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That beautifully intricate call of the songbird is a uncommon sound in the UK nowadays, however not at the Surrey site. Four years ago, a solitary nightingale could be noticed at this hidden location in the countryside of Surrey; recently, they were everywhere. “We were hearing them calling all night, from several zones,” says Meg Cookson, lead ecologist for the eco-activist organization. A group of participants were staying overnight at the location, but the nightingales were so boisterous, “we couldn’t sleep all night,” comments a project coordinator. “We were all worn out the next day, but it was so cool.” An professional from the Surrey Wildlife Trust came to help them net and ring one of the birds the next morning, she recalls: “He’d never handled a songbird in his possession before. He was teary.”

Ecological Restoration Accelerates at This Location

Ecological restoration is by definition a slow business, but here at the farm, after merely a short period, the results are already visible, and noticeable. The land was once a haven for horses. Today it’s a model for the Youngwilders’ mission: to speed up ecological restoration, in one of the most nature-depleted regions in the planet, and to engage youth (18-30-year-olds) with a ecosystem they are often excluded from, and a global warming issue they are often ineffectual to halt. Climate change persists, habitat loss damages natural habitats, and another international meeting comes to a unsatisfactory conclusion in Brazil – so what person could criticize young people for choosing to take matters into their own hands?

The initiative was founded on the notion that there were people ready to permit a bunch of youthful idiots on to their property

“The younger generation is the most knowledgeable in terms of nature that there’s previously,” explains the group's founder, Jack Durant. They are also “the highly invested in the problems, and have played the least to their creation, and, then, are also going to be affected the greatest as a outcome.”

Transformation of the Property

Today, the initiative is taking root across the Britain – and this location planted the seed, in multiple ways. “It’s where we started, and where we established our community,” says another co-director, as she gives a overview of the 12-hectare site. “This was previously multiple separate areas,” she says, as we stroll through overgrown meadows dotted with shrubs, surrounded by established trees. “The main visible transformation is that we’ve removed all the enclosures, a significant length of it, to make it feel like a unified area.” In the summer, they used hazmat suits and eradicated masses of giant hogweed, an aggressive flora that can burn the body. “We’ve established many of hedgerows,” says the director. “But the main thing is we’ve just allowed it to rest for a short time. We’ve eliminated a large part of grazing pressure and noticed what’s come up.”

Underbrush and natural fences are a perfect nightingale habitat, she explains, but today they’re cutting back some of the thorny plants to establish a greater diversity of environments and to link up two parts of the property. Fresh plantings will take considerably longer to grow, but new growth from the surrounding oaks are already taking root in the meadows; the group have been setting up protectors to shield them from grazing deer.

Nature Reappears in Abundance

There's more than the songbirds – animals is returning in droves. This year they’ve spotted reptiles, legless lizards, nocturnal mammals and insects, explains a team member, as he uncovers one of their reptile mats (similar to a mat over a indentation in the ground). “You discover reptiles and things sheltering under there, but it’s probably a somewhat cool for them now.” Natural beehives, constructed from hollowed-out sections of tree trunk and buzzing with insects, are strapped to some of the woodland. The removal of grazing horses has allowed invertebrates room to flourish in the long grass. When they visited this season, comments the director, “I’d never observed so many lepidoptera. There were just clouds of them. We were wondering, ‘What is going on?’”

Origins of the Initiative

The initial founders – Bennett, Durant, Easton and more individuals – formed as students, pursuing or sharing an passion in ecology. In that year, the IPCC was indicating that the acceptable threshold of 1.5C of warming was looking impossible, a prominent figure was spearheading the youth protests for environmental action, and campaigner Clover Hogan was addressing the generation experiencing “environmental stress”. It was also the time of a writer's book, about nature recovery, on how the authors changed the a Sussex location from a struggling agricultural business into a flourishing ecosystem. “We were super-inspired by the example, but what could be the role for youth?” says Easton. “So we developed a platform and rang up numerous of conservation groups and were asking, ‘Do you sometimes get your estate holders wanting to do something and you don’t have resources?’”

Durant continues the story: “Our whole project was fundamentally founded on the notion that there were landowners who were ready to allow a collection of youthful enthusiasts on to their property without strict rules, to take fairly massive decisions that would change land value