Enter the Young Wilders!
We really love the Young Wilders. They are a fresh-faced organisation led by some wooly haired but very un-wooly-headed, wise souls with a desire to connect younger people with the experience and business of managing the natural world. The serious bit is that whilst they have found over 80% of young people are eager to take action to help the environment only one in five believe they are being listened to. They want to build experience and competence in delivering practical work from volunteering at a place like Hepple or more specific, value added ecological work in any number of their project areas.
Their focus is twofold, first, get enthusiastic young people out into the natural world and inhabit it fully. The elemental elements of Hepple during early May did a fine job of making it raw: generally falling to the wetter, windier and colder edges of the average for this time of year the Young Wilders were tested in and out of their tents and came through magnificently. Lucy’s provisioning back at the newly operational (but not yet finished) Field Study Centre was also magnificently commented on “Its the first proper food I’ve had for a month”…
The second focus is on building skills. We were incredibly lucky to have Dr Erica McAllister, curator of the Natural History Museum’s gigantic fly collection (Diptera) to stay at the same time. She delivered one of the most sensational presentations on the natural world that I and surely most of the Young Wilder attendees had ever heard. Thrilling, gory, inspiring and above all, educative about the essential role this rather reviled taxa group plays in the world’s ecosystems.
Erica McAllister and the gory glory of the fly
They braved the weather to remove fencing, pull our exotic invasive plants and plant juniper seedlings - when these start to produce berries for Hepple Spirits the Young Wilders will no longer be young. We then celebrated with a dash of light cocktail action on the hill. Here’s to the Young Wilders! Many thanks guys and see you again soon!
