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Title: Yorkshire Wildlife Trust Celebrates a 100 Years of Nature Conservation Author: Yorkshire Wildlife Trust  ID & Publication: 20120511021 ~ The-Villager.co.uk  Area: Yorkshire  Subject: Environment

Today Yorkshire Wildlife Trust is celebrating one hundred years of The Wildlife Trust’s working to protect and conserve our local, wild places. These days The Wildlife Trusts collectively manage around 2300 nature reserves, run projects on land and also in the marine environment and work to inspire a growing membership of over 800,000 people.

Yorkshire Wildlife Trust plays a considerable part in this collective organisation, managing 92 nature reserves and running numerous projects which are supported by a membership of 33,000 people.

The movement was the brainchild of banker Charles Rothschild who went on to found the ‘Society for the Promotion of Nature Reserves’ on the 16th May 1912. A revolutionary for his time, Rothschild saw the importance of protecting Britain’s wildlife, and went on to draw up a list of sites that he and his contemporaries thought were worth protecting and therefore potentially purchasing – the first nature reserves. To protect these places local Wildlife Trust’s were then later set up, Yorkshire Wildlife Trust becoming the second local Trust formed in 1946.

On Rothschild’s original list were several Yorkshire sites, some of which are Yorkshire Wildlife Trust’s nature reserves today, including Askham Bog near York and Grass Wood near Grassington in North Yorkshire, Maltby Low Common in the south, and Flamborough Head and Spurn in the east.

Whilst these nature reserves are of considerable importance to us today, and provide fantastic examples of Britain’s wildlife (some rich wildflower meadows, others ancient woodland or impressive chalk cliffs which are the breeding grounds for tens of thousands of seabirds) thinking has moved on slightly since 1912. Yorkshire Wildlife Trust, as part of the wider Wildlife Trust movement are now working towards a Living Landscape and Living Seas, in which wildlife remains connected, realising that wildlife cannot exist on small patches alone. Instead species need to be able to move through our landscape, so that populations can survive in times of change. Inspiring and involving local people is a massive part of this, without support it would be impossible to achieve.
Projects in Yorkshire that are helping us realise this aim include work on the Outer Humber, the River Hull, in the Aire & Calder Valley and on the Humberhead Levels. Partnerships are being forged with local communities, landowners, businesses and schools so that we can all work together to transform our environment to a wildlife rich one. River projects are creating and restoring habitat for wetland wildlife including otters and water voles, projects on the floodplains protect habitat for wading birds, whereas meadow projects are returning fields back to wildflower havens, good for humans and insects!

Yorkshire’s wildlife is one of wonder, we have plenty to celebrate, but there is still a lot to be done so we look forward to the next 100 years, and hope that you will continue to support our work by becoming a member or volunteering your time.

For more information about Yorkshire Wildlife Trust please visit www.ywt.org.uk.

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