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That richly complex melody of the nightingale is a uncommon sound in the UK today, yet it's different at Maple Farm. Back in 2020, a lone nightingale could be detected at this hidden spot in the countryside of Surrey; recently, they were in multiple locations. “We were listening to them singing all night, from multiple areas,” says a lead scientist, top biologist for the youth rewilding group. A band of volunteers were staying overnight at the property, yet the birds were so noisy, “we were unable to rest all night,” remarks a project coordinator. “We were all knackered the next day, but it was so cool.” An expert from the Surrey Wildlife Trust came to help them trap and mark one of the nightingales the next morning, the ecologist remembers: “He’d never handled a nightingale in his possession before. He was crying.”

Ecological Restoration Speeds Up at Maple Farm

Rewilding is by its very essence a slow endeavor, but at this site at Maple Farm, after merely four years, the results are already evident, and hearable. The property previously served as a haven for horses. Today it’s a model for the Youngwilders’ purpose: to speed up ecological restoration, in one of the most nature-depleted countries in the planet, and to connect young people (18-30-year-olds) with a natural world they are often denied access to, and a environmental emergency they are often ineffectual to halt. Global heating continues, habitat loss damages ecosystems, and one more international meeting comes to a unsatisfactory conclusion in abroad – so who could criticize the younger generation for wanting to take matters into their own hands?

Our initiative was premised on the belief that there were people willing to let a collection of young idiots on to their estate

“The youth is the best educated in terms of nature that there’s historically,” explains the Youngwilders’ leader, a key figure. They are also “the highly invested in the problems, and have added the minimal role to their causing, and, then, are also going to be affected most as a outcome.”

Change of the Landscape

Currently, the group is growing across the UK – and Maple Farm was the beginning, in multiple ways. “It’s the initial project, and the place we built our connections,” says another co-director, as she gives a walkthrough of the 30-acre site. “This used to be multiple separate areas,” she states, as we stroll through overgrown meadows featuring bushes, bordered by established trees. “The primary visual difference is that we’ve taken out all the barriers, 1.2km of it, to give the sense like a unified landscape.” In the summer, they wore hazmat suits and removed large amounts of harmful weeds, an invasive species that can irritate the flesh. “We’ve established many of natural barriers,” explains the director. “But the primary focus is we’ve just let it breathe for a brief period. We’ve removed a significant amount of grazing pressure and observed what’s come up.”

Underbrush and natural fences are a ideal songbird home, she says, although today they’re cutting back some of the thorny plants to establish a greater variety of ecosystems and to link up different sections of the property. Fresh plantings will take much more time to grow, but saplings from the surrounding oaks are already growing in the meadows; the crew have been installing barriers to shield them from animals.

Wildlife Comes Back in Droves

It’s not just the nightingales – wildlife is returning in droves. This year they’ve seen reptiles, creatures, nocturnal mammals and invertebrates, says a team member, as he raises one of their survey equipment (like a doormat over a indentation in the earth). “You find snakes and wildlife residing under there, but it’s probably a bit cool for them now.” Natural beehives, built using hollowed-out pieces of wood and active with pollinators, are attached to some of the trees. The removal of livestock has allowed small creatures space to thrive in the overgrown areas. When they visited this summer, states the director, “I’d never seen so many butterflies. There were just clouds of them. We were saying, ‘What is happening?’”

Beginnings of the Project

The original Youngwilders – Bennett, Jack, Molly and additional members – came together as students, studying or having an interest in ecology. In 2019, the IPCC was forecasting that the target of 1.5C of warming was appearing out of reach, Greta Thunberg was spearheading the youth protests for eco-awareness, and activist another voice was discussing young people experiencing “eco-worry”. It was also the time of the author's publication, Wilding, on how the authors revitalized the Knepp Estate from a unsuccessful agricultural business into a successful wildlife haven. “We were super-inspired by the Knepp story, but what could be the part for the next generation?” asks Molly. “So we developed a website and rang up numerous of environmental organizations and were asking, ‘Do you occasionally get your landowners wanting to take action and you don’t have resources?’”

Durant continues the account: “Our whole initiative was fundamentally based on the idea that there were individuals who were willing to let a collection of young idiots on to their estate freely, to take significant choices that would affect land value