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The richly complex call of the nightingale is a rare sound in England these days, however it's different at the Surrey site. Back in 2020, a lone nightingale could be noticed at this hidden location in the countryside of Surrey; recently, they were all around. “We were listening to them calling all night, from several zones,” explains a lead scientist, top biologist for the youth rewilding group. A team of volunteers were camping out at the property, yet the nightingales were so noisy, “we were unable to rest all night,” says a project coordinator. “We were all exhausted the next day, but it was so incredible.” An specialist from the Surrey Wildlife Trust came to help them trap and mark one of the songbirds the next morning, she states: “He’d never touched a songbird in his hands before. He was teary.”

Ecological Restoration Progresses at the Surrey Site

Rewilding is by its very essence a slow business, but at this site at this property, after just several seasons, the results are already apparent, and audible. The property was once a haven for equines. Now it’s a showpiece for the youth-led mission: to accelerate habitat revival, in one of the ecologically impoverished countries in the globe, and to link young people (18-30-year-olds) with a environment they are often excluded from, and a global warming issue they are often ineffectual to halt. Climate change advances, tree clearing destroys ecosystems, and yet another international meeting ends with a frustrating end in the host country – so who could blame youth for wanting to take matters into their own hands?

The initiative was premised on the idea that there were individuals prepared to let a collection of young amateurs on to their property

“The younger generation is the most knowledgeable environmentally that there’s ever been,” explains the group's co-director, a key figure. They are also “the deeply concerned in the problems, and have played the minimal role to their creation, and, then, are also going to be affected the greatest as a consequence.”

Transformation of the Property

Today, the organisation is expanding across the Britain – and this location was the beginning, in multiple ways. “It’s where we started, and the place we established our network,” says another co-director, as she gives a tour of the 12-hectare property. “This was previously multiple separate areas,” she comments, as we walk through overgrown meadows filled with shrubs, bordered by forest. “The main noticeable difference is that we’ve taken out all the enclosures, 1.2km of it, to give the sense like a single landscape.” In the warmer months, they used special clothing and cleared large amounts of invasive plants, an aggressive flora that can harm the skin. “We’ve planted numerous of bush lines,” explains she. “But the main thing is we’ve just let it breathe for a little bit. We’ve eliminated a significant amount of grazing pressure and seen what’s sprung up.”

Underbrush and hedgerows are a ideal nightingale home, she comments, although currently they’re cutting back some of the wild growth to create a more variety of environments and to connect two parts of the property. Young saplings will take a while to establish, but new growth from the adjacent woodland are already growing in the open areas; the group have been installing barriers to protect them from animals.

Nature Comes Back in Abundance

There's more than the nightingales – wildlife is reappearing in abundance. Lately they’ve seen grass snakes, slowworms, bats and insects, says Noah Bennett, as he lifts up one of their monitoring tools (similar to a mat over a depression in the ground). “You discover reptiles and animals sheltering under there, but it’s possibly a somewhat cold for them now.” Organic homes, constructed from carved pieces of tree trunk and humming with insects, are fixed to some of the woodland. The removal of livestock has provided invertebrates space to thrive in the meadows. When they explored this summer, comments he, “I’d not ever encountered so numerous butterflies. There were just masses of them. We were saying, ‘What is happening?’”

Beginnings of the Movement

The original Youngwilders – Bennett, Durant, Easton and more individuals – formed as students, focusing on or having an concern in nature. In 2019, the IPCC was indicating that the acceptable threshold of one and a half degrees of global heating was appearing unachievable, Greta Thunberg was spearheading the youth protests for environmental action, and activist a speaker was discussing young people experiencing “eco-worry”. It was also the era of Isabella Tree’s work, about nature recovery, on how the authors changed the Knepp Estate from a failing farm into a thriving ecosystem. “We were highly motivated by the Knepp story, but what could be the part for young people?” questions Easton. “So we developed a platform and called loads of wildlife trusts and were asking, ‘Do you ever get your property owners wishing to take action and you are short on capacity?’”

Jack continues the account: “Our entire organisation was essentially founded on the belief that there were people who were willing to let a collection of young idiots on to their property freely, to decide on fairly massive actions that would change land value