Wildlife trust Guide, Meaning , Facts, Information and Description

Table of contents

1 Background 2 How the partnership developed 3 Aims and objects of the Society for Nature Conservation 3.1 Purpose and Role 3.2 Size of organisation 3.3 Volunteers 4 Linking the partnership together 5 Future developments 6 Geographical location of Wildlife Trusts 7 External link

Background

The Royal Society of Wildlife Trusts (RSWT) carries out the key task of representing the interests of the 47 individual Wildlife Trusts. It also acts as the movement's public voice at English, UK and international levels as appropriate.

Today's Wildlife Trust partnership is a highly professional, locally-focused conservation network which collectively forms the largest group of independent conservation organisations in Britain. The combined power of the Trusts makes them a major player in the conservation movement. The partnership is made up of 47 independently funded and managed Wildlife Trusts, which also form the membership of RSWT, which is itself an independent charity.

How the partnership developed

The Wildlife Trust partnership has a long and distinguished history which has strongly shaped its current ethos and modes of working.

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 Naturalist 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 Naturalist Trusts. Kent Naturalist 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 movement continued to make steady progress throughout the nineteen seventies and by the early nineteen eighties most of today's Trusts had been established and the movement could claim, with some justification, that it had spread to all corners of the British Isles. Their philospohy of addressing the needs of both 'people and wildlife' has now been adopted across the partnership. It was during this period that some Trusts changed their name from Naturalist Societies to Trusts for Nature Conservation and then to Wildlife Trusts and the badger logo was adopted by the movement to establish its common identity.

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 to its current figure (2004) of over 500,000.

By the end of the twentieth century the partnership was almost ninety years old and it had developed its distinct structure and ways of working. These characteristics were encapsulated in a letter sent out to all Trusts in 1981 by the Society's then president, Christopher Cadbury. In this letter he describes the Society's aims and objectives as:

Aims and objects of the Society for Nature Conservation

Purpose and Role

The society is primarily the Trusts' association, its purpose being to assist Trusts in securing their aims. These give it a dual role:

• To service the Trusts, and in this to be both initiatory as well as responsive
• To give the Trusts a collective identity by developing a national image

Size of organisation

The Trusts should be the growth points. The Society should maintain a small and highly professional organisation to retain clarity of purpose and a sense of service to Trusts.

Volunteers

Volunteers should be used to a maximum, as in the Trusts, not only on essential committees but also in the creation of work and the Society should be organised to facilitate and encourage this.

In the same letter he also warned that...

"Any tendency to over-centralisation must be avoided and, if possible, greater opportunities provided to enable Trusts to contribute more to the work of the Society as a whole... realising that many of the problems facing the Society are the same as those facing the Trusts".

Christopher Cadbury 17 November, 1981

These ideals have shaped the way in which the partnership has developed over the past twenty-five years and remain as relevant in 2004 as they did in 1981.

Linking the partnership together

The driving force that links the Wildlife Trusts together is the partnership's conservation plan which aims:

"To achieve an environment richer in wildlife for everyone"

The conservation work of the partnership is currently guided by a common strategy known as the Conservation Plan. This is based on ten priority conservation areas around which all Wildlife Trusts have agreed to focus their activities until the year 2005.

Through its Conservation Plan the Partnership has set out its conservation aims for the immediate future. The ten priority areas of the plan are:

1. Biodiversity information - Developing a database of good quality biological data is essential to the protection of wildlife. The Wildlife Trusts aim to achieve, in partnership with others, a co-ordinated network of local record centres, operating to common standards, throughout Britain.
2. Managing Land - The partnership manages more than 2,561 nature reserves, covering some 802 km². The great majority are open to the public, free of charge. Improving the quality of these sites for wildlife and people represents a key objective.
3. Agriculture - Changing farming practices, driven by production subsidies, have had a catastrophic impact on Britain's biodiversity. The Wildlife Trusts will campaign for greater incentives for wildlife-friendly farming and provide advice to farmers at local level.
4. Water and Wetlands - Demand for water continues to grow and the pressures on wetlands and water quality are severe. The Wildlife Trusts will give priority to the conservation and restoration of wetlands, and seek to raise awareness of the importance of water as a precious resource, for wildlife and people, that must be used more wisely.
5. Marine - Half of Britain's biodiversity is under the sea, yet protection of our marine environment is inadequate, and unsustainable use of marine resources continues unabated. The Wildlife Trusts, in collaboration with the Worldwide Fund for Nature, will work towards better marine conservation, concentrating on the problems of pollution, over-fishing and by-catch.
6. Standing up for Wildlife - The future of wildlife depends heavily on the right policies and legal framework being pursued at every level of government. The Wildlife Trusts will campaign hard at local, regional, national and international level to protect the interests of wildlife.
7. Making Biodiversity relevant to People - A sustainable future for wildlife is dependent upon people's attitudes and lifestyles. The Wildlife Trusts will increase the public's understanding, appreciation and enjoyment of wildlife, and will include children in this, through Wildlife Watch and other programmes.
8. Focal Habitats - The Wildlife Trusts will focus efforts on 10 priority habitats from the UK Biodiversity Action Plan (BAP). They are peat bogs, calcareous grasslands, chalk rivers, coastal habitats, fens, hay meadows, heath land, limestone pavements, shallow marine inlets and seagrass beds, and woodlands. For each habitat The Wildlife Trusts will set and implement targets and action plans.
9. Focal Species - The Wildlife Trusts will focus on more than 20 species for which Trusts are lead partners in the UK Biodiversity Action Plan and eight further species where The Wildlife Trusts are well-placed to make a difference. The species involved include the Otter, Dormouse, Water Vole, Red Squirrel, Harbour Porpoise, Bittern, Marsh Warbler, Basking Shark, Common Frog, Marsh Fritillary, Southern Damselfly, Fen Orchid, Nail Fungus, Dwarf Stonewort and English Bluebell.
10. Biodiversity Action - The Wildlife Trusts have played an integral part in the process of developing Biodiversity Action Plans (BAPs) with partners at every level, and will continue to promote this process as a key mechanism for achieving biodiversity conservation throughout the UK.

Future developments

During 2002 and 2003, the partnership took stock by undertaking a detailed review of its future role and development. Because of the federated nature of the movement, the review's recommendations have been subjected to extensive consultation, with the result that the new strategic framework was adopted in December 2003.

Geographical location of Wildlife Trusts

Scotland has one Trust covering the whole of the country, placing it in a strong position in its dealings with the Scottish Parliament. Wales has six Trusts which are actively exploring ways of working together to take advantage of the opportunities presented by the establishment of a Welsh Assembly.

Ulster has one Trust dealing directly with the Northern Ireland government structures. England has 36 Trusts, which are largely based on the old county boundaries or small groupings of such counties. There are also a small number of specialist Urban Wildlife Trusts that operate in towns and cities. The introduction of regionalism has resulted in the English Trusts organising themselves into five large groupings. This has enabled them to obtain the necessary "critical mass" needed to obtain representative places on the various policy-forming committees. Some regions have also introduced regional posts to co-ordinate the ways in which they work collaboratively.

There are also single trusts covering the Isle of Man, Isles of Scilly, and Alderney in the Channel Islands.

External link

• Wildlife Trusts' home page

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