That beautifully intricate melody of the nightingale is a rare occurrence in the UK nowadays, yet it's different at this rural location. Four years ago, a lone bird could be detected at this remote spot in the countryside of Surrey; recently, they were everywhere. “We were listening to them chirping all night, from several zones,” says one ecologist, lead ecologist for the youth rewilding group. A band of Youngwilders were camping out at the property, however the birds were so boisterous, “we stayed awake all night,” says a project coordinator. “We were all knackered the next day, but it was so amazing.” An specialist from the Surrey Wildlife Trust came to help them capture and tag one of the songbirds the next morning, Cookson states: “He’d never touched a nightingale in his care before. He was teary.”
Rewilding Accelerates at the Surrey Site
Rewilding is by nature a lengthy business, but in this place at this property, after merely several seasons, the results are already visible, and hearable. The land previously served as a retirement home for horses. Currently it’s a example for the Youngwilders’ mission: to hasten habitat revival, in one of the biodiversity-poor regions in the planet, and to connect young people (18-30-year-olds) with a natural world they are often shut out of, and a environmental emergency they are often ineffectual to stop. Global heating advances, deforestation damages wildlife homes, and yet another Cop summit draws to a frustrating conclusion in Brazil – so what person could blame young people for choosing to act independently?
Our project was founded on the belief that there were individuals willing to permit a group of young idiots on to their land
“The youth is the most informed ecologically that there’s ever been,” explains the group's leader, a key figure. They are also “the most emotionally involved in the challenges, and have contributed the least to their causing, and, then, are also going to be affected most as a result.”
Transformation of the Property
Currently, the initiative is expanding across the UK – and this location planted the seed, in multiple ways. “It’s the initial project, and where we established our network,” says another co-director, as she provides a overview of the 12-hectare site. “This was previously six different fields,” she comments, as we stroll through long grass featuring bushes, bordered by mature woodland. “The primary visual difference is that we’ve removed all the barriers, over a kilometer of it, to create the impression like a unified landscape.” In the recent season, they wore special clothing and eradicated significant quantities of giant hogweed, an aggressive flora that can harm the skin. “We’ve established many of natural barriers,” says the director. “But the key action is we’ve just given it space for a little bit. We’ve reduced a large part of grazing pressure and observed what’s emerged.”
Low scrub and hedgerows are a perfect songbird environment, she explains, but currently they’re trimming some of the brambles to establish a more diversity of environments and to connect separate areas of the land. Young saplings will take a while to take root, but young trees from the adjacent oaks are already taking root in the open areas; the team have been setting up guards to shield them from grazing deer.
Wildlife Comes Back in Large Numbers
In addition to the songbirds – fauna is returning in abundance. Recently they’ve observed reptiles, legless lizards, flyers and invertebrates, notes a team member, as he raises one of their survey equipment (like a doormat over a depression in the earth). “You find creatures and things residing under there, but it’s likely a slightly cold for them now.” Wild beehives, constructed from carved sections of wood and humming with pollinators, are attached to some of the trees. The removal of grazing horses has given invertebrates room to thrive in the meadows. When they explored this summer, states Bennett, “I’d not ever seen so numerous lepidoptera. There were just swarms of them. We were saying, ‘What is going on?’”
Inception of the Project
The first Youngwilders – Noah, Jack, Molly and two others – came together as youth, pursuing or expressing an concern in environmental science. In 2019, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was forecasting that the safe limit of 1.5C of global heating was seeming impossible, the activist was guiding the demonstrations for eco-awareness, and advocate another voice was addressing young people suffering from “environmental stress”. It was also the era of the author's book, on rewilding, on how she and her husband changed the a Sussex location from a struggling agricultural business into a thriving natural habitat. “We were super-inspired by the example, but what was the function for the next generation?” asks Molly. “So we created a online presence and contacted many of wildlife trusts and were saying, ‘Do you occasionally get your landowners wishing to make changes and you don’t have capacity?’”
Jack explains the account: “Our complete initiative was essentially premised on the belief that there were people who were ready to let a collection of young amateurs on to their estate indiscriminately, to make fairly massive choices that would change land value
