That beautifully intricate song of the songbird is a rare sound in England nowadays, but not at the Surrey site. Back in 2020, a lone bird could be heard at this secluded place in rural Surrey; this summer, they were everywhere. “We were hearing them chirping all night, from multiple areas,” explains a lead scientist, top biologist for the youth rewilding group. A group of Youngwilders were staying overnight at the location, yet the nightingales were so loud, “we couldn’t sleep all night,” comments Layla Mapemba. “We were all knackered the next day, but it was so incredible.” An specialist from the Surrey Wildlife Trust came to help them net and ring one of the birds the next morning, Cookson recalls: “He’d never touched a songbird in his hands before. He was teary.”
Rewilding Speeds Up at the Surrey Site
Rewilding is by definition a slow business, but in this place at the farm, after merely four years, the results are already evident, and audible. The farm used to be a haven for horses. Currently it’s a model for the Youngwilders’ purpose: to hasten habitat revival, in one of the ecologically impoverished countries in the world, and to connect young people (18-30-year-olds) with a ecosystem they are often shut out of, and a environmental emergency they are often ineffectual to stop. Global heating persists, habitat loss damages natural habitats, and yet another Cop summit draws to a frustrating conclusion in the host country – so who could criticize young people for wanting to act independently?
The initiative was premised on the idea that there were people prepared to let a bunch of young idiots on to their property
“The younger generation is the most knowledgeable environmentally that there’s historically,” states the Youngwilders’ founder, Jack Durant. They are also “the highly invested in the issues, and have played the smallest part to their origin, and, then, are also going to experience consequences the worst as a result.”
Change of the Site
Today, the group is growing across the UK – and the original site started it all, in multiple ways. “It’s our origin point, and the place we built our community,” notes a founding member, as she provides a overview of the 30-acre property. “This used to be multiple separate areas,” she says, as we move through overgrown meadows dotted with low scrub, bordered by established trees. “The primary visible difference is that we’ve taken out all the barriers, a significant length of it, to create the impression like one area.” In the summer, they used special clothing and cleared significant quantities of giant hogweed, an non-native plant that can harm the flesh. “We’ve established many of natural barriers,” notes she. “But the key action is we’ve just allowed it to rest for a brief period. We’ve reduced a lot of grazing pressure and observed what’s emerged.”
Bushes and natural fences are a excellent songbird habitat, she comments, although currently they’re trimming some of the thorny plants to create a more range of habitats and to join different sections of the site. Fresh plantings will take considerably longer to establish, but saplings from the adjacent woodland are already taking root in the fields; the group have been placing protectors to shield them from wildlife.
Wildlife Returns in Abundance
There's more than the songbirds – animals is coming back in droves. Lately they’ve observed serpents, legless lizards, bats and bugs, explains another co-director, as he lifts up one of their survey equipment (similar to a cover over a indentation in the soil). “You find snakes and wildlife sheltering under there, but it’s probably a slightly cold for them now.” Natural homes, made from empty pieces of timber and active with pollinators, are attached to some of the woodland. The removal of grazing horses has allowed invertebrates room to thrive in the overgrown areas. When they visited this season, comments he, “I’d never observed so countless butterflies. There were just masses of them. We were wondering, ‘What is going on?’”
Inception of the Initiative
The original participants – Noah, Durant, Molly and two others – came together as learners, focusing on or having an concern in ecology. In that year, the climate experts was predicting that the acceptable threshold of 1.5C of global heating was seeming unachievable, a prominent figure was guiding the youth protests for environmental action, and campaigner Clover Hogan was addressing the generation suffering from “environmental stress”. It was also the time of Isabella Tree’s publication, on rewilding, on how the authors revitalized the a Sussex location from a struggling farm into a thriving natural habitat. “We were deeply influenced by the example, but what was the role for the next generation?” questions Molly. “So we developed a website and contacted many of conservation groups and were like, ‘Do you occasionally get your landowners seeking to do something and you are short on capacity?’”
Jack continues the story: “Our complete organisation was basically premised on the idea that there were individuals who were willing to permit a bunch of youthful enthusiasts on to their estate without strict rules, to decide on fairly massive choices that would change land value
