The Wildlife Trusts partnership

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The logo of the Wildlife Trusts

The Wildlife Trusts partnership, or simply The Wildlife Trusts, is a partnership of 47 local wildlife trusts in the United Kingdom plus the Isle of Man and Alderney.

The partnership's member trusts, between them, look after 2,200 nature reserves covering 80,000 square hectares. As of 2007 they have a combined membership of 670,000 members.

The Royal Society of Wildlife Trusts (RSWT), an independent charity, is also part of the partnership and acts as an umbrella group for the local Wildlife Trusts, as well as operating a separate grants unit which administers a number of funds.

Their Patron is HRH The Prince of Wales. Their President is Professor Aubrey Manning OBE. The vice presidents are Sir David Attenborough, Prof. Chris Baines, Sir John Burnett, Prof. GL Lucas, Prof. David MacDonald, Julian Pettifer, Sir James Swaffield, Prof. Robert Worcester, Chris Packham, Nick Baker and Bill Oddie.

1 Activities of the Wildlife Trusts
2 History of the Wildlife Trusts
3 Geographical location of Wildlife Trusts
4 Full list of trusts
5 See also
6 External links

[edit] Activities of the Wildlife Trusts

Wildlife Trusts are local organisations of differing size, history and origins, and can vary greatly in their constitution, activities and membership. However, all wildlife trusts share a common interest in wildlife and biodiversity, rooted in a practical tradition of land management and conservation. Almost all county wildlife trusts are significant landowners, with many nature reserves. Collectively they are the third largest voluntary sector landowners in the UK. They often have extensive educational activities, and programmes of public events and education. The Wildlife Trusts centrally and locally also lobby for better protection of the UK's natural heritage, by becoming involved in planning matters and by national campaigning through the Royal Society of Wildlife Trusts. The trusts rely heavily upon volunteer labour for many of their activities, but nevertheless employ significant numbers of staff in countryside management and education.

[edit] History of the Wildlife Trusts

Today's Wildlife Trust movement began life as The Society for the Promotion of Nature Reserves (SPNR) which was formed by Charles Rothschild in 1912. During the early years, membership tended to be made up of specialist naturalists and its growth was comparatively slow. The first independent Trust was formed in Norfolk in 1926 as the Norfolk Naturalists Trust, and it was not until the 1940s and 1950s that a number of new Naturalists' Trusts were formed in Yorkshire, Lincolnshire, West Wales, Leicestershire and Cambridgeshire. These early Trusts tended to focus on purchasing land to establish nature reserves in the geographical areas they served.

Encouraged by the growing number of Trusts, the Society for the Promotion of Nature Reserves (SPNR) began in 1957 to discuss the possibility of forming a national federation of Naturalists' Trusts. Kent Naturalists Trust was established in 1958 with SPNR being active in encouraging its formation. In the following year the SPNR established the County Naturalists' Committee which organised the first national conference for Naturalists' Trusts at Skegness in 1960. By 1964, the number of Trusts had jumped to 36 and the Society for the Promotion of Nature Reserves had changed its name to the Society for the Promotion of Nature Conservation. In recognition of the movement's growing importance, its name was changed to The Royal Society for Nature Conservation in 1981. The organisation is now known as the Royal Society of Wildlife Trusts.

The movement continued to develop throughout the nineteen seventies and by the early nineteen eighties most of today's Trusts had been established. In 1980 the first urban Wildlife Trust (now The Wildlife Trust for Birmingham and the Black Country) was established in the West Midlands, rapidly followed by others in London and Bristol. This was a watershed for the movement which strengthened its focus on 'wildlife and people'. It was during this period that some Trusts changed their name from Naturalist Societies to Trusts for Nature Conservation and then to Wildlife Trusts. The badger logo was adopted by the movement to establish its common identity.

(Does anyone know when the Surrey Wildlife Trust began?)

As the number of Trusts grew, so did their combined membership, from 3,000 in 1960 to 21,000 in 1965. Membership topped 100,000 in 1975, and in that year Wildlife Watch was launched as a children's naturalist club. By the late 1980s membership lay at 200,000, reaching 260,000 in 1995 and a 2004 figure of over 500,000. The combined membership for 2007 stands at 670,000 members, 108,000 belonging to the junior branch Wildlife Watc.

[edit] Geographical location of Wildlife Trusts

Scotland has one Trust.
Wales has six Trusts.
Northern Ireland has one Trust.
England has 36 Trusts, which are largely based on the old county boundaries or small groupings of such counties. There is a small number of specialist Urban Wildlife Trusts that operate in towns and cities.
There are also single trusts covering the Isle of Man, Isles of Scilly, and Alderney in the Channel Islands.