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That richly complex call of the songbird is a rare presence in Britain nowadays, but not at this rural location. Back in 2020, a single nightingale could be detected at this remote location in rural Surrey; lately, they were in multiple locations. “We were listening to them chirping all night, from several zones,” notes one ecologist, chief environmental expert for the Youngwilders. A group of volunteers were camping out at the site, however the birds were so noisy, “we were unable to rest all night,” says Layla Mapemba. “We were all worn out the next day, but it was so cool.” An specialist from the local conservation group came to help them capture and tag one of the birds the next morning, she remembers: “He’d never handled a nightingale in his hands before. He was teary.”

Rewilding Speeds Up at This Location

Ecological restoration is by definition a slow endeavor, but in this place at Maple Farm, after just several seasons, the results are already apparent, and noticeable. The farm previously served as a retirement home for horses. Now it’s a example for the Youngwilders’ goal: to accelerate ecological restoration, in one of the biodiversity-poor nations in the world, and to engage young people (18-30-year-olds) with a natural world they are often excluded from, and a environmental emergency they are often ineffectual to prevent. Rising temperatures persists, tree clearing damages natural habitats, and one more climate conference draws to a disappointing end in Brazil – so who could fault young people for wanting to act independently?

Our initiative was based on the belief that there were people prepared to allow a collection of young idiots on to their land

“The youth is the most knowledgeable environmentally that there’s historically,” says the Youngwilders’ co-director, a key figure. They are also “the most emotionally involved in the problems, and have contributed the least to their causing, and, then, are also going to experience consequences the greatest as a consequence.”

Change of the Property

Now, the organisation is taking root across the UK – and this location started it all, in multiple ways. “It’s where we started, and where we established our network,” explains another co-director, as she provides a walkthrough of the 12-hectare land. “This once consisted of six different fields,” she says, as we move through tall vegetation filled with low scrub, surrounded by mature woodland. “The key visible change is that we’ve removed all the fencing, over a kilometer of it, to make it feel like one environment.” In the recent season, they used protective gear and eradicated significant quantities of giant hogweed, an non-native plant that can burn the skin. “We’ve established many of bush lines,” says the director. “But the primary focus is we’ve just let it breathe for a short time. We’ve removed a large part of grazing pressure and observed what’s come up.”

Underbrush and shrub lines are a perfect nightingale habitat, she says, but currently they’re trimming some of the brambles to create a more variety of environments and to link up two parts of the property. New trees will take considerably longer to establish, but young trees from the nearby trees are already growing in the open areas; the group have been placing guards to safeguard them from animals.

Nature Comes Back in Abundance

There's more than the songbirds – fauna is reappearing in droves. This year they’ve spotted grass snakes, legless lizards, flyers and invertebrates, notes Noah Bennett, as he raises one of their monitoring tools (similar to a cover over a depression in the ground). “You find creatures and animals residing under there, but it’s likely a slightly cool for them now.” Organic beehives, made from carved pieces of tree trunk and humming with pollinators, are strapped to some of the woodland. The removal of grazing horses has allowed small creatures opportunity to prosper in the overgrown areas. When they came to this summer, says the director, “I’d never seen so many lepidoptera. There were just masses of them. We were saying, ‘What is happening?’”

Beginnings of the Initiative

The first founders – Bennett, Durant, Molly and more individuals – united as learners, focusing on or expressing an interest in environmental science. In the recent past, the IPCC was predicting that the safe limit of one and a half degrees of warming was looking impossible, a prominent figure was leading the demonstrations for eco-awareness, and advocate another voice was talking about youth feeling “environmental stress”. It was also the period of Isabella Tree’s book, Wilding, on how she and her husband changed the a nearby property from a unsuccessful agricultural business into a flourishing natural habitat. “We were highly motivated by the Knepp story, but what was the part for youth?” questions Easton. “So we made a online presence and called many of environmental organizations and were like, ‘Do you ever get your property owners wishing to do something and you don’t have resources?’”

Jack explains the account: “Our whole project was basically premised on the notion that there were individuals who were ready to permit a collection of young amateurs on to their land freely, to make significant decisions that would affect land value