The richly complex call of the songbird is a scarce presence in Britain nowadays, yet it's different at this rural location. Back in 2020, a solitary bird could be detected at this secluded spot in the countryside of Surrey; recently, they were in multiple locations. “We were hearing them singing all night, from multiple areas,” explains Meg Cookson, chief environmental expert for the Youngwilders. A group of Youngwilders were camping out at the site, yet the birds were so boisterous, “we stayed awake all night,” says Layla Mapemba. “We were all worn out the next day, but it was so amazing.” An specialist from the Surrey Wildlife Trust came to help them net and ring one of the songbirds the next morning, the ecologist recalls: “He’d never handled a nightingale in his hands before. He was teary.”
Habitat Revival Speeds Up at This Location
Nature recovery is by its very essence a gradual process, but at this site at the farm, after merely four years, the outcomes are already visible, and hearable. The land previously served as a retirement home for equines. Today it’s a showpiece for the Youngwilders’ purpose: to hasten ecological restoration, in one of the biodiversity-poor regions in the globe, and to link young people (18-30-year-olds) with a ecosystem they are often shut out of, and a global warming issue they are often powerless to stop. Climate change advances, habitat loss destroys ecosystems, and one more climate conference draws to a disappointing end in Brazil – so who could criticize young people for wanting to act independently?
Our organisation was founded on the belief that there were individuals ready to permit a collection of young idiots on to their land
“The newer cohort is the best educated ecologically that there’s historically,” explains the Youngwilders’ co-director, a key figure. They are also “the deeply concerned in the problems, and have played the minimal role to their causing, and, then, are also going to suffer most as a result.”
Change of the Site
Currently, the organisation is taking root across the United Kingdom – and this location started it all, in multiple ways. “It’s the initial project, and where we created our community,” notes Molly Easton, as she offers a walkthrough of the 30-acre site. “This was previously divided plots,” she states, as we move through long grass filled with bushes, hemmed by forest. “The key noticeable change is that we’ve eliminated all the barriers, a significant length of it, to give the sense like one environment.” In the warmer months, they donned hazmat suits and removed significant quantities of giant hogweed, an invasive species that can harm the body. “We’ve planted many of bush lines,” explains Easton. “But the main thing is we’ve just let it breathe for a little bit. We’ve reduced a significant amount of grazing pressure and observed what’s emerged.”
Bushes and natural fences are a ideal nightingale environment, she comments, but currently they’re cutting back some of the thorny plants to establish a greater diversity of environments and to connect separate areas of the property. New trees will take much more time to establish, but young trees from the adjacent trees are already establishing themselves in the fields; the group have been setting up guards to shield them from wildlife.
Wildlife Returns in Large Numbers
It’s not just the nightingales – fauna is coming back in large numbers. Recently they’ve observed grass snakes, legless lizards, bats and bugs, says Noah Bennett, as he uncovers one of their survey equipment (similar to a doormat over a depression in the earth). “You discover reptiles and things sheltering under there, but it’s possibly a slightly cool for them now.” Organic nests, made from carved pieces of wood and humming with insects, are strapped to some of the woodland. The removal of livestock has provided invertebrates opportunity to thrive in the overgrown areas. When they came to this time, comments Bennett, “I’d not once seen so many lepidoptera. There were just masses of them. We were wondering, ‘What is going on?’”
Inception of the Movement
The initial Youngwilders – Noah, Jack, Easton and additional members – came together as youth, pursuing or having an interest in ecology. In that year, the IPCC was predicting that the safe limit of one and a half degrees of climate change was seeming impossible, Greta Thunberg was spearheading the youth protests for eco-awareness, and campaigner another voice was addressing youth suffering from “climate anxiety”. It was also the era of a writer's work, on rewilding, on how they changed the a nearby property from a struggling agricultural business into a successful ecosystem. “We were super-inspired by the Knepp story, but what was the role for youth?” says Molly. “So we created a platform and contacted numerous of wildlife trusts and were saying, ‘Do you occasionally get your landowners wishing to do something and you don’t have capacity?’”
Jack adds the story: “Our entire organisation was essentially premised on the notion that there were people who were prepared to let a bunch of young idiots on to their property indiscriminately, to make fairly massive choices that would impact land value
