The beautifully intricate song of the nightingale is a scarce sound in the UK these days, but not at the Surrey site. Back in 2020, a single nightingale could be noticed at this remote location in rural Surrey; lately, they were everywhere. “We were listening to them chirping all night, from several zones,” notes Meg Cookson, lead ecologist for the youth rewilding group. A band of participants were staying overnight at the property, but the birds were so loud, “we were unable to rest all night,” remarks a project coordinator. “We were all worn out the next day, but it was so incredible.” An professional from the Surrey Wildlife Trust came to help them trap and mark one of the nightingales the next morning, she remembers: “He’d never handled a nightingale in his care before. He was teary.”
Rewilding Progresses at the Surrey Site
Nature recovery is by definition a slow endeavor, but in this place at this property, after only four years, the results are already evident, and noticeable. The farm was once a sanctuary for equines. Currently it’s a example for the Youngwilders’ goal: to accelerate nature recovery, in one of the ecologically impoverished nations in the world, and to link the younger generation (18-30-year-olds) with a ecosystem they are often excluded from, and a environmental emergency they are often ineffectual to halt. Rising temperatures continues, tree clearing eliminates wildlife homes, and yet another Cop summit comes to a frustrating end in Brazil – so who could criticize young people for choosing to act independently?
Our organisation was premised on the idea that there were individuals prepared to allow a collection of young amateurs on to their estate
“The newer cohort is the most informed environmentally that there’s ever been,” says the group's leader, a key figure. They are also “the deeply concerned in the issues, and have added the least to their origin, and, then, are also going to suffer the worst as a consequence.”
Transformation of the Site
Now, the group is growing across the United Kingdom – and this location started it all, in all respects. “It’s the initial project, and where we established our network,” says another co-director, as she offers a tour of the 12-hectare land. “This once consisted of six different fields,” she comments, as we move through overgrown meadows filled with shrubs, hemmed by established trees. “The primary visible transformation is that we’ve eliminated all the fencing, a significant length of it, to make it feel like a unified landscape.” In the summer, they donned special clothing and cleared large amounts of harmful weeds, an aggressive flora that can burn the skin. “We’ve planted loads of bush lines,” notes she. “But the primary focus is we’ve just given it space for a little bit. We’ve eliminated a lot of livestock impact and seen what’s emerged.”
Low scrub and hedgerows are a excellent songbird habitat, she comments, but today they’re trimming some of the thorny plants to create a more diversity of environments and to join different sections of the land. New trees will take much more time to grow, but young trees from the surrounding woodland are already growing in the meadows; the crew have been placing barriers to safeguard them from animals.
Nature Comes Back in Abundance
In addition to the nightingales – animals is reappearing in droves. Lately they’ve spotted grass snakes, creatures, flyers and invertebrates, says Noah Bennett, as he lifts up one of their reptile mats (similar to a doormat over a small hollow in the ground). “You get snakes and wildlife hiding under there, but it’s possibly a bit chilly for them now.” Organic nests, built using hollowed-out pieces of wood and humming with insects, are strapped to some of the trees. The lack of livestock has given insects opportunity to flourish in the long grass. When they visited this summer, comments the director, “I’d not ever observed so countless insects. There were just clouds of them. We were wondering, ‘What is happening?’”
Inception of the Movement
The original participants – Bennett, Durant, Easton and two others – formed as youth, pursuing or having an interest in nature. In 2019, the IPCC was indicating that the safe limit of one and a half degrees of climate change was seeming unachievable, the activist was leading the youth protests for eco-awareness, and advocate Clover Hogan was addressing young people experiencing “climate anxiety”. It was also the period of a writer's publication, about nature recovery, on how they transformed the a Sussex location from a struggling agricultural business into a thriving natural habitat. “We were deeply influenced by the example, but what was the part for the next generation?” asks Easton. “So we created a online presence and rang up many of conservation groups and were saying, ‘Do you ever get your landowners wishing to take action and you don’t have capacity?’”
Jack continues the story: “Our complete initiative was fundamentally based on the notion that there were individuals who were willing to let a collection of youthful idiots on to their property freely, to decide on fairly massive choices that would affect land value
