That beautifully intricate song of the nightingale is a rare sound in Britain these days, yet not at the Surrey site. Back in 2020, a single bird could be noticed at this remote location in rural Surrey; this summer, they were everywhere. “We were hearing them chirping all night, from several zones,” notes a lead scientist, top biologist for the Youngwilders. A band of volunteers were camping out at the site, yet the birds were so noisy, “we couldn’t sleep all night,” remarks an engagement lead. “We were all knackered the next day, but it was so incredible.” An expert from the local conservation group came to help them capture and tag one of the birds the next morning, the ecologist recalls: “He’d never held a nightingale in his hands before. He was crying.”
Habitat Revival Speeds Up at the Surrey Site
Nature recovery is by its very essence a slow process, but in this place at the farm, after only four years, the outcomes are already visible, and hearable. The property used to be a sanctuary for horses. Currently it’s a model for the Youngwilders’ goal: to accelerate ecological restoration, in one of the most nature-depleted nations in the world, and to connect the younger generation (18-30-year-olds) with a ecosystem they are often denied access to, and a climate crisis they are often powerless to stop. Rising temperatures advances, tree clearing damages ecosystems, and another Cop summit comes to a disappointing conclusion in Brazil – so who could blame youth for choosing to act independently?
The initiative was premised on the belief that there were landowners willing to let a bunch of young enthusiasts on to their estate
“The younger generation is the best educated 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 added the minimal role to their creation, and, then, are also going to experience consequences the worst as a result.”
Transformation of the Landscape
Now, the organisation is growing across the UK – and this location started it all, in every sense. “It’s where we started, and the place we established our network,” explains a founding member, as she provides a tour of the 30-acre property. “This once consisted of multiple separate areas,” she comments, as we walk through long grass dotted with bushes, hemmed by forest. “The key visible change is that we’ve eliminated all the enclosures, a significant length of it, to make it feel like a single environment.” In the warmer months, they donned hazmat suits and eradicated large amounts of invasive plants, an invasive species that can harm the body. “We’ve planted many of bush lines,” explains she. “But the primary focus is we’ve just given it space for a little bit. We’ve removed a lot of grazing pressure and seen what’s emerged.”
Low scrub and hedgerows are a perfect nightingale home, she comments, but currently they’re trimming some of the wild growth to create a more diversity of ecosystems and to join separate areas of the site. Young saplings will take a while to establish, but young trees from the nearby oaks are already taking root in the fields; the team have been setting up guards to shield them from animals.
Animals Returns in Large Numbers
In addition to the nightingales – wildlife is reappearing in droves. Recently they’ve spotted grass snakes, legless lizards, nocturnal mammals and insects, explains another co-director, as he lifts up one of their survey equipment (similar to a mat over a small hollow in the ground). “You get creatures and things hiding under there, but it’s possibly a somewhat cool for them now.” Wild beehives, built using empty parts of wood and buzzing with insects, are attached to some of the woodland. The lack of livestock has provided small creatures space to flourish in the long grass. When they came to this time, states he, “I’d never seen so many insects. There were just masses of them. We were saying, ‘What is happening?’”
Inception of the Movement
The initial Youngwilders – Bennett, Jack, Easton and two others – formed as youth, studying or having an interest in ecology. In 2019, the IPCC was indicating that the acceptable threshold of 1.5C of warming was seeming impossible, Greta Thunberg was spearheading the school strikes for climate movement, and campaigner a speaker was discussing youth suffering from “environmental stress”. It was also the period of Isabella Tree’s book, about nature recovery, on how she and her husband changed the a Sussex location from a failing farm into a successful natural habitat. “We were deeply influenced by the case study, but what was the role for the next generation?” says Molly. “So we made a website and rang up loads of environmental organizations and were like, ‘Do you occasionally get your landowners wanting to make changes and you don’t have capacity?’”
Durant adds the story: “Our complete organisation was essentially premised on the notion that there were landowners who were willing to let a group of young amateurs on to their property without strict rules, to make significant actions that would impact land value
