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The richly complex call of the nightingale is a rare sound in England today, yet it's different at the Surrey site. Back in 2020, a lone nightingale could be detected at this remote spot in the countryside of Surrey; this summer, they were in multiple locations. “We were listening to them singing all night, from several zones,” says Meg Cookson, top biologist for the youth rewilding group. A band of participants were camping out at the property, but the birds were so noisy, “we couldn’t sleep all night,” remarks Layla Mapemba. “We were all knackered the next day, but it was so incredible.” An professional from the regional nature organization came to help them capture and tag one of the birds the next morning, the ecologist recalls: “He’d never touched a nightingale in his hands before. He was crying.”

Rewilding Speeds Up at This Location

Ecological restoration is by nature a slow business, but at this site at this property, after only several seasons, the results are already apparent, and noticeable. The farm was once a haven for equines. Now it’s a example for the Youngwilders’ goal: to speed up ecological restoration, in one of the ecologically impoverished regions in the planet, and to link young people (18-30-year-olds) with a environment they are often shut out of, and a environmental emergency they are often ineffectual to stop. Rising temperatures continues, habitat loss destroys ecosystems, and one more international meeting draws to a frustrating conclusion in Brazil – so who could fault young people for wanting to act independently?

The initiative was premised on the idea that there were landowners ready to let a bunch of youthful idiots on to their land

“The newer cohort is the most informed ecologically that there’s historically,” states the group's co-director, a key figure. They are also “the deeply concerned in the problems, and have played the least to their origin, and, then, are also going to suffer the greatest as a consequence.”

Change of the Landscape

Now, the group is growing across the United Kingdom – and this location planted the seed, in multiple ways. “It’s where we started, and the place we created our network,” explains a founding member, as she gives a walkthrough of the 12-hectare site. “This once consisted of multiple separate areas,” she comments, as we move through long grass featuring shrubs, surrounded by forest. “The primary noticeable difference is that we’ve eliminated all the fencing, 1.2km of it, to create the impression like one landscape.” In the recent season, they used hazmat suits and eradicated masses of invasive plants, an aggressive flora that can burn the body. “We’ve introduced many of bush lines,” explains Easton. “But the key action is we’ve just allowed it to rest for a short time. We’ve removed a large part of animal feeding and noticed what’s come up.”

Underbrush and natural fences are a perfect songbird home, she explains, however today they’re trimming some of the brambles to create a more range of environments and to join two parts of the land. Young saplings will take considerably longer to establish, but young trees from the nearby trees are already growing in the meadows; the group have been setting up guards to protect them from wildlife.

Nature Reappears in Abundance

There's more than the nightingales – fauna is coming back in abundance. This year they’ve spotted serpents, slowworms, nocturnal mammals and bugs, explains a team member, as he raises one of their survey equipment (such as a mat over a depression in the ground). “You discover reptiles and things hiding under there, but it’s possibly a bit cold for them now.” Natural beehives, built using carved parts of tree trunk and humming with pollinators, are fixed to some of the plants. The removal of livestock has given invertebrates room to flourish in the meadows. When they visited this time, says he, “I’d not ever observed so many insects. There were just masses of them. We were saying, ‘What is going on?’”

Beginnings of the Movement

The first Youngwilders – Bennett, Jack, Molly and additional members – formed as students, focusing on or having an concern in environmental science. In 2019, the IPCC was indicating that the safe limit of 1.5C of climate change was looking out of reach, a prominent figure was guiding the school strikes for climate movement, and activist Clover Hogan was discussing young people feeling “climate anxiety”. It was also the era of the author's work, on rewilding, on how the authors transformed the a nearby property from a struggling dairy farm into a flourishing natural habitat. “We were highly motivated by the Knepp story, but what could be the part for young people?” asks Molly. “So we created a website and called numerous of conservation groups and were asking, ‘Do you occasionally get your landowners seeking to do something and you don’t have time?’”

Durant adds the account: “Our complete project was basically premised on the notion that there were landowners who were prepared to permit a group of young enthusiasts on to their estate indiscriminately, to make major decisions that would change land value