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That richly complex song of the songbird is a rare occurrence in the UK today, yet it's different at the Surrey site. Previously, a solitary nightingale could be noticed at this remote place in rural Surrey; lately, they were in multiple locations. “We were hearing them chirping all night, from five different territories,” says Meg Cookson, lead ecologist for the Youngwilders. A team of Youngwilders were camping out at the property, but the nightingales were so boisterous, “we stayed awake all night,” remarks Layla Mapemba. “We were all knackered the next day, but it was so cool.” An expert from the Surrey Wildlife Trust came to help them trap and mark one of the birds the next morning, she remembers: “He’d never handled a nightingale in his hands before. He was crying.”

Ecological Restoration Accelerates at the Surrey Site

Ecological restoration is by definition a gradual endeavor, but at this site at this property, after just a short period, the outcomes are already visible, and noticeable. The property was once a sanctuary for equines. Currently it’s a example for the youth-led goal: to speed up habitat revival, in one of the biodiversity-poor countries in the world, and to link the younger generation (18-30-year-olds) with a natural world they are often denied access to, and a global warming issue they are often powerless to halt. Rising temperatures continues, deforestation damages ecosystems, and yet another Cop summit draws to a unsatisfactory outcome in Brazil – so what person could criticize the younger generation for choosing to act independently?

The project was founded on the belief that there were people willing to allow a bunch of youthful amateurs on to their land

“The youth is the most informed ecologically that there’s historically,” explains the group's leader, Jack Durant. They are also “the deeply concerned in the problems, and have contributed the least to their causing, and, then, are also going to suffer the greatest as a consequence.”

Revitalization of the Site

Now, the initiative is expanding across the United Kingdom – and this location started it all, in every sense. “It’s the initial project, and where we created our connections,” says another co-director, as she gives a overview of the 30-acre property. “This was previously multiple separate areas,” she comments, as we stroll through long grass featuring shrubs, bordered by mature woodland. “The main visual change is that we’ve removed all the barriers, a significant length of it, to give the sense like a single area.” In the warmer months, they wore protective gear and eradicated large amounts of invasive plants, an aggressive flora that can burn the body. “We’ve planted loads of natural barriers,” says she. “But the primary focus is we’ve just let it breathe for a brief period. We’ve reduced a lot of animal feeding and seen what’s come up.”

Low scrub and hedgerows are a ideal songbird environment, she says, although today they’re cutting back some of the thorny plants to create a greater variety of habitats and to join separate areas of the site. Young saplings will take much more time to grow, but new growth from the nearby oaks are already growing in the meadows; the crew have been setting up protectors to shield them from animals.

Animals Reappears in Abundance

It’s not just the nightingales – wildlife is returning in droves. This year they’ve seen grass snakes, creatures, flyers and insects, explains a team member, as he raises one of their monitoring tools (similar to a cover over a indentation in the soil). “You find reptiles and wildlife sheltering under there, but it’s probably a somewhat cool for them now.” Wild nests, built using carved pieces of wood and buzzing with insects, are attached to some of the plants. The removal of livestock has allowed insects space to thrive in the long grass. When they visited this season, says the director, “I’d not once observed so countless lepidoptera. There were just swarms of them. We were saying, ‘What is occurring?’”

Inception of the Movement

The original participants – Noah, Durant, Molly and additional members – united as learners, focusing on or expressing an concern in ecology. In the recent past, the IPCC was predicting that the acceptable threshold of 1.5C of climate change was looking out of reach, Greta Thunberg was leading the school strikes for eco-awareness, and activist Clover Hogan was addressing youth feeling “eco-worry”. It was also the era of the author's book, Wilding, on how she and her husband changed the Knepp Estate from a struggling agricultural business into a flourishing ecosystem. “We were deeply influenced by the case study, but what was the function for young people?” asks Easton. “So we created a online presence and contacted numerous of wildlife trusts and were asking, ‘Do you ever get your estate holders seeking to do something and you don’t have capacity?’”

Jack adds the narrative: “Our entire project was fundamentally premised on the idea that there were individuals who were ready to let a collection of youthful amateurs on to their estate freely, to decide on major decisions that would impact land value