That manically melodic song of the nightingale is a scarce presence in the UK these days, yet not at this rural location. Four years ago, a lone nightingale could be heard at this hidden spot in the countryside of Surrey; lately, they were in multiple locations. “We were listening to them singing all night, from several zones,” notes Meg Cookson, lead ecologist for the youth rewilding group. A team of participants were staying overnight at the site, but the nightingales were so loud, “we stayed awake all night,” says a project coordinator. “We were all exhausted 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 songbirds the next morning, she remembers: “He’d never handled a songbird in his possession before. He was crying.”
Rewilding Speeds Up at the Surrey Site
Rewilding is by definition a gradual business, but here at this property, after just a short period, the outcomes are already apparent, and hearable. The farm used to be a sanctuary for animals. Today it’s a model for the Youngwilders’ purpose: to accelerate nature recovery, in one of the most nature-depleted countries in the planet, and to connect youth (18-30-year-olds) with a ecosystem they are often excluded from, and a climate crisis they are often unable to prevent. Rising temperatures continues, habitat loss damages ecosystems, and one more Cop summit comes to a frustrating outcome in abroad – so what person could fault the younger generation for wanting to take matters into their own hands?
Our initiative was based on the belief that there were landowners prepared to permit a collection of youthful idiots on to their property
“The younger generation is the most informed in terms of nature that there’s ever been,” says the Youngwilders’ founder, Jack Durant. They are also “the highly invested in the issues, and have played the smallest part to their creation, and, then, are also going to experience consequences the greatest as a consequence.”
Transformation of the Landscape
Today, the initiative is taking root across the Britain – and this location was the beginning, in every sense. “It’s where we started, and where we established our network,” says another co-director, as she offers a tour of the 12-hectare site. “This once consisted of multiple separate areas,” she comments, as we walk through long grass dotted with bushes, hemmed by established trees. “The main visible change is that we’ve taken out all the enclosures, a significant length of it, to make it feel like a unified landscape.” In the warmer months, they used protective gear and removed significant quantities of invasive plants, an non-native plant that can burn the body. “We’ve planted loads of hedgerows,” says the director. “But the main thing is we’ve just given it space for a short time. We’ve reduced a lot of grazing pressure and observed what’s sprung up.”
Bushes and shrub lines are a excellent nightingale home, she says, but today they’re managing some of the brambles to create a greater variety of ecosystems and to connect separate areas of the property. New trees will take considerably longer to take root, but saplings from the adjacent woodland are already growing in the fields; the group have been setting up barriers to protect them from animals.
Animals Returns in Droves
It’s not just the songbirds – wildlife is reappearing in large numbers. Recently they’ve observed serpents, creatures, flyers and bugs, explains a team member, as he raises one of their survey equipment (such as a doormat over a small hollow in the ground). “You find creatures and animals hiding under there, but it’s possibly a somewhat chilly for them now.” Natural nests, built using empty parts of tree trunk and buzzing with wild bees, are attached to some of the trees. The absence of animals has given small creatures room to thrive in the long grass. When they explored this time, comments the director, “I’d not once seen so numerous lepidoptera. There were just masses of them. We were like, ‘What is going on?’”
Origins of the Movement
The first founders – Bennett, Durant, Easton and more individuals – came together as learners, studying or expressing an passion in environmental science. In 2019, the IPCC was predicting that the acceptable threshold of one and a half degrees of global heating was appearing impossible, the activist was spearheading the demonstrations for eco-awareness, and activist a speaker was addressing youth suffering from “eco-worry”. It was also the period of the author's book, Wilding, on how they revitalized the a Sussex location from a unsuccessful farm into a thriving natural habitat. “We were super-inspired by the Knepp story, but what could be the role for youth?” says Molly. “So we created a online presence and contacted many of conservation groups and were like, ‘Do you occasionally get your estate holders wanting to do something and you lack time?’”
Durant continues the story: “Our entire organisation was basically founded on the idea that there were people who were prepared to permit a bunch of youthful idiots on to their property indiscriminately, to take major choices that would impact land value
