That richly complex song of the nightingale is a rare sound in the UK nowadays, but not at this rural location. Four years ago, a single bird could be noticed at this secluded spot in rural Surrey; recently, they were all around. “We were listening to them chirping all night, from five different territories,” explains one ecologist, lead ecologist for the Youngwilders. A team of volunteers were staying overnight at the property, yet the nightingales were so loud, “we couldn’t sleep all night,” comments a project coordinator. “We were all worn out the next day, but it was so amazing.” An specialist from the local conservation group came to help them net and ring one of the songbirds the next morning, the ecologist states: “He’d never held a songbird in his care before. He was emotional.”
Ecological Restoration Progresses at This Location
Nature recovery is by nature a gradual business, but at this site at this property, after just a short period, the outcomes are already evident, and hearable. The land previously served as a retirement home for horses. Now it’s a example for the Youngwilders’ mission: to accelerate nature recovery, in one of the biodiversity-poor nations in the world, and to link youth (18-30-year-olds) with a natural world they are often denied access to, and a climate crisis they are often unable to prevent. Rising temperatures continues, deforestation destroys wildlife homes, and another climate conference ends with a frustrating outcome in the host country – so what person could blame young people for wishing to take matters into their own hands?
Our organisation was premised on the notion that there were people prepared to permit a collection of young idiots on to their estate
“The younger generation is the most informed in terms of nature that there’s historically,” says the Youngwilders’ founder, one organizer. They are also “the most emotionally involved in the challenges, and have contributed the smallest part to their causing, and, then, are also going to experience consequences the greatest as a result.”
Revitalization of the Landscape
Today, the organisation is expanding across the UK – and this location planted the seed, in multiple ways. “It’s the initial project, and the place we established our connections,” explains another co-director, as she offers a tour of the 30-acre site. “This once consisted of six different fields,” she comments, as we move through tall vegetation dotted with low scrub, hemmed by mature woodland. “The key visual transformation is that we’ve taken out all the barriers, 1.2km of it, to create the impression like a unified area.” In the summer, they wore hazmat suits and eradicated large amounts of giant hogweed, an aggressive flora that can burn the body. “We’ve introduced loads of hedgerows,” explains she. “But the main thing is we’ve just let it breathe for a little bit. We’ve reduced a lot of livestock impact and seen what’s emerged.”
Bushes and hedgerows are a ideal nightingale home, she says, although today they’re trimming some of the thorny plants to establish a more variety of ecosystems and to connect different sections of the property. New trees will take much more time to take root, but saplings from the nearby oaks are already taking root in the open areas; the group have been installing barriers to protect them from grazing deer.
Wildlife Reappears in Large Numbers
In addition to the songbirds – fauna is returning in abundance. This year they’ve spotted serpents, legless lizards, flyers and invertebrates, notes a team member, as he lifts up one of their survey equipment (like a cover over a depression in the soil). “You find snakes and wildlife residing under there, but it’s likely a bit cool for them now.” Organic nests, built using carved parts of timber and buzzing with wild bees, are fixed to some of the plants. The removal of livestock has provided small creatures opportunity to thrive in the long grass. When they came to this time, states the director, “I’d never observed so many lepidoptera. There were just masses of them. We were like, ‘What is happening?’”
Beginnings of the Initiative
The original founders – Noah, Durant, Molly and additional members – formed as youth, studying or expressing an interest in ecology. In that year, the IPCC was indicating that the acceptable threshold of one and a half degrees of warming was appearing unachievable, a prominent figure was leading the demonstrations for environmental action, and advocate another voice was talking about young people feeling “climate anxiety”. It was also the era of Isabella Tree’s publication, about nature recovery, on how they revitalized the Knepp Estate from a struggling dairy farm into a flourishing wildlife haven. “We were super-inspired by the case study, but what could be the part for young people?” asks Molly. “So we developed a platform and contacted many of wildlife trusts and were asking, ‘Do you sometimes get your property owners wishing to take action and you lack capacity?’”
Durant adds the story: “Our entire project was basically premised on the belief that there were individuals who were ready to permit a group of young amateurs on to their property without strict rules, to decide on significant choices that would affect land value
