanting to take matters into their own hands?
The project was founded on the idea that there were landowners ready to allow a group of young idiots on to their estate
“The younger generation is the most knowledgeable ecologically that there’s ever been,” states the group's leader, a key figure. They are also “the deeply concerned in the issues, and have added the smallest part to their causing, and, then, are also going to experience consequences the worst as a result.”
Change of the Property
Currently, the group is expanding across the UK – and the original site started it all, in all respects. “It’s the initial project, and the place we established our connections,” says a founding member, as she gives a tour of the 30-acre site. “This once consisted of divided plots,” she says, as we walk through long grass dotted with shrubs, hemmed by mature woodland. “The main visual change is that we’ve taken out all the fencing, over a kilometer of it, to create the impression like a single area.” In the recent season, they wore hazmat suits and eradicated masses of giant hogweed, an invasive species that can burn the skin. “We’ve established loads of bush lines,” explains she. “But the primary focus is we’ve just allowed it to rest for a little bit. We’ve removed a large part of animal feeding and observed what’s sprung up.”
Underbrush and shrub lines are a perfect songbird environment, she says, although currently they’re trimming some of the wild growth to establish a increased diversity of ecosystems and to join different sections of the land. New trees will take much more time to take root, but saplings from the adjacent oaks are already establishing themselves in the open areas; the crew have been installing protectors to safeguard them from wildlife.
Wildlife Comes Back in Abundance
It’s not just the nightingales – fauna is returning in abundance. Lately they’ve spotted grass snakes, slowworms, nocturnal mammals and insects, explains another co-director, as he lifts up one of their monitoring tools (similar to a cover over a depression in the soil). “You discover reptiles and things hiding under there, but it’s likely a somewhat chilly for them now.” Organic homes, constructed from empty sections of tree trunk and humming with wild bees, are attached to some of the woodland. The removal of livestock has given invertebrates space to prosper in the overgrown areas. When they explored this summer, states Bennett, “I’d not once observed so many lepidoptera. There were just clouds of them. We were saying, ‘What is occurring?’”
Origins of the Movement
The original participants – Noah, Durant, Molly and two others – united as youth, pursuing or sharing an interest in ecology. In the recent past, the climate experts was forecasting that the safe limit of 1.5C of climate change was appearing impossible, Greta Thunberg was guiding the school strikes for environmental action, and campaigner a speaker was discussing youth suffering from “eco-worry”. It was also the period of a writer's book, on rewilding, on how she and her husband transformed the Knepp Estate from a struggling farm into a flourishing ecosystem. “We were deeply influenced by the case study, but what could be the part for youth?” asks Molly. “So we developed a platform and rang up many of wildlife trusts and were like, ‘Do you sometimes get your landowners wanting to do something and you lack resources?’”
Jack adds the story: “Our entire initiative was fundamentally founded on the idea that there were landowners who were prepared to permit a group of youthful amateurs on to their estate indiscriminately, to decide on major decisions that would impact land value
