The beautifully intricate song of the nightingale is a uncommon sound in the UK today, but it's different at Maple Farm. Four years ago, a solitary bird could be heard at this remote location in rural Surrey; recently, they were everywhere. “We were listening to them calling all night, from multiple areas,” notes a lead scientist, lead ecologist for the youth rewilding group. A team of volunteers were staying overnight at the site, yet the nightingales were so boisterous, “we were unable to rest all night,” comments an engagement lead. “We were all worn out the next day, but it was so cool.” An specialist from the Surrey Wildlife Trust came to help them capture and tag one of the birds the next morning, the ecologist remembers: “He’d never handled a songbird in his possession before. He was emotional.”
Rewilding Progresses at This Location
Nature recovery is by its very essence a lengthy endeavor, but at this site at the farm, after merely four years, the outcomes are already visible, and noticeable. The land used to be a sanctuary for equines. Now it’s a showpiece for the youth-led purpose: to accelerate ecological restoration, in one of the most nature-depleted nations in the planet, and to engage young people (18-30-year-olds) with a natural world they are often denied access to, and a global warming issue they are often unable to prevent. Climate change continues, tree clearing damages ecosystems, and one more Cop summit ends with a frustrating end in the host country – so what person could criticize the younger generation for wanting to initiate change themselves?
The organisation was founded on the idea that there were individuals willing to allow a group of youthful enthusiasts on to their property
“The younger generation is the best educated environmentally that there’s ever been,” states the group's founder, Jack Durant. They are also “the deeply concerned in the challenges, and have played the minimal role to their creation, and, then, are also going to be affected most as a outcome.”
Change of the Landscape
Today, the organisation is growing across the Britain – and the original site planted the seed, in every sense. “It’s our origin point, and where we established our connections,” notes Molly Easton, as she gives a walkthrough of the 12-hectare land. “This used to be multiple separate areas,” she says, as we move through tall vegetation dotted with low scrub, surrounded by established trees. “The primary noticeable difference is that we’ve removed all the barriers, a significant length of it, to give the sense like a single environment.” In the recent season, they used special clothing and cleared masses of invasive plants, an invasive species that can burn the body. “We’ve planted many of hedgerows,” notes she. “But the key action is we’ve just given it space for a little bit. We’ve reduced a significant amount of livestock impact and observed what’s sprung up.”
Low scrub and hedgerows are a ideal nightingale environment, she says, however today they’re cutting back some of the brambles to create a greater diversity of environments and to join separate areas of the site. New trees will take much more time to establish, but new growth from the surrounding woodland are already establishing themselves in the open areas; the crew have been setting up protectors to safeguard them from animals.
Nature Returns in Abundance
There's more than the nightingales – wildlife is returning in droves. Recently they’ve spotted reptiles, slowworms, flyers and invertebrates, says another co-director, as he lifts up one of their monitoring tools (like a doormat over a indentation in the soil). “You find reptiles and things sheltering under there, but it’s probably a bit cold for them now.” Wild nests, built using empty sections of wood and humming with pollinators, are strapped to some of the woodland. The removal of grazing horses has provided invertebrates space to thrive in the long grass. When they explored this season, says Bennett, “I’d never encountered so numerous insects. There were just clouds of them. We were like, ‘What is going on?’”
Origins of the Initiative
The original participants – Bennett, Jack, Molly and two others – united as youth, studying or expressing an passion in ecology. In 2019, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was predicting that the safe limit of one and a half degrees of warming was seeming impossible, a prominent figure was leading the school strikes for eco-awareness, and advocate a speaker was discussing young people experiencing “environmental stress”. It was also the time of a writer's publication, about nature recovery, on how she and her husband changed the Knepp Estate from a unsuccessful dairy farm into a successful natural habitat. “We were super-inspired by the example, but what could be the role for the next generation?” says Easton. “So we made a website and contacted many of environmental organizations and were like, ‘Do you sometimes get your property owners seeking to take action and you don’t have time?’”
Jack explains the narrative: “Our whole organisation was basically based on the idea that there were landowners who were prepared to allow a group of youthful amateurs on to their estate indiscriminately, to make significant choices that would change land value
