history society or field club) was Norfolk. The Norfolk Naturalists Trust was established by Dr Sidney Long in 1926 as a ‘special non-profit paying company to hold and manage nature reserves’. Behind its formation lay a dissatisfaction with the National Trust, which came to the boil when the latter refused to take on Cley Marshes on the grounds that it was only of interest to naturalists. Norfolk had acquired several nature reserves by the 1950s, but although F.W. Oliver’s prediction that one day every English county would have its own county trust proved right, it took a long time. It was not until 1946 that the Yorkshire Naturalists Trust was founded, on the Norfolk model, and again with the immediate purpose of looking after a nature reserve, Askham Bog. The Lincolnshire Naturalists Trust followed two years later, largely through the efforts of A.E. Smith, later Secretary of the Society for the Promotion of Nature Reserves (SPNR). With the support of the Nature Conservancy, many more county trusts sprang up across England in the 1950s – Leicester and Cambridgeshire in 1956, the West Midlands and Kent in 1958, Surrey and Bucks, Berks and Oxon (‘BBONT’) in 1959, Essex and Hampshire in 1960, Cornwall and Wiltshire in 1962. The first Welsh trust, the West Wales Naturalists Trust, was formed in 1956, and the Scottish Wildlife Trust, covering the whole of Scotland, followed in 1964. Many of them emerged from the embers of an earlier natural history society, often through the efforts of a few dedicated local naturalists. For example, the Somerset Trust for Nature Conservation was formed in 1964 by members of the venerable Somerset Archaeological and Natural History Society, led by Ernest Neal and Peter Tolson. The Cornwall Naturalists Trust took over and much extended the activities of the Cornwall Bird Watching and Preservation Society. Many county trusts have changed their names (and acronyms) two or three times since. Originally they were naturalists trusts. Later some became trusts for nature conservation. Now they are nearly all wildlife trusts – and one rather dreads their possible future reincarnation as sustainability or biodiversity trusts.
Most trusts acquired a full-time conservation officer as soon as they were up and running, with the help of ‘pump-priming’ grants from the NCC and other bodies. During the 1980s, NCC grants helped the trusts to become more professional and to acquire a small corps of promotional, educational and marketing staff, as well as computer systems. In the 1990s, some trust nature reserves profited from English Nature’s Reserve Enhancement Scheme, and still more by the Heritage Lottery Fund which, by 2000, had awarded a total of £50 million to buy land as nature reserves or fund capital improvements. A further £6 million worth of projects came from the Landfill Tax Credit Scheme. At the same time, increased public interest in nature conservation resulted in big increases in membership. For example, the medium-sized Somerset Trust, with 9,000 members, now has an annual income just over £1 million and assets of £3 million, together with about 30 full-time staff housed in beautiful surroundings at Fyne Court. Between them the county wildlife trusts now manage some 2,300 nature reserves, ranging in size from under a hectare to several square kilometres, and extending over nearly 70,000 hectares.
The activities of the county trusts have much in common, but they always reflect the nature of their constituencies. The Welsh Trusts have become adept at running seabird islands and restoring reed beds; the Scottish Wildlife Trust specialises in restoring peat bogs. Among their core activities are acquiring and managing nature reserves and campaigning against harmful developments. More recently, their work has become more inclusive, embracing ideas of sustainability enshrined in Agenda 21 and interpreting them on a local scale (see p. 78), or helping farmers to sell environment-friendly products, as in the Devon Wildlife Trust’s ‘Green Gateway’ scheme. The nature of the membership is also changing. Twenty years ago, most trust members were keen naturalists. Today, many join out of a broader concern for the environment (that is, for our own quality of life), and often include whole families. Trust activities reflect such changes, with a greater emphasis these days on communities, education, and participatory activities.
The Wildlife Trusts partnership, formerly the Royal Society for Nature Conservation (RSNC), acts as a spokesman and administrative centre for the disparate county wildlife trusts. It had its distant origins in the SPNR, which was set up in 1912 for the purposes of ‘securing’ nature reserves and ‘to encourage the love of Nature’. This Society struggled on for years on a shoestring budget without achieving very much (though its surveys are a valuable retrospective source for the state of wildlife in the first half of the twentieth century, see Rothschild & Marren 1997). It did, however, contribute organisation and expertise for the Nature Reserves Investigation Committee in 1942, which produced the original ‘shopping list’ for the subsequent selection of National Nature Reserves and other important sites. In the 1950s the SPNR assisted some of the fledgling county trusts with modest grants to set up their first nature reserves, along with advice on how to look after them. In 1957 the county trusts proposed that the SPNR should act as a co-ordinating body for their activities, in effect as their ‘federal centre’. In the early 1970s a proposal to combine forces with the RSPB was briefly considered, but rejected, largely because the pair were mismatched: the RSPB was already too big. In 1976, the SPNR was granted a royal charter, becoming the RSPNR for a short period, before changing its name yet again to the Royal Society for Nature Conservation (RSNC) in 1981. In 1991, the RSNC joined with the 46 county trusts and 50 urban wildlife groups to form the Wildlife Trusts partnership, which now has a combined membership of nearly 300,000. All receive the wildlife trusts’ quarterly magazine, Natural World, along with a copy of their local trust’s magazine. There is also a junior arm, Wildlife Watch, founded in 1977 with young naturalists in mind.
The Wildlife Trusts partnership provides the local trusts with a common identity, promotes their common interests and campaigns on their behalf. On occasion it has gone too far down the centralising path, for example, when it tried to impose a common ‘badger’ logo (known as the raccoon by disparagers) on all the trusts. But in general the division of responsibility seems to work well enough, with each partner concentrating on its constituency strengths, leaving the umbrella body to organise training weekends, launch national appeals (for example ‘Tomorrow Is Too Late) and making its voice heard in the corridors of power. It has long had its head office somewhere in Lincolnshire for reasons lost in the mists of time, but the Trusts’ director’s office is in London. Its logo: the ubiquitous badger. Vision: ‘the achievement of a United Kingdom that is richer in wildlife and managed on sustainable principles’.
I cover the activities of a particular wildlife trust on pp. 75-9.
Head Office: The Kiln, Waterside, Mather Road, Newark NG24 1WT.
Wildlife Trusts partnership Director general: Simon Lyster.
The National Trust
At the turn of the millennium, the National Trust’s membership was just short of a stupendous three million. The public loves a bargain, and for the modest membership fee the whole of the Trust’s vast estate is open to them. Moreover, to many, the Trust embodies all that is best in the countryside: beautiful scenery, benevolent stewardship and a good day out. However, until recently the National Trust was only on the margins of the nature conservation world. It is not a campaigning body, and much of its work is centred on maintaining stately homes and gardens. Its importance lies in the nature conservation work carried out on its own properties. The Trust is emerging as an important player mainly because, in common with other heritage bodies, it takes a greater interest in wildlife than in the past.
There are two separate National Trusts, one for England and Wales, the other for Scotland. The former, older Trust had its origins in the concern over the enclosure of commons in the nineteenth century. The desire of a few Victorian philanthropists to preserve ‘all that still remained open, for the health and recreation of the people’ led to the formation of the Commons Preservation Society, the first successful conservation pressure group in history. In 1885, the Society’s solicitor, Robert (later Sir Robert) Hunter, proposed a ‘Land Company’ to buy and accept gifts of heritage land and buildings for the benefit of the nation. In 1893, joined by Canon Hardwicke Rawnsley’s Lake District Defence
