‘It Fully Changed My Life!’ How Youthful Rewilders Transformed a Farm – and Launched a Campaign

The richly complex melody of the songbird is a rare sound in Britain today, however not at this rural location. Back in 2020, a solitary bird could be noticed at this remote spot in rural Surrey; lately, they were in multiple locations. “We were listening to them singing all night, from multiple areas,” explains a lead scientist, lead ecologist for the youth rewilding group. A team of Youngwilders were residing temporarily at the location, but the nightingales were so noisy, “we couldn’t sleep all night,” remarks an engagement lead. “We were all exhausted the next day, but it was so cool.” An professional from the Surrey Wildlife Trust came to help them capture and tag one of the birds the next morning, Cookson recalls: “He’d never handled a songbird in his care before. He was teary.”

Rewilding Accelerates at This Location

Rewilding is by nature a gradual endeavor, but at this site at Maple Farm, after just a short period, the changes are already visible, and hearable. The property previously served as a retirement home for animals. Now it’s a showpiece for the Youngwilders’ mission: to speed up nature recovery, in one of the most nature-depleted countries in the planet, and to link young people (18-30-year-olds) with a ecosystem they are often denied access to, and a climate crisis they are often ineffectual to stop. Rising temperatures continues, habitat loss eliminates ecosystems, and another climate conference draws to a disappointing conclusion in abroad – so what person could fault the younger generation for choosing to take matters into their own hands?

The project was premised on the belief that there were individuals willing to let a collection of youthful amateurs on to their property

“The youth is the most informed environmentally that there’s previously,” says the Youngwilders’ leader, a key figure. They are also “the deeply concerned in the issues, and have added the minimal role to their causing, and, then, are also going to be affected the worst as a consequence.”

Transformation of the Site

Today, the organisation is expanding across the Britain – and Maple Farm was the beginning, in multiple ways. “It’s where we started, and the place we established our network,” explains another co-director, as she offers a walkthrough of the 30-acre site. “This used to be six different fields,” she comments, as we walk through overgrown meadows dotted with bushes, surrounded by mature woodland. “The main visual difference is that we’ve eliminated all the barriers, 1.2km of it, to create the impression like a unified landscape.” In the summer, they donned special clothing and eradicated significant quantities of harmful weeds, an non-native plant that can irritate the skin. “We’ve planted numerous of hedgerows,” explains the director. “But the main thing is we’ve just given it space for a short time. We’ve eliminated a significant amount of animal feeding and seen what’s emerged.”

Low scrub and shrub lines are a perfect nightingale home, she explains, but currently they’re trimming some of the brambles to develop a more range of habitats and to connect separate areas of the site. Young saplings will take a while to establish, but new growth from the adjacent woodland are already taking root in the meadows; the group have been setting up barriers to safeguard them from grazing deer.

Wildlife Returns in Abundance

There's more than the songbirds – fauna is coming back in large numbers. This year they’ve seen reptiles, creatures, bats and bugs, says a team member, as he raises one of their survey equipment (such as a mat over a small hollow in the earth). “You find reptiles and wildlife hiding under there, but it’s probably a slightly cool for them now.” Organic beehives, constructed from carved sections of timber and buzzing with insects, are attached to some of the plants. The lack of grazing horses has provided insects opportunity to thrive in the long grass. When they visited this time, says he, “I’d never observed so numerous butterflies. There were just swarms of them. We were like, ‘What is occurring?’”

Beginnings of the Movement

The initial Youngwilders – Noah, Durant, Molly and two others – formed as learners, studying or expressing an interest in environmental science. In 2019, the IPCC was forecasting that the acceptable threshold of one and a half degrees of climate change was looking unachievable, Greta Thunberg was guiding the school strikes for climate movement, and campaigner another voice was talking about young people suffering from “eco-worry”. It was also the period of Isabella Tree’s work, Wilding, on how they revitalized the Knepp Estate from a struggling agricultural business into a thriving natural habitat. “We were super-inspired by the case study, but what was the role for the next generation?” questions Molly. “So we developed a platform and called many of environmental organizations and were saying, ‘Do you sometimes get your property owners wishing to make changes and you are short on resources?’”

Durant explains the narrative: “Our complete organisation was fundamentally founded on the belief that there were people who were ready to permit a group of youthful amateurs on to their estate indiscriminately, to make fairly massive decisions that would change land value

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‘It Fully Changed My Life!’ How Youthful Rewilders Transformed a Farm – and Launched a Campaign

Rewilding Accelerates at This Location

Transformation of the Site

Wildlife Returns in Abundance

Beginnings of the Movement

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