The manically melodic melody of the nightingale is a rare presence in England these days, however it's different at the Surrey site. Back in 2020, a solitary bird could be noticed at this hidden location in rural Surrey; lately, they were in multiple locations. “We were listening to them calling all night, from multiple areas,” notes Meg Cookson, lead ecologist for the youth rewilding group. A band of Youngwilders were staying overnight at the site, however the nightingales were so boisterous, “we were unable to rest all night,” says a project coordinator. “We were all exhausted the next day, but it was so amazing.” An specialist from the local conservation group came to help them trap and mark one of the nightingales the next morning, Cookson recalls: “He’d never touched a songbird in his hands before. He was crying.”
Rewilding Accelerates at This Location
Nature recovery is by its very essence a slow business, but in this place at the farm, after merely four years, the results are already apparent, and audible. The property was once a haven for equines. Now it’s a model for the youth-led purpose: to accelerate nature recovery, in one of the ecologically impoverished countries in the globe, and to engage youth (18-30-year-olds) with a environment they are often shut out of, and a climate crisis they are often ineffectual to prevent. Rising temperatures advances, tree clearing damages natural habitats, and one more international meeting comes to a unsatisfactory end in the host country – so who could blame young people for choosing to initiate change themselves?
Our organisation was based on the belief that there were landowners prepared to allow a collection of young enthusiasts on to their land
“The newer cohort is the most informed in terms of nature that there’s previously,” states the group's co-director, a key figure. They are also “the most emotionally involved in the problems, and have added the minimal role to their causing, and, then, are also going to be affected the worst as a result.”
Revitalization of the Landscape
Today, the initiative is taking root across the UK – and the original site started it all, in multiple ways. “It’s the initial project, and where we created our network,” says Molly Easton, as she provides a tour of the expansive site. “This used to be multiple separate areas,” she says, as we move through long grass dotted with bushes, surrounded by established trees. “The primary noticeable change is that we’ve taken out all the fencing, 1.2km of it, to create the impression like a unified area.” In the warmer months, they wore hazmat suits and eradicated significant quantities of giant hogweed, an non-native plant that can burn the flesh. “We’ve planted many of hedgerows,” explains she. “But the primary focus is we’ve just allowed it to rest for a little bit. We’ve eliminated a lot of animal feeding and noticed what’s emerged.”
Bushes and hedgerows are a ideal nightingale home, she says, however today they’re managing some of the wild growth to establish a more range of ecosystems and to join two parts of the land. Young saplings will take much more time to grow, but new growth from the surrounding woodland are already taking root in the meadows; the group have been placing protectors to shield them from animals.
Wildlife Reappears in Abundance
There's more than the nightingales – wildlife is reappearing in large numbers. Lately they’ve observed serpents, legless lizards, nocturnal mammals and insects, notes a team member, as he raises one of their monitoring tools (like a doormat over a small hollow in the earth). “You discover creatures and wildlife hiding under there, but it’s possibly a bit cold for them now.” Natural nests, built using hollowed-out sections of timber and active with pollinators, are strapped to some of the trees. The lack of grazing horses has allowed insects space to thrive in the long grass. When they explored this time, says Bennett, “I’d never observed so countless lepidoptera. There were just masses of them. We were saying, ‘What is going on?’”
Origins of the Project
The initial participants – Noah, Jack, Easton and additional members – united as youth, pursuing or expressing an interest in environmental science. In 2019, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was forecasting that the acceptable threshold of 1.5C of climate change was seeming out of reach, Greta Thunberg was leading the demonstrations for eco-awareness, and advocate a speaker was talking about youth experiencing “environmental stress”. It was also the period of the author's book, on rewilding, on how the authors transformed the a nearby property from a struggling dairy farm into a successful natural habitat. “We were highly motivated by the case study, but what could be the part for young people?” asks Easton. “So we created a platform and called loads of wildlife trusts and were like, ‘Do you sometimes get your property owners seeking to make changes and you don’t have time?’”
Durant adds the story: “Our entire project was fundamentally founded on the idea that there were people who were prepared to permit a group of youthful idiots on to their land indiscriminately, to decide on significant decisions that would impact land value
