🔗 Share this article

That manically melodic melody of the nightingale is a rare presence in Britain nowadays, but not at this rural location. Four years ago, a lone nightingale could be detected at this hidden place in the countryside of Surrey; recently, they were all around. “We were hearing them chirping all night, from several zones,” notes a lead scientist, chief environmental expert for the youth rewilding group. A team of Youngwilders were camping out at the property, yet the birds were so boisterous, “we stayed awake all night,” remarks a project coordinator. “We were all knackered the next day, but it was so cool.” An expert from the local conservation group came to help them trap and mark one of the nightingales the next morning, Cookson remembers: “He’d never touched a nightingale in his possession before. He was teary.”

Rewilding Speeds Up at This Location

Rewilding is by definition a gradual business, but at this site at this property, after merely several seasons, the results are already visible, and audible. The land was once a haven for animals. Now it’s a showpiece for the Youngwilders’ purpose: to speed up ecological restoration, in one of the ecologically impoverished regions in the planet, and to engage young people (18-30-year-olds) with a natural world they are often shut out of, and a environmental emergency they are often powerless to prevent. Rising temperatures continues, habitat loss eliminates wildlife homes, and yet another international meeting draws to a unsatisfactory end in abroad – so what person could fault youth for wanting to act independently?

The project was premised on the belief that there were landowners prepared to let a bunch of young amateurs on to their land

“The youth is the best educated ecologically that there’s previously,” says the Youngwilders’ co-director, Jack Durant. They are also “the deeply concerned in the problems, and have contributed the minimal role to their origin, and, then, are also going to be affected the greatest as a result.”

Change of the Landscape

Now, the organisation is expanding across the United Kingdom – and the original site started it all, in every sense. “It’s our origin point, and where we established our community,” notes Molly Easton, as she gives a overview of the 12-hectare site. “This used to be divided plots,” she comments, as we walk through overgrown meadows filled with low scrub, hemmed by established trees. “The main noticeable change is that we’ve removed all the enclosures, over a kilometer of it, to make it feel like a single landscape.” In the summer, they donned hazmat suits and removed masses of harmful weeds, an invasive species that can burn the body. “We’ve established numerous of bush lines,” notes the director. “But the key action is we’ve just allowed it to rest for a short time. We’ve eliminated a large part of livestock impact and seen what’s sprung up.”

Bushes and shrub lines are a perfect nightingale habitat, she says, but now they’re trimming some of the wild growth to develop a greater diversity of environments and to link up different sections of the property. New trees will take much more time to take root, but saplings from the surrounding woodland are already establishing themselves in the meadows; the team have been installing protectors to protect them from wildlife.

Wildlife Reappears in Abundance

There's more than the nightingales – wildlife is reappearing in droves. Lately they’ve seen grass snakes, legless lizards, nocturnal mammals and bugs, notes a team member, as he lifts up one of their survey equipment (such as a doormat over a indentation in the soil). “You find reptiles and animals sheltering under there, but it’s probably a bit cold for them now.” Natural nests, constructed from empty parts of timber and active with pollinators, are attached to some of the trees. The lack of livestock has given invertebrates opportunity to flourish in the long grass. When they explored this summer, comments he, “I’d not once encountered so many butterflies. There were just swarms of them. We were saying, ‘What is occurring?’”

Beginnings of the Project

The first Youngwilders – Noah, Jack, Molly and more individuals – united as youth, pursuing or expressing an passion in nature. In that year, the IPCC was forecasting that the acceptable threshold of 1.5C of global heating was looking impossible, Greta Thunberg was leading the demonstrations for climate movement, and activist Clover Hogan was talking about the generation suffering from “environmental stress”. It was also the period of a writer's publication, on rewilding, on how they revitalized the a nearby property from a struggling dairy farm into a thriving ecosystem. “We were highly motivated by the Knepp story, but what could be the role for young people?” says Easton. “So we made a website and rang up loads of wildlife trusts and were saying, ‘Do you occasionally get your estate holders wishing to make changes and you lack capacity?’”

Durant continues the narrative: “Our entire organisation was basically premised on the notion that there were individuals who were prepared to allow a bunch of young enthusiasts on to their property without strict rules, to take significant choices that would change land value